世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent kerfuffle in the Japanese web community involved 2 channel, the world’s largest bulletin board service, banning certain summary sites from not just copying thread highlights, but also editing the occasional comment to add affiliate links, so this survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, looked at what people thought about it.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 15th of June 2012 1,092 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 15.8% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

I’d like to link to some of the sites that were banned – note that the ban was not a legal ban, just a public warning – but they really are heavily-wrapped in dodgy adverts for dodgy comics and figurines. Instead, here’s a link to a more detailed write-up of the story.
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Here is my first “best of 2010″ surveys, a look by iShare at internet slang in 2010. Not all the words are from 2010, in fact most of them are a bit older, but it is the awareness that is being investigated in this survey.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 22nd of October 2010 665 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.0% of the sample were male, 26.9% in their twenties, 35.0% in their thirties, and 38.0% in their forties.

That was a lot of fun to translate, and I learnt a bit tonight! If I have made a few mistakes along the way, please let me know.

Here’s a short animation of orz:

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Media Interactive recently conducted a survey amongst 2ch (2 channel) users to find out more about their usage patterns. The highlights of the survey were reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 22nd of January 2010 exactly 1,000 people who had used 2ch were selected by some unspecified methodology. 53.4% of the sample were male, 0.8% in their teens, 19.4% in their twenties, 36.7% in their forties, 11.6% in their fifties, and 3.9% in their sixties.

The sample demographics seems like a very typical demographic for online survey companies, so it’s difficult to say if the demographic reflects 2ch users or reflects Media Interactive’s monitor panel.

The stand-out figure for me is how few use 2ch on the move; the notebook figure perhaps reflects the lack of public WiFi and the lack of penetration of wireless dongles, and the mobile phone figure is perhaps due to the fact that most mobile browsers are pretty terrible, and to use a “full browser” (mobile Opera and the like) requires a separate more expensive plan.

I wonder if there’s a business opportunity for someone to write a 2ch reader for Android or the iPhone?
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If you want to find a reason to dislike Japan, visiting 2 channel is probably the best place to start. This recent survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into the 2 channel bulletin board system found an awful lot of people use the place.

Demographics

On the 10th of July 2008 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed in either the private or public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 74.9% of the sample were male, 7.3% in their twenties, 40.2% in their thirties, 38.1% in their forties, and 14.5% in their fifties.

The popular image of 2 channel amongst the portion of the gaijin internet users that I am familiar with is of it as a place of unfettered right-wing strongly-nationalistic hate-mongerers. A standing joke, based very much on fact, is that whenever a Japanese person commits a headline-worthy crime, the 2 channelers will dig up a Korean ancestor for them so as to deny the wrong-doer is one of “us”.

Having said that, I don’t really know what percentage of 2 channel (by volume or by frequency of access) is of that reprehensible kind. Do any of my readers have a feel for this?

Oh, and 2 channel is blocked at work by our firewall proxy, I think. I can’t check as they’ve just recently started asking people about why they accessed blocked sites, and I don’t fancy trying to explain that away!
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2 Channel is the bulletin board system that mkes all the news in Japan, usually for all the wrong reasons! It is a cess-it, albeit an extremely popular cess-pit, always ready to pounce on the latest scandal and spread much muck, along with the all to rare smidgeon of truth. To learn more about what people get out of these boards, japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on the very topic of internet bulletin board usage.

Demographics

On the 16th of May 2007 JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample was female, 22.4% in their twenties, 36.7% in their forties, 23.9% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 6.1% in their sixties.

About the only bulletin board I’m active on these days is the Digital Point forums.
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With the recent kerfuffle in the news about the impending closure of 2 channel, or at least the threat of a forced seizure of the domain name, or perhaps just business as usual, japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s survey into what people thought about the rumoured closing down. Between the 19th and 21st of January they interviewed 1,059 people from their monitor group. 51.9% were male, 26.9% in their twenties, 25.1% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 23.4% in their fifties.

Note that a previous survey showed that 56% of a sample of mainly business professionals have visited there, so I would have through that there might have been a stronger showing of people with definite opinions about the news, especially considering that over three quarters of the total population have visited the site, and just 4% have not heard anything about it. Also note that as far as I can see, neither my blog nor my name appears on that site, but I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad sign!
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japan.internet.com reported that in the middle of October JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people from its monitor panel on the matter of usage of bulletin board sites. Of the sample, 74.8% were male, 14.8% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 12.1% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties. Note that one of the features of JR Tokai’s monitor pool is that they have a large percentage of business men, due in part to the fact that completing these surveys awards points for discounts on the Bullet Train.

2 Channel is a cess pit, quite frankly. I’ve visited there a few times myself, but the combination of heavy slang, both ordinary slang and 2-chan specifics, the general level of vitreol that anonymity promotes, and the utter ugliness of the layout makes me soon give up in disgust.
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