本文分析2004至2020年的台灣選舉與民主化調查(TEDS)總統選舉面訪資料,探索過去20年間台灣民眾及其政治資訊接收管道之間的互動與變化。在這段時間內,電視仍然是八成以上受訪者接收政治與選舉資訊的管道之一,但民眾依賴報紙與廣播接收政治資訊的比例逐年下滑,而使用網路的比例逐年上升,並在2016年超越報紙。不同報紙與新聞台的讀者,在統獨偏好與國族認同上都有極大的差別,但是兩極化的程度在過去二十年來變化不大。而觀眾平均政治偏好較為極端的新聞台,民眾選擇它作為政治資訊來源的比例也較高。在新興的社群網站上,台灣民眾依賴社群網站接收政治資訊的比例已經超越廣播,但不同社群網站使用者之年齡分布亦十分不同,加上社群網站本身設計互動模式差異,可能導致未來不同社群網站有不同程度的政治影響力。本文最後試著討論目前調查民眾政治資訊接收在方法論上的限制,以及未來可能的研究方向。
This article explores the change and continuity of how Taiwanese voters consume political information in the past 20 years. The analysis exploits five waves of Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) face-to-face post-presidential-election survey between 2004 and 2020 and reveals three major results. First, more than 80% of voters rely on television to consume political information, but the number relying on newspapers and radio is declining; meanwhile, Internet usage surpassed the newspaper as the second most common consumption method. Second, voters with different national identities and unification-independence preferences tend to select different newspapers and news channels. Meanwhile, the news channels in which the audience has a stronger political preference are much likely to be chosen by the voters as the main source of information. Nevertheless, the overall level of media polarization does not increase across time. Third, social media surpassed the radio as one of the important channels for political information, but the variety of the users' age distribution exists across platforms, foretelling the future political impacts of the social media sites. In the end, this article briefly discusses the methodological challenges in studying political information consumption in this new information era.