ING-WEN TSAI is the president of the Republic of China. Politicians need different platforms to present their ideas and thought. Nowadays, social media is a great chance for them to present themselves or advertise themselves. I checked twitter and Facebook, and I found that there is a huge different between eastern and western politicians.

First of all, not every Taiwanese politician’s tweet but they all have Facebook.  President ING-WEN TSAI, the president of the Republic of China, has two millions of people who like her Facebook page, and 63 thousands of followers on her twitter account. I also find out an interesting phenomenon. On January 15^th,2017, President Tsai visited twitter Team, after that day, her tweet turned to English. Mostly, the topics of President Tsai’s tweet are diplomacy and culture, such as her visit to Honduras, Guatemala.

President Tsai sometimes tweets about Taiwan tradition festivals, such as National Hakka Day or Lantern Festival. I think it is a way to introduce Taiwan’s special customs to others countries. I don’t think her followers are Taiwanese. The main contents of her tweets are not domestic news. Some tweet even using multiple languages. The Facebook pages are full of domestic news, and all the contents are written in Chinese. For example, she is talking about legalizing same-sex marriage on the Facebook page recently, but none of any tweet has talked about it.

Why there is a difference between twitter and Facebook? In my opinion, it’s because twitter has the character limit, it is more like people talking to you personally. You are not writing a long paragraph, so you can’t put all your thought in it. We can feel emotions in a tweet, people feel like they know this person better. You can connect with people through a tweet, since it’s short and clear. However, because of the cultural difference, President Tsai’s tweets might be too formal for the western followers. It’s hard to raise emotional feelings. It’s just like another official statement.