In search of insights that can help promote of the usage and utilization of broadcast archives in Japan, this two-part series reports the latest developments at the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA) of France—one of the largest broadcasting and audiovisual archives in the world—as well as its legal system. The first part presents how INA has been actively developing its functions and services in recent years, including AI-supported use of archives for research purposes, online distribution of content, and social contributions. A large number of audiovisual archives are collected and preserved by the institute, where experts manage metadata. Under the system of the legal deposit of audiovisual media, almost all collections are available for viewing for research, which are now actively used for quantitative analyses utilizing an AI tool developed by INA. The institute also vigorously produces audiovisual content and disseminating it on social media. In 2022, INA produced a new type of political program utilizing archives related to the candidates of presidential election and received a lot of buzz. The institute’s flexible responses to customers’ demands in video sales have been contributing to the enhancement of its brand image. Furthermore, horizontal collaborations among diverse departments across the organization are also active, which create synergies in achieving the mission of the institute. Amid the ongoing debates on the nature of public service broadcasters, including the removal of the license fee system, the institute strives to restoring trust in media by helping solve problems in the field of education, local communities, and overseas countries by leveraging its expertise in archiving.

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This paper is a republication of the fourth and the fifth installments (Part 1 and Part 2 of an article featuring an NHK cameraperson) from a series of articles “Research Report: The Current State of Journalists—the Quest for Trusted Media” that have been posted on the website of the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute since April 2023, with partial additions and corrections. The series presents how journalists in the field address the recipients’ (readers’/viewers’) distrust of journalism—mainly television and newspapers, or so-called “old media” as they acknowledge the existence of distrust. The paper focuses on Noriaki Tokuda, a cameraperson at the NHK Kamaishi bureau in the Tohoku region, who passed away about a year ago. The author investigated how he earned the deep trust of local people at the areas heavily hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and delivered broadcast programs and news reporting based on their trust. As a means of uncovering the process and characteristics of his achievements, statements from those whom Tokuda filmed and interviewed as well as his colleagues were collected. What the author found there was the importance of walking alongside local residents as a member of the community and facing issues from the same perspectives as theirs as one of the persons involved. This also implies a danger in mass-media reporters’ trying to see things from above the clouds with a bird’s eye view and generalizing them for reporting. As recipients’ distrust of media is growing now, the author hopes that this paper will serve as a reference for considering measures to sustain trust in journalism, by shedding a light anew on the importance of interacting with local people with the same perspectives as theirs as a person involved. Coinciding with the writing of this paper, the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake occurred on January 1st this year, with a maximum intensity of 7 on the Japanese scale. The largest tsunami since the Great East Japan Earthquake hit cities, which claimed many lives due to collapsed buildings, mudslides, and fires. A large number of people in wider areas have lost their homes and have no choice but to live in evacuation centers in a bitter cold climate. As reporting activities continue in the region, how should journalists interact with the people in disaster-affected areas and what should be reported? The author’s hope is that the experiences and lessons learnt in the affected areas in Tohoku can be utilized in any way.

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This is a report on the 45th Conference of the International Association for Time Use Research, IATUR, which was held in Tokyo in November 2023. The conference theme was “Sustainable Society and Time Use Research.” A total of 24 sessions were organized, where over 60 presentations were delivered. The main focuses of this article are two of those sessions: ‘Gender inequalities in use of time’ and ‘Modern ways to collect time use data.’ In the session ‘Gender inequalities in use of time,’ research findings from a cross-national comparative study of ‘GenTime,’ a project at the University of Oxford, were presented. It was pointed out that women spend more time on work than men do, when combining unpaid work with paid work, in the surveyed East Asian and Western societies in common. Time use surveys can capture the time spent on unpaid work, such as domestic work, childcare, and nursing care by collecting 24-hour records of daily activities. Therefore, the amount of time for paid and unpaid work, measured separately by gender, has been regarded as one of the data which could indicate gender inequalities. In the session ‘Modern ways to collect time use data,’ web-based survey platforms that work on personal computers and smartphones were reported by research institutes in the UK and Belgium, respectively. Among them, “MOTUS,” Modular Online Time Use Survey, a platform developed in Belgium, was reported to be utilized for nation-wide surveys not only in Belgium but also in Germany. In Europe, international collaborations in the form of sharing survey platforms for time use data collection have started. It is vital to share the knowledge acquired from such practices in order to explore survey methodologies that are more efficient and in line with the times.

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