世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com reported on an interesting survey recently conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into news consumption. Between the 10th and 12th of January they interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their monitor group; the sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% aged 18 or 19, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties. Note that the full survey (available at a fee) covers many genres of news other than just the politics and technology groups featured in this article.

In particular regarding political news coverage, the results presented here have data points that are reassuring and others that are a bit depressing. The good news is that a relatively small one in five uses the internet as their primary politics news source. Whilst there are exceptions, like my favourite, Trans-Pacific Radio’s Seijigiri, certainly in the English-language world the perception I have is that many people gravitate towards the http://www.MyViewIsCorrectAndYouAreWrongWrongWrong.com sort of site. The bad news is that television is the most popular medium. Although I am in no way an expert on Japanese television news, not even a regular follower, I do get the impression that mainstream bulletins have little or no analysis, and there are few in-depth current-affairs programmes to rival, for instance, Newsnight in the UK, although I do hear that that’s gone downhill recently.

Personally, about the only current affairs program I enjoy (even though it is a little celebrity-heavy at times they at least give the lightweights little air-time, but that Kevin guy makes me want to throw stuff at the telly!) is “Bakusho Mondai’s Hikari Ota’s If I Were Prime Minister…”. That’s a login-free New York Times story, and it describes the show far better than I could. It’s worth catching every Friday 8pm to 9pm on NTV.

Q1: From where do you mainly get your politicial news? (Sample size=221)

Television	57.0%
Radio	0.5%
Internet	20.4%
Newspaper	21.7%
Magazines	0.0%
Word of mouth	0.0%
Posters in railway carriages	0.0%
Mobile phone news contents	0.5%
Other	0.0%

Note that 79 people, or 26.3% of the sample, do not follow any political news. For the graph at the head of the story I added these people back in. Also note that although this was a survey of mobile phone users, just one used their phone as their main source of political news.

Note that television was also a primary source for economic, international and society news.

Q2: From where do you mainly get your IT and other technology news? (Sample size=144)

Television	16.0%
Radio	0.7%
Internet	70.1%
Newspaper	9.0%
Magazines	4.2%
Word of mouth	0.0%
Posters in railway carriages	0.0%
Mobile phone news contents	0.0%
Other	0.0%

Here, 156 people, or 52.0% of the original sample do not follow any technology news.

The internet was also the primary source for entertainment news.

Q3: How frequently do you usually check internet news sources? (Sample size=300)

Almost every day	66.7%
Sometimes view	16.7%
Viewed once or twice	14.0%
Never viewed	2.7%