The crime of Aum-Shinrikyo is one of the biggest media-event in Japan. The unique televised reality is discussed in this paper. The accused crime of Aum-Shinrikyo was not reported mainly in terms of the clasical conception of "NEWS" on the Japanese newspaper and television. Its report was done by weekly magazines, socalled "Wideshow" programes in television and "Sports" newspaper. This fact urged to re-examine the clasical news concept in Japanese journalism. Unique reality created by television "Wideshow" programes shows that characteristics of the style of presentation had powerful impact on the image of reality on the mind of Japanese people.

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This paper examines the relationship between so-called new Media Activists and the established mass media in Japanese journalism. I focus on two new media fields in Japan, video journalism and internet journalism which appeared in the early 1990's. I maintain that primarily these new Media Activists and mass media organizations can create balance, making diverse layers in the media sphere. In Japan, however, a different dynamic movement occurred, which was a confrontation between the mass media and Media Activists, with the former even trying to eliminate the latter from the media sphere. I extract some important problematic issues from these relationships and analyze the potentialities and limitations of new Media Activists.

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For more than a century, professionalism has been a central concept to journalism in U.S. It is written about in trade journals, scholarly publications, and journalism texts. Mass media scholars, applying sociological models of professions, have examined the professional orientations of journalists. By contrast, journalism educators and scholars in Japan, focusing on descriptive studies of journalism which is said to have a unique positon in global journalism, have few findings about aggregate data or profile of Japanese journalists. Why? In this article, I would like to introduce the American perspectives and suggest their implications.

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Journalists have changed. They are losing their instinct for the real problem, their willingness to criticise authority and their sensitivity for human rights. Gone is their concern for quality or being unique : speed alone is their measure. Hence the excessive competition. Further, mass media that rely on the Correspondents' Club system can easily become an organ of the authorities. The future of the mass media depends on the universities' ability to raise up journalists with an acute sensitivity for human rights and the courage to fight for them.

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The receiver of new type begins to appear. His characteristic are tendency to leave paper for TV, and to reference fragmentary messages. This type is clear in young generation under twenty-five years of age. After the Great Earthquake of the Hanshin district, the receiver begins to feel a sense of incompatibility with the reality of TV's image. Just like responding with this, the reliance upon mass media begins to fall off. This tendency spreads from young age to middle age. Importance of private circle spreads from young age to middle age, too. And this tendency is related with receiver's apathy toward social situation.

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This paper is based on two viewpoints-ideological theory and freedom of expression-and on an analysis of the argument raised after the Japan Epileptic Association denounced Kadokawa Publishing for publishing a textbook carrying a work of literature titled "Non-human Police" by Yasutaka Tsutsui. The association, which also denounced Tsutsui, reasoned that "Non-human Police" would spread prejudice against epileptics. Following the method of discourse analysis, this paper discusses how the notion of "freedom of expression" is challenged by the discourses from those who argue that discriminatory works should be eliminated from the public sphere.

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This study focuses on three main problems related to the use of RCDs and channel changing by audiences. The first problem mainly explores the impact of using RCDs by audiences on advertising exposure. Secondly, in order to use audience's viewing motives as main variables with regard to the explanation of channel changing, factor analysis is used. In this study instrumental, ritualistic, and entertainment viewing motives are identified. Thirdly, what variables are related to audiences in channel changing? Multiple regression analysis is used to investigate the strength of the relationship between fourteen predictor variables and the degree of channel changing. Among fourteen variables, sex is the strongest predictor in explaining channel changing.

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This article reports the results of a study of gratifications obtained from cellular telephones by sampling users in Hyogo Prefecture. The research was guided by three questions: 1.What are the gratification dimensions? 2.What is the typical use-pattern? 3.What is the relationship of gratifications to the situations of the user? The results are as follows: 1.A factor analysis demonstrated the presence of four factors: work, private business, accessibility and consummatory use. 2.The typical user works in the construction industry, uses a car for his job, and has gratifications of accessibility and work. 3.The differences in situations in the uses and gratifications are statistically significant.

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Germany added low-power local radios to its broadcasting system in 1984. This new type of media has initially been expected to revitalize local communication, which has long been dominated by very few local newspapers in each county. This thesis investigates the German local radio system in the framework of the German broadcasting system, where both public and private broadcasters compete with each other. The present analyses identify the factors which prevent the achievement of the expected goals of local radios, and point out which possibilities these media still possess in the future.

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The information-oriented society has been closely related to human communication. It has been mainly focused on by economic interests and industrial views. On the other hand, the totality of the electronic network has the possibility of offering an independent communication sphere which is separated and which prevents meaning spilling from the system, as some post-modernists have mentioned. If communications in electronic networks were to become a communication sphere totally independent of other social prosess, it might be a new nightmare for the society. The potentiality of the critical sphere that includes electronic networks is discussed with reference J.Habermas' theories of communication and the public sphere.

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The purpose of this paper is to reconsider media studies from the viewpoint of gender. After examining the preceding studies in Japan, it is stressed that we have to pay more attention to both media and gender constructed by/in social relations. Next, I present recent studies in Britain, U.S.A. and Canada which have been carried out from these perspectives. My conclusion is that further studies are needed, especially those that reflect our own daily experiences with media.

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The aim of this paper is to investigate characteristics of Internet and legal problems of journalism on World Wide Web(WWW). On network, anyone can send out various information as a "journalist". Two main problems can be pointed out. The first problem is that "journalists' ethics" can't be obeyed on Internet. The second problem is the absence of a System Operator. So credibility of information is not so high. This leads us to the question of how we can establish the borderline between broadcasting and communication. Because WWW has characteristics of both Broadcasting and Communication. It seems reasonable to conclude that we should not regard WWW as a broadcasting service.

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This is a study of the penetration process of CATV, decision-making processes in successful and unsuccessful acceptance of it in families, and satisfaction with it. These were investigated by a survey in a CATV system area near Tokyo. This was the first attempt at such a survey, and several interesting findings were obtained. Observed decision-making processes leading to successful acceptance are strongly consensus-oriented. In the average CATV subscriber family, the number negative to acceptance was only seven percent. Presence of a negative opinion in a family were highly likely to lead to unsuccessful acceptance. These findings suggest that the attractiveness of CATV would be rather weak, in addition to a slightly high application cost for the average consumer. Customer satisfaction analysis shows that subscribers are divided into several groups sensitive to the different types of usefulness of CATV. These results suggest that different types of promotional paths of CATV would be effective.

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