Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses Internet intersecting with the totalitarian past to shape the AIDS governance in Taiwan to lead individual fear of longevity. A research methodology to investigate the block chain technology for doing ethnography digitally on individual COVID-19 experiences is also discussed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses how Internet had intersected with the totalitarian past to shape the landscape of gender/sexualities as well as AIDS movements in Taiwan that social minorities assembled as “union of unwanted” for social justice. My project had drawn on digital technology to connect my research participants for their social sufferings to be heard and learned in a remote and longitudinal manner.

The "altruistic" and "decentralised" regulatory regimes, I argue, redistributes state power to local social bodies where the decentralised governance of sexual minorities and social deviants is exercised through compassionate voluntary labour. As a result, this health regime has escalated and engendered everyday struggles which the affected endure and will continue to confront.

My approach to explore individual everyday struggles through Facebook and the application for instant communication was beneficial to my study of AIDS governance in Taiwan. I observed that qinggan (情感, sentiment) or emotional labour experiencing my research participants under the AIDS governance in Taiwan was also impacted by their everyday use of digital technologies. Allowing this research to expound individual fear of living longer despite their pharmaceutical access, the virtual connection also overcome chronic loneliness or depression constantly facing ganranzhe (感染者, HIV-infected individuals) to not easily end one’s life.

Extending the approach for studying AIDS governance in Taiwan, this paper also attempts to investigate the block chain technology in relation to both Taiwanese and Australian indigenous knowledge to learn individual experiences of COVID-19 embedded in digital landscapes.