NHK has been conducting the “Survey on Japanese Value Orientations” every five years since 1973 to longitudinally track the Japanese views on society, economy, daily lives, and other wide range of topics by repeatedly using same questions and survey method. This paper reports the findings from the latest survey, focusing on the results regarding family and gender relations such as views on marriage, premarital sex, women’s jobs, and education for daughters.“Family and gender relations” is the area that has seen the largest changes in the “Survey on Japanese Value Orientations.” The changes show the following characteristics. (1) In general, people’s attitudes are changing towards respecting gender equality and individual freedom. (2) Many topics change towards the same directions; some keep an upward trend, and others downward. (3) Some questions show the changes in responses due to the alternation of generations, and others are largely influenced by the times.People’s view on family and gender relations have changed significantly over the past 45 years, but views on some topics have changed little since around 2000.

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As the second report on the “Public Opinion Survey on Information and Media Use,” following the June 2018 issue, this article focuses on social media to discuss the current state of usage, the positioning of social media and television among the youth, and the aspect of contacting news sources.As to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LINE, a large number of those aged 20 and under use Twitter, as a tool to acquire information rather than to a communication tool. Among under-20s, their daily media usage finds that those using LINE or Twitter almost every day outnumber those viewing television, and their evaluation of media shows social media and television had the same level of appreciation in terms of making them aware of something they had not paid attention to before and learning diverse opinions. As to media for acquiring information, these results suggest that social media’s presence has become as large as, or larger than, that of television among young people. For access news to learn political, economic, and social trends, television was used by the largest number of respondents even among under-20s (over 70%), but more than 40% view news delivered on LINE NEWS or tweeted/shared on social media. Many of under-20s and of those using LINE NEWS as a news source contact with news passively. Furthermore, fake news is less recognized by those who use LINE NEWS most for acquiring news. Internet media including social media enable people access content they are interested in effectively, but these pieces of information are not necessarily credible. Under such circumstances, for the better usage of rapidly spreading social media, it is indispensable to put in place a new information delivery scheme as well as to raise users’ media literacy.

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With media consumption on mobile devices advancing around the world and the media market implementing next-generation key technologies such as AI and social big data analysis offered by GAFA and other global IT companies, the media environment and people’s communication style are dramatically changing. Under these circumstances, public service broadcasters (PSBs) keep losing the “broadcasting” and “online service” shares across the globe, which is particularly accelerated among the young users. Such situation makes it difficult for PSBs to provide basic public services. Meanwhile, to respond to these changes, PSBs in EU countries have been trying to transform themselves to “public service media (PSM)” over ten years and proactively adopting new technologies into their public services. However, European PSM at the moment are forced stagnate new technological innovations and service developments affected by GAFA and other major players’ global market domination and technological monopolies. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and some other organizations have expressed strong concern over this situation. This paper reviews the current challenges, countering strategies, and innovation initiatives of European PSM, which should serve as a preceding example of NHK’s “turning PSM,” based on related materials including the EBU’s “Vision2020: Our Strategic Objectives 2017.” Then the author examines the inherent “possibilities” and “limits” of European PSM’s innovation initiatives. Finally, the paper discusses the future vision of the PSM’s innovations.

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NHK’s national telephone public opinion surveys have been using “land-line and mobile RDD” method since December 2016. Meanwhile, regional surveys still have no other choice than depending only on land-line numbers (hereinafter referred to as “land-line RDD”) because mobile phone numbers do not identify the areas the users live in.However, it is revealed that the divergence between the sample composition ratios of recent “land-line RDD” surveys, and the Basic Resident Register’s composition ratio is widening, which suggests it is high time to review the effectiveness of this method.With this in mind, the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute adopted the mail survey instead of “land-line RDD” to conduct a public opinion survey in Kobe City and surrounded areas in October 2018. In conducting the survey we attempted to shorten the survey period as much as possible to pursue the highest agility, which is a strong point of the telephone survey. As a result the following findings were obtained.　-Reminders were issued less frequently than usual and the survey period was shortened almost by half, but a comparatively high response rate was maintained.　-The first deadline was brought forward, which allowed speedy collection and contributed to building up a high response rate in the first half of the survey period.　-The sample composition ratio was less divergent from the Basic Resident Resister’s composition ratio, and the bias towards older generations was largely improved.The above findings imply that replacing “land-line RDD” surveys with mail surveys will increase the accuracy of regional surveys unless prompt publication of the results is required.

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