Digital society has changed the way citizens interact and consume news, and media companies are trying to find ways to adapt to the changing media landscape. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, a think-tank based at Oxford University in the UK, has been investigating the impact of digitalization on the news and media outlets through international comparative research—“Digital News Report.” The NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute participates in this as a partner organization. Our analysis in 2023 finds that as digitization accelerates, more people, especially the younger generations, prefer to access news and information via social media, both in Japan and around the world. However, there are no dominant or big platforms which drive substantial traffic, and the intermediaries are getting increasingly fragmented. Moreover, despite their doubts about algorithms influencing which news they see, the users’ dependence on these platforms continue to grow. This year’s survey was carried out as the war in Ukraine also played out over information online. While members of the public recognize the importance of reliable information, the growth of subscriptions has stalled, as the cost-of-living crisis puts pressure on their livelihoods.

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Social recognition on the significance of embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion is increasing. It has brought more interest and scrutiny to whether and how media reflects the diversity of their society. In 2022, the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute conducted its second survey on on-screen representation in Japanese television programs, focusing on NHK and five major commercial broadcast channels. Our team conducted the following two surveys. 1) Meta data analysis of gender balance and representation of those who appeared on all television programs during a week in June, 2022. 2) Coding analysis of those who spoke or were quoted in weekday-evening national news & current affairs programs, during a week in June and a week in November, 2022. For the news analysis, we also looked at the representations of people with disabilities, individuals with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and in addition, the geographical spread of locations at which the individuals spoke or were interviewed. The representation of women and men in both surveys showed a similar trend to the previous 2021-22 survey results. The ratio of women and men were 4:6 in all programs, and 3:7 in evening news programs. The imbalance stood out further when they were separated into age groups. The largest representations of women were in younger age groups－20s in all programs and 19-39 in news programs. Men were markedly better represented in middle age—the largest age group was 40s in all programs, and 40-64 in news programs. This is in distortion to Japan’s general population where women are greater in their total numbers compared to men, especially in older age brackets. Furthermore, women in news were more likely to appear as an anonymous citizen while men appeared as figures of authority, especially in fields of larger social influence and impacts such as politics and economy. In other areas of representation in news: In terms of racial/ethnic diversity, we opted to code individuals with any audiovisual or narrative information that indicated they had non-Japanese, multi-racial or indigenous background as not “Japanese”, irrespective of their citizenship. Still, “Japanese” came close to 75% out of all those counted, and “people with European backgrounds” were represented better than other groups compared to their share of general population, both within and outside Japan. Regarding the representation of people with disabilities, individuals that we were able to identify as “people with disabilities” were a mere 0.3%, and 1.2% even including those we identified as “people who might have disabilities”—far below the national figure of 9.2% of the population. We need to take note of the fact that the analysis was made on a sample survey of limited number of days and that the coding analysis based on audiovisual and narrative cues taken from TV programs may have overlooked or misinterpreted gender identities, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and/or disabilities of some people. However, it can be said that the representations we captured in our surveys were close to what the audience saw. That picture—the world of television—seems quite distant from our real world.

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A symposium themed “Public Utilization of Broadcast Archives” was held as part of the 2023 NHK BUNKEN FORUM in March 2023. Based on the recording of the session, this paper examines how to utilize the enormous number of past broadcast programs and source materials as well as solutions to challenges, following the course of discussion at the symposium. Chapter I analyzes the survey on the needs for the use of broadcast archives held in the three prefectures of the Hokuriku region. While the survey finds a high demand for the utilization of public cultural facilities, many respondents cite that such facilities are in fact hard to access. In Chapter II and onwards, the author reports what was discussed at the symposium, starting with the examination of the potential of broadcast archives, which is followed by remarks that the high fee to be paid to NHK when using broadcast archives and low searchability have become hinderance to the cultural development of research, education, and other fields. Chapter III features the commentary by Kensaku Fukui about the principle of the Copyright Law that poses a challenge to the utilization of content including the usage in archives as well as recent trends such as the expansion of the “Limitation of Copyright” rules that exempts the authorization of copyright owners and new methods for obtaining authorization more easily. This chapter also reports questions and answers. In Chapter IV, the author presents and assesses his suggestions for promoting the public use of broadcast archives. Finally, from the viewpoint of the public utilization of broadcast archives, the author poses questions—what the role of NHK is as a public service media and what the receiving fee is paid for.

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