Social Transparency for a democratic government system

For the media structure of Apple Daily, Lai encourages the company to adopt a culture of transparency and creativity without hierarchy system. Transparency in newspaper circulation has becoming much more important when an organization is taking a reader-centered approach in order to retain their readership. This is why employees of the Apple Daily are encouraged to tackle readership challenges, such as gathering readers’ feedbacks in a most possible efficient ways through trial and error methods. The main difference between traditional and newer media is the level of interactivity between the media and the public. It basically means the interactivity between newspapers and readers, and is “the degree to which participants in a communication process have control over, and can exchange roles in, their mutual discourse” (William, Rice, and Rogers, 1988).

Control refers to the scope of contents and sequences a participant can make decisions on of a communication act, and the exchange of roles refers to the ability of person and vice versa. Mutual discourse is the degree to which given communications act is based upon a prior series of communication acts. These show that the Taiwanese facilitate political, economic, and social transparency, accountability, and critical engagement, which together help to froster democratic government system in a much efficient way. The history of the media in Taiwan reveals that they acted as “agents of change” throughout the democratization process, and serve as “agents of restraint”-monitoring, checking, and balancing government-as democracy is consolidated (Duncan McCargo, 2003).