Mapping the Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Dataveillance Discourse in Japan

When Media Companies Insist They're Not Media Companies and Why It Matters for Communications Policy

Komori is a generic term that consists of a noun,ko(a child), and a verb,moru(to protect or to take care of); Japanese use it to refer to any person, male or female, old or young, who takes care of children. This article will focus on the young girls, hired by families in need of child care in the so-called modern Imperial period (1868–1945), who were calledkomori. Like their European counterparts, nursemaids and nannies,komoribegan to appear in what Michel Foucault has called the “discourse of power” in the late nineteenth century, i.e., in the formative period of the Japanese modern nation state. Thekomori'sappearance in Japan's discourse of power corresponded to the emergence of a subculture among thekomorithat is the focus of my analysis in this article.

Mention Indian, and the first image that comes to most people's minds is likely to be a figment of the American mass media: A war-bonneted chief. The Land O' Lakes maiden. Most American Indians in the twenty-first century live in urban areas, so why do the mass media still rely on imagery stuck in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? How can more accurate views of contemporary cultures replace such stereotypes? These and similar questions ground the essays collected in American Indians and the Mass Media, which explores Native experience and the mainstream media's impact on American histories, cultures, and communities. Chronicling milestones in the relationship between Indians and the media, some of the chapters employ a historical perspective, and others focus on contemporary practices and new technologies. All foreground American perspectives missing in other books on mass communication. The historical studies examine treatment of Indians in America's first newspaper, published in seventeenth-century Boston, and in early Cherokee newspapers; Life magazine's depictions of Indians, including the famous photograph of Ira Hayes raising the flag at Iwo Jima; and the syndicated feature stories of Elmo Scott Watson. Among the chapters on more contemporary issues, one discusses campaigns to change offensive place-names and sports team mascots, and another looks at recent movies such as Smoke Signals and television programs that are gradually overturning the movie Indian stereotypes of the twentieth century. Particularly valuable are the essays highlighting authentic tribal voices in current and future media. Mark Trahant chronicles the formation of the Native American Journalists Association, perhaps the most important early advocacy organization, which he helped found. As the contributions on new media point out, American Indians with access to a computer can tell their own stories - instantly to millions of people - making social networking and other Internet tools effective means for combating stereotypes. Including discussion questions for each essay and an extensive bibliography, American Indians and the Mass Media is a unique educational resource.

From the early days of Japan’s modern period, apocalyptic narratives warned of problems caused by progressivism and modernization: ecological change, economic gaps between advanced and less advanced nations, exploitation of the lower classes, and conflicts between different religious beliefs and ethnicities. Such distrust of progress, new scientific findings and technological developments deepened at the end of World War I. With World War II came the shocking realization that humanity had created weapons that could literally wipe out human life. After the atomic bombings, modern apocalyptic discourse in Japan underwent a crucial change: for the first time humans displaced the astronomical unknown as the force that could destroy the world.

A common position amongst social media platforms and online content aggregators is their resistance to being characterized as media companies. Rather, companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter have regularly insisted that they should be thought of purely as technology companies. This paper critiques the position that these platforms are technology companies rather than media companies, explores the underlying rationales, and considers the political, legal, and policy implications associated with accepting or rejecting this position. As this paper illustrates, this is no mere semantic distinction, given the history of the precise classification of communications technologies and services having profound ramifications for how these technologies and services are considered by policy-makers and the courts.

A handful of social media companies, with their shifting strategies to become hosts of all information available online, have significantly changed the news media landscape in recent years. Many news media companies across the world have gone through reorganizations in a bid to keep up with new storytelling techniques, technologies, and tools introduced by social media companies. With their non-transparent algorithms favoring particular content formats and lack of interest in developing solid business models for publishers, social media platforms, on the other hand, have attracted widespread criticism by many academics and media practitioners. This chapter aims at discussing the impact of social media on journalism with the help of digital research that provides an insight on what storytelling types with which three most-followed news outlets in Turkey gain the most engagement on Facebook.

Mass Media, Consumerism and National Identity in Postwar Japan addresses Japan’s evolving nationalism and national identity in relation to its newly rising consumerism during the two decades from 1952 to 1972, through a study of the transformation of the print media and the market for weekly and monthly magazines. Martyn Smith argues that the transformation of the print media in the 1950s and 1960s expanded the possibilities for social, individual and national identities in Japan. From the late 1950s, the growth in the market for weekly magazines was fuelled by the huge potential for advertising revenue, the rapid development of the Japanese economy, and the necessity for the growth of a consumer society. This resulted in the merging of national identity with individual subjectivity – which this book describes as –national subjectivity’ – as the Japanese media promoted individual consumption to aid the recovery of the Japanese nation as a whole. Examining housewife magazines such as Fujin Koron, Fujin no Tomo and Fujin Gaho, as well as news magazines such as Mainichi Graph and Asahi Graph, and publications aimed at young people – Shukan Heibon and Heibon Punch – Smith shows how the relationship of nationalism to everyday life is best understood by taking into account the changing nature of consumption in the period. By presenting an alternative to the traditional –top-down’ narrative of state-driven economic nationalism, this book therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of postwar Japanese history and Japanese nationalism.

Una postura común entre las plataformas de redes sociales y los agregadores[1] de contenido es su resistencia a ser caracterizados como empresas mediáticas. En cambio, compañías como Google, Facebook y Twitter insisten reiteradamente en que deben ser consideradas como empresas puramente tecnológicas. Este artículo critica la posición que sostiene que estas plataformas son compañías tecnológicas en lugar de empresas de medios, explora la racionalidad que subyace a esta idea y tiene en cuenta las implicancias políticas, legales y de política pública asociadas con la aceptación o el rechazo de esta postura. Como ilustra este artículo, no se trata de una mera distinción semántica, ya que la precisa clasificación de los servicios y las tecnologías de comunicación a lo largo de la historia tiene profundas ramificaciones sobre cómo estas tecnologías y servicios son considerados por quienes elaboran políticas públicas y por las cortes judiciales.
 
 [1] N. del T.: En su versión original, el artículo utiliza en algunas ocasiones la palabra “agregadores de contenidos” [content aggregators] y en otras se refiere a “curadores de contenidos” [content curators]. En esta traducción se optó en la mayoría de los casos por la noción de “agregadores de contenidos” por ser el término más utilizado en español, y porque alude de modo más cabal a la tarea de selección y organización de contenidos que realizan estas empresas.

Hollywood and Silicon Valley have long been uncomfortable bedfellows. Out of fear of pirating and lost profits, entertainment companies have historically resisted technological changes. Conversely, high-tech companies, more concerned with technological progress, have largely ignored the needs of the entertainment industry. Nevertheless, those products that we now take for granted, such as DVDs, MP3 players, and the Internet, are all due to the synergy of technology and entertainment. The switch to digital and web formats for entertainment represents huge potential market opportunities for both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It has opened up new possibilities for entertainment and expanded the way content is created, distributed and consumed. Consider the phenomenon of YouTube and its wildly popular user-created content, or the ability to download movies and TV shows from sites such as iTunes and watch them on your iPod or computer, anytime and anywhere. The dual forces of consumer demand and rapidly changing content distribution are combining in new ways to create changes that will strike at the very foundations of the entertainment and technology industries. Depending upon how entertainment and technology companies respond, these changes can help them prosper or put them out of business. Media companies will have to become more like technology companies; and technology companies will need to change too. Because content creation, distribution and consumption are ever more tightly linked, Hollywood will need to understand what's happening in Silicon Valley and vice versa; changes in one industry will reverberate through the other. Some companies such as AOL and Time Warner have tried and failed (at least so far) to harness these forces, while a few companies such as Disney, Intel, and Google have recently taken the initial steps. But many more companies wait, afraid to change but knowing they cannot conduct business as usual. With an insider's knowledge, researcher and consultant, Philip Meza insightfully clarifies what managers and investors in media and technology companies will need to do in order to successfully navigate today's tricky environment. Coming Attractions? Hollywood, High Tech, and the Future of Entertainment discusses the history of the key forces driving the relationship between entertainment and technology today and into the future.

If public health can be defined as "all activities to ensure universal medical use of the people and protect and promote health," it can be said that public health emerged in the process of developing the concept of hygiene in East Asia. While traditional hygiene emphasized individual curing and longevity, modern hygiene was the state in charge of individual body and discipline. East Asian countries had to practice modern tasks in the field of hygiene and medical care in line with the construction of modern countries, and it was considered legitimate for modern countries to intervene in individual bodies. As the demand for modern national construction became stronger, interest in public health rather than personal hygiene increased. In East Asia, a new interpretation of the concept of hygiene began in Japan. Sensai Nagayo(1838-1902) newly defined the concept of 'sanitation' to justify the physical intervention of the modern state in Meiji period. The concept of 'public health' began to be used in earnest in 1890, when Ogai Mori(1862-1922) translated Western-style health protection measures for the public as public health. Since then, public health has evolved into a universal social discourse in Japan. Japan's public health expanded to colonial Joseon, Taiwan, and China. Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War led East Asian countries to believe that hygiene was the root of the Japanese nation's power. In the early 20th century, the government of the Republic of China began to imitate the case of Japan while promoting modern education reform and institutional reform. Japanese-style 'public health' was transplanted into various hygiene laws and sanitary equipment. In Korea, modern hygiene was introduced and spread from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, and the concept of 'public health' in Japan was mainly spreading. Public health in Japan was vaguely defined as an activity to protect and promote the health of the people, but in practice, it was focused on improving quarantine and environmental infrastructure. In response, the concept of American-style public health, which values prevention and treatment at the same time, has already begun to emerge under the Japanese colonial rule. In East Asia in the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese-style public health and American-style public health discourse competed, and measures to solve medical inequality were discussed in earnest. Interestingly, in common in East Asian countries, Actual Medical Expenses Campaigns to improve medical access at low cost and social medicine to universally provide prevention and treatment to the people have drawn attention. This was also a phenomenon caused by intensifying medical inequality as rapid urbanization and industrialization progressed in East Asian countries in the first half of the 20th century. Although it was impossible to resolve social contradictions or move toward fundamental reform of the national medical system due to the nature of the private movement, the actual medical movement further imprinted the need for public health care in the country and society. Social medicine studied the effects and relationships of the social environment on diseases and health, and studied ways to promote public health by using preventive medicine and therapeutic medicine. If social medicine was supported by state power, it was possible to go forward with practice such as State Medicine like China, otherwise it would only be a civilian movement such as the People's Health Movement, as in colonial Korea. Liberation and the Korean War were a dramatic turning point in American-style health that led to Japanese-style hygiene. Immediately after Liberation, there was a discussion between the left and right camps over medical nationalization to enhance the publicity of medical care. The medical community was sympathetic to the nationalization of medical care, but due to the lack of medical personnel and financial resources, specific alternatives could not be proposed. As American-style health studies gradually expanded their influence after the Korean War, American-style public health, which emphasized prevention and treatment activities, became established, and efforts were made to establish a health center system.

The mass media in the era of society 5.0 is the main means of disseminating messages and information to the wider community. The era of society 5.0 and the birth of new media has made people's daily lives easier. Currently, the mass media has a dual role, namely as a means of sharing messages in the flow of communication and also acting as an agent of change for the community. Many people's expectations of the role of mass media as agents of change for the wider community to become even better turned out to have a myriad of challenges. Because basically the mass media has a flexible nature. Mass media as a means of disseminating information and messages to the wider community is in line with the realities of life, every new change of course has new risks that follow. The rapid development of mass media also brings the rapid development of cyber crime in human life. And here is a new challenge that must be faced by every party in the era of society 5.0. Reflecting on the case above, the research in this journal focuses on discussing the challenges that must be faced by each party involved in society 5.0 in the era of cyber crime that attacks all aspects of life. This research uses an explanatory method based on literature study in which all data are obtained from books, journals, articles and internet media. This study aims to see and find out to what extent the parties involved in society 5.0 face cyber crime, especially the mass media. The theory used in this study is social learning theory to discuss the reasons for the existence of cyber crime, then use and gratification theory to see the extent to which society is affected by mass media in society 5.0 and finally media ecology theory to see how the role of mass media is in dealing with cybercrime.

The emergence of digital technologies over the past two decades has brought about changes that threaten the very existence of german media companies. The journalistic business model is losing sales, and the decline in print circulations is making it successively difficult to earn money with journalistic products. Therefore, german media companies have been investing in business models that have no relation to journalism to generate growth for years – with success. Considering this development, it is astonishing from a purely economic perspective that media groups, which are increasingly developing into technology companies, are still clinging to the ailing journalistic business model at all. To examine their motives to do so, this study poses the following research question: "Why do media companies still invest in journalistic products today?" To answer it, the researcher conducted interviews with highlevel employees from media companies as part of a qualitative study. Analysis of the data revealed that media companies continue to invest in journalism mainly because they benefit economically from the brands their journalistic products represent. Other reasons like serving as a pillar of the democratic constitution or to help shape public discourse seem to be less important.

The adoption of recommender systems in online news personalization has made it possible to tailor the news stream to the individual interests of each reader. Previous research on commercial recommender systems has emphasized their use in large‐scale media houses and technology companies, and real‐world experiments indicate substantial improvements of click rates and user satisfaction. It is less understood how smaller media houses are coping with this new technology, how the technology affects their business models, their editorial processes, and their news production in general. Here we report on the experiences from numerous Scandinavian media houses that have experimented with various recommender strategies and streamlined their news production to provide personalized news experiences. In addition to influencing the content and style of news stories and the working environment of journalists, the news recommender systems have been part of a profound digital transformation of the whole media industry. Interestingly, many media houses have found it undesirable to automate the entire recommendation process and look for approaches that combine automatic recommendations with editorial choices.

Nihonjinron, the particularistic discourse on Japanese national identity, successfully dominates the Japanese panorama even now, thanks to the influence of academic and popular literature, mass media, Japan’s powerful cultural industry, politics, and a widespread, genuine interest in “Japaneseness” among the Japanese themselves. The works of professor Watanabe Shōichi represent an outstanding example of Nihonjinron literature and of its temporal continuity. From the second half of the 1970s until well into the 2000s, Watanabe has been surprisingly prolific in the nihonjinron field, enthusiastically propagating the establishment’s ideology. In this respect, his essays provide a significant insight into three main aspects of the Nihonjinron: the role of language as the highest expression of national identity; the existence of a widespread set of peculiar Japanese expressions conveying its ideological framework; its deep-rooted primordialist core. In the construction of a lexical and conceptual dichotomy between the stratum of the supposed “native lexicon” and that of “foreign loans” which compose the Japanese language and in the emphasis on the uniqueness of the Japanese language as a vehicle of Japanese primeval spirit, Watanabe shows the primordialist system of beliefs surrounding the concept of the “Japanese nation” (naturalness, organicity, continuity, timelessness, mythical-ness, sameness, perennial-ness) which firmly underlines the entire Japanese identity discourse.

The purpose of any social discipline is to understand the society through their theoretical perspectives. Human communication as a social science is also without exception, its purpose is to explain the society by means of inspecting the social information as well as the contents and extensions during the operation of social information system. Social together with its system are complex and comprehensive by nature, which determines human communication existing itself as a comprehensive science with multiple theories, aspects and perspectives. It is reasonable to study with the help of related theories of other subjects in facing concrete research issues and when the existing theories lack enough power to give an explanation. Interpersonal human communication is an important part in human life, the human communication study about is rather few, however. This paper is about to solve this problem, for current human communication cannot explain the barriers occurred in the interpersonal human communication. To deal with such issue that often happens in social life, the author is appeal to information system theories to explain that the trajectory of information changes in the course of human communication could cause barriers.