An annual conference of Public Broadcasting International (PBI) was held in Tokyo in November 2022. The Overseas Media Studies group of the NHK Broadcasting Culture Institute that researches public service media (PSM) around the world, which have been providing information not only through broadcasts but also on the internet, interviewed six representatives of American, European, and Asian PSM who took part in the PBI Tokyo 2022, asking what challenges each media outlet was facing and what roles PSM should play amidst the dramatic change in the environment surrounding information and communication media. The common challenges the interviewees cited include (1) securing long-term stable financial resources, (2) intensifying competition caused by the expanding choice of information sources and services, (3) audience fragmentation and erosion, and (4) declining audience trust. They also had a common belief that, all the more for the era of abundant disinformation and deepening social fragmentation, PSM is needed as an institution “delivering reliable information” and “bridging people.” To gain a public understanding of these roles, the representatives also underlined the importance of enhancing transparency and accountability efforts. The talks of the six representatives showed a sense of urgency, with an eye on the challenges in their efforts of transforming from public service broadcasters to public service media, as well as a sense of mission, with a commitment to supporting rich and quality information spaces and civil, democratic societies.

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Based on the Time Use Survey on Media Use conducted in 2021, this paper focuses on those who watch online videos on TV screens (6% of the total respondents, hereinafter referred to as “online-video viewers”)　to analyze their use of TV screens and video viewing and discuss whether the further spread of connected TVs and those watching videos on televisions will change the use of TV monitors.The survey finds the online-video viewers spend 1 hour 47 minutes watching “videos” on TV screens, which is the same level of their “real-time TV viewing” (1 hour and 39 minute). In terms of the shift in a given day, “real-time TV viewing” was overwhelmingly high in morning hours, while “online-video viewing” increased toward the late evening hours. This shows that online-video viewers chose what to watch on TV screens depending on the time of day. As to how to watch online-videos on TV screens, they spent almost the same amount of time “viewing while doing something else” and “dedicatedly viewing.” Activities they engage in while watching the video include “meals,” “social media,” and “personal chores,” which shows they watch online videos in a manner close to real-time TV viewing. These findings suggest that these characteristics of the use of TV screens by online-video viewers will become prevalent along with the spread of connected TVs and the increase of those who watch videos on TV screens.

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A working group on public broadcasting was set up in “the Study Group on the Ideal Broadcasting System in the Digital Age” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC) in September 2022. The group has been discussing the role of public service broadcasting in the internet age and NHK’s operations using the internet that are currently defined as “optional operations.” In the four deliberations of the working group so far, experts have noted that NHK should be allowed to expand its online operations, with remarks such as “The strength of public service broadcasting is its capacity to deliver basic information that must be shared by the public in a trustful manner without being preoccupied with the attention economy. How to provide these benefits to those not watching broadcasts should be worth considering” and “If the system is left unchanged, Japan will lag further behind within the entire information space in terms of providing the public with healthy access to information.” On the other hand, the Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association argued, “If making internet operations compulsory is to be considered, NHK should explain its aims and content concretely and go through careful discussion,” and the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association, “If NHK’s internet operations become compulsory, it will impede fair competition and undermine the diversity of speech and the pluralism of media, which may cause detriment to the public and society.”This paper is a re-publication of the past four articles posted on “BUNKEN blog” that reviewed the discussed of the working group on public broadcasting. One of the articles included a summary of the developments of January 2023, during which a series of actions surrounding NHK occurred. Please note some issues featured in the blog saw changes in the content as the discussions progressed, but the author keeps them as a record of the discussion process.

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How suicides by celebrities are reported has received increasing attention in recent years. When Ueshima Ryuhei, a member of a popular comedy trio Dachou Club passed away in May 2022, broadcasters reporting the news in front of his house or revealing the suicidal method were harshly criticized on social media sites and newspapers.The World Health Organization (WHO) has released “Preventing suicide: a resource for media professionals, update　2017” (commonly known as “media guidelines for suicide reporting”). This booklet presents a total of 12 items of “dos” and “don’ts” with detailed explanations for each. This month’s Research Report analyzes 26 TV programs that covered Mr. Ueshima’s suicide on the day of his death to examine how their reports complied with the guidelines’ “dos” and “don’ts.”For “dos”, the analysis finds that few programs aired the aspects of “Educate the public about the facts of suicide and suicide prevention, without spreading myths” and “Report stories of how to cope with life stressors or suicidal thoughts, and how to get help.” Meanwhile, although “don’ts” included “Don’t place stories about suicide prominently and don't unduly repeat such stories” with an explanation “Caution should be exercised regarding the repetition or updating of the original story,” but some programs repeatedly provided information regarding Mr. Ueshima.

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Social media has a significant impact on society today, and it is inevitable to take into consideration the influence of social media in studying trends of public opinion. On the other hand, we need to examine what characteristics and challenges social media analysis has in comparison with the analysis of public opinion through traditional public opinion surveys. Nevertheless, analyzing discourse on social media platforms requires a different approach from conventional public opinion surveys. With this in mind, this paper discusses the characteristics of “public opinion” in the social media sphere by applying an emerging method in social science—a computational social science approach—to “public opinion” in social media to compare the results with those of a public opinion survey. As an example, Twitter posts on Prime Minister Abe Shinzo were analyzed.To be specific, the method of sentiment analysis with supervised learning (SL) was used for the estimation of attitudes towards Mr. Abe, whether supporting him or not, from massive tweet data. As a machine learning model, we used RoBERTa, an improved model of BERT pre-trained language model based on deep learning. The model proved to function satisfactory with its accuracy rate of 85.79%.The analysis finds that nearly 80% of tweets are classified as negative attitudes towards Mr. Abe, with support considerably exceeding disapprove throughout the observation period. Furthermore, we analyzed the words distinctive to the sentiments classified by the model, which confirmed that they were understandable to human eyes and the classification was adequate to some extent. In this way, the chronological changes in support for and disapproval of Mr. Abe were compared with those of Cabinet approval ratings, which revealed that their results did not match and a huge gap was found. These findings will serve as good material for examining the relationship between opinions expressed on Twitter and general public opinion. In the next issue the paper will analyze in detail regarding what topics Mr. Abe was supported or disapproved of, using a method called topic model analysis, and discuss the usability and challenges of Twitter analysis.

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