On September 6^th, 2023, the Study Group on the Ideal Broadcasting System in the Digital Age”—an advisory panel of experts organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication—released a draft summary of the year-long deliberation. It clearly shows an emphasis on widening the scope of NHK’s remit and the need for the cooperation among broadcasting media organizations amidst the increasing market power of foreign platform operators such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Including many diverse issues, the summary is 838 page long. This paper overviews the year-long deliberation and the draft summary, which features the following five points that the author deems important in discussing the ideal future of broadcasting.
1. Updating business operation model
2. Formulating measures for matters related to platforms
3. Considering the future of broadcasting networks
4. Promoting content production
5. Securing the trust in media
Other than the above, making NHK’s internet-based operations its compulsory operation is discussed in a separate chapter. In this digitalized society, users, technologies, businesses, and service are all shifting from broadcasting to the internet. However, there still exist a high barrier between broadcasting and telecommunications in Japan that is oriented by the Broadcasting Act. Herein lies the difficulty of the Study Group that examines the broadcasting system in digital society. In the meantime, changes surrounding broadcasting is becoming more and more drastic. The author also presented her views on what kind of discussion is needed to confront the essence and look ahead to the future.

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This paper is the second in a series of analyses from ‘Reuters Digital News Report 2023,’ an international comparative study conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. The first article investigated how the emergence of various platforms has led to an increasingly fragmented social media environment.However, user dependence on these platforms continues to grow despite the disquiet about the spread of misinformation and disinformation and the concern over how algorithms select information. This paper examines how these changes in the media environment have affected people’s ’trust’ and ‘interest’ in the news and analyses ‘news avoidance’—a term used to describe people’s deliberate avoidance of the news. Unlike many countries, Japan has not experienced a declining trust in news and an increase in news avoidance. On the other hand, interest in the news continues to decline among the Japanese population, and the share of the population that is ‘disconnected’ from the news is the highest in the world. Furthermore, Japan has the lowest level of ‘participation’ in news of any country, and the lack of political discussion is also evident. The Japanese population appears to be passive and uninterested in the news, which has significant implications for the future of journalism. The level of support for public broadcasting is also low, and popular recognition of the role it plays in society is lower than in other countries.

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This is the third report of the Survey on the Lives and Attitudes of Middle and High School Students that NHK conducted in the summer of 2022. The paper focuses on how middle and high schoolers and their parents feel about school and studies. Approximately 90 percent of middle and high schoolers say they enjoy their school life, and many have good relationships with their home-room teachers. Parents’ evaluation for schools and teachers is also high, with approximately 30% of fathers and 50% of mothers—largest figures ever—feeling that “there are many teachers who are devoted educators.” Meanwhile, parents who consider themselves as households of low living standards tend not to know about teachers and what is taught and are less interested in schools. The same tendency is found among middle and high schoolers themselves: the lower the standard of living, the lower the prospects they have for the future level of living. As seen in this result their prospects for the future are different depending on the family background. Nevertheless, middle and high schoolers who have parents with positive opinions about their children tend to have higher motivation for learning and expectations for their own future, which suggests that children may overcome adversity with a help of parents’ encouragement.

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