UC Berkeley

This dissertation adopts an ethnographic approach to understand the complex political relations between Taiwan and mainland China, focusing on how sound and audio communication have been central in maintaining continuous dialogue across the Taiwan Strait even amidst political tensions and communication restrictions. It demonstrates that throughout 75 years of cross-strait history, people in Taiwan and mainland China have continuously found ways to speak and listen to one another. Since the Kuomintang government’s retreat to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War, communication across the Taiwan Strait has been heavily restricted. Both Taiwan and mainland China’s governments maintained highly regulated media environments through the 1980s, and mainland China’s Great Firewall continues to impose strict controls on online communication today. Amidst this restricted environment, people have mobilized various audio communication technologies—from loudspeakers and radio broadcasts to social media and videogames—to project a steady stream of sound across the Taiwan Strait. While discussions of cross-strait politics often emphasize formal diplomatic negotiations and political tension, this research instead centers sound and voice communication as distinct perspectives through which to explore how individuals communicate beliefs and navigate differences as they go about their daily lives.

A recurring theme in this dissertation is the concept of regulatory latency, which describes how the development and implementation of regulatory mechanisms often lag behind those of communication technologies. This latency leads to unregulated gaps that can be temporarily leveraged by individuals for open exchange in highly restricted media environments. I build on the concept of regulatory latency to demonstrate that since the 1950s, individuals in Taiwan and mainland China have continuously employed audio technologies to communicate outside of the bounds of the latest government regulations. I start with loudspeakers, which were used from the 1950s on both sides of the Taiwan Strait not only to transmit cross-strait propaganda, but also for informal exchange. Radio broadcasts similarly provided a rare space for cross-strait exchange; I specifically focus on the transitional period from the late 1980s through the early 2000s during which Taiwanese radio hosts and mainland Chinese listeners formed sustained relationships through multimedia exchanges surrounding these broadcasts. Analyzing these exchanges encourages a reconceptualization of broadcast radio as multimedia and multidirectional, while also revealing shifts in what I call the cross-strait socio-political imaginary.

More recently, I consider online exchanges through a case study of the briefly popular audio social media app Clubhouse. I highlight how Clubhouse users engaged in live voice communication to escape the “echo chambers” that are common on contemporary social media, forming affective connections and empathizing with people whose beliefs differ from their own. I also explore live-voice communication in online videogames. In contrast to associations of videogames with the promotion of violence, I demonstrate how informal, relaxed interactions in the context of online play provide a site through which Taiwanese and mainland Chinese gamers can collectively confront cultural, linguistic, and political differences. Taken together, these case studies reveal situations in which individuals find ways to communicate despite restrictions, navigating their differences by speaking and listening to one another.