世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com presented the results of a survey by goo Research into the FIFA World Cup™ and the internet. They interviewed 1,015 people from their monitor group on the 16th to 18th of this month (Japan’s second match against Croatia kicked off late on the evening of the 18th). The sample was 57.2% female, 3.0% were in their teens, 20.3% in their twenties, 42.9% in their thirties, 22.7% in their forties, 8.0% in their fifties, and 3.2% in their sixties.

The article gives a gratuitous plug to the Firefox plugin Joga, so I will too, even though I am an Opera man myself.

First, 427 people, or 42.1%, said they were using the internet to gather information about the World Cup. In addition, 23.9% said they had no interest in the World Cup whatsoever.

Q1: What sort of information are you specifically gathering from the internet? (Sample size=427, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Confirmation match detailed schedule, progress, or results	416	97.4%
Player, location, or team-related information	184	43.1%
Watching matches	35	8.2%
Communicating with fellow fans	30	7.0%
Arranging travel or rooms for the match	4	0.9%
Other	5	1.2%

Barring those who had no interest, 772 people were asked if during or after the match they had posted to the internet about their impression of the match, 7.0% said that they had.

Looking at the 432 who either used the net to gather information or to write about their opinions, 65.0% said they spend up to 30 minutes a day on World Cup-related surfing, 19.6% said they spent 30 minutes to an hour, 7.4% were online for between one and two hours regarding football, and 5.8% from two to five hours. That leaves an unreported 2.2% who may very well be spending over five hours a day online talking football!

Q2: What media are you using to gather information about the Germany World Cup? (Sample size=1,015, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Television	835	82.3%
Newspapers	448	44.1%
Internet from computer	441	43.4%
Radio	67	6.6%
Magazines	66	6.5%
Internet from mobile phone	52	5.1%
Other	7	0.7%
Won’t get any information from any of them	140	13.8%

Q3: During the Germany World Cup, how will your time spent on the internet change? (Sample size=1,015)

Increase I think	19.9%
Decrease I think	7.8%
Not change	72.3%

Note that those with no interest in the World Cup mostly said their use of the internet would not change, so the increase cannot be accounted for by assuming that those bored with football will log on instead.