GuoTing Lin is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Westminster. She completed a Master in Radio and Television with an observation of reader-writing manner of communication on the Internet from National Taiwan University of Arts. She was also awarded an MA degree from the University of Westminster in Communication Studies in 2015. The dissertation may be of importance in exploring the new role of the music of social movement, as well as in providing musicians and activists with a better understanding of how social media relate to the music and the social movement. Her research focuses on Taiwanese indigenous music and culture in social media, music and social movements in Taiwan and is trying to explore how indigenous musicians communicate their perspectives of indigenous culture and issues to audiences through self-presentation on social media for rethinking the self-identity. She had been educated in classical music with majoring in cello and minoring in piano since 6 years old and is interested in music-making and singing. Therefore, she, as urban indigenous people, hopes to seek self-identity that is affected by her mother through the research project.
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Indigenous Music and Social Media in Contemporary Taiwan: Rethinking the Identity of Taiwanese Indigenous people.
The history and politics of Taiwan are related to the indigenous culture and life in Taiwan. As a result, the relationship between music and political events is crucial. Moreover, the indigenous music became a dialogue field between musicians and listeners, from which it could be heard that the consultations between indigenous peoples and other groups in Taiwan during each colonized period.
To locate the soundscape of indigenous music in the virtual community in Taiwan and to depict the cartography of the communication between Taiwanese contemporary indigenous music and the social media, reviewing the literature of the relationship between the music recording industry and indigenous music is also vital for understanding the different appearances of indigenous peoples from the context of history. This research will focus on recognizing the appearance of indigenous music from the period of the vinyl’s, the cassette culture, the comparatively recent CD period to the contemporary online period.
Since most of the indigenous singer-songwriters with cultural intentions perform themselves through social media, they communicate culture to other people. As an online community platform, social media has a function of interpersonal communication to the contemporary indigenous music community. Thus, the purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between music and culture in indigenous society to acquire innovation found in contemporary Taiwan.
Indigenous people in Taiwan reconstruct their identity in the online world and experience new ways of interacting through participation. In this process, new cultures and societies continue to emerge and they give people a distinct approach to imagining the world. This research, therefore, hopes to discover a new orientation for positioning the new indigenous identity, which is integrated with the contemporary indigenous culture, through exploring the interaction between indigenous music and media.
