Our society is celebrating the publishing of the 50th edition of our research periodical"The Journal of Mass Communication Studies". In observance of anniversary, the writer will highlight some of the recent research presented by society members in past the Journal editions No.30 to No.49. This feature article divides the past editions into two review periods:No.30 of 1980 to No.39 of 1990 and No.40 of 1991 to No.49 of 1996. The former term featured divers research subject. The latter term pointed out the difficulty infinding research methods applicable to the drastic changes caused by new media. In this regard, the writer suggested that journalism studies and mass communication research should both fearlessly take on and challenge with criticize each other.

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For a long time since the end of the last world war, studies of culture and mass communication in Japan had been conducted under the overwhelming influence of American"main stream". However the trend is now changing toward more or less"critical" approach. The situation in Japan could be paralleled that in U.K., France, U.S.A. and Germany, the typical of which is represented by the cultural studies in U.K. An overview is presented briefly regarding cultural studies and media theories. Development in studies of content and cultural globalization are also mentioned. Changes found in studies of culture and mass communication in Japan as well as elsewhere are inter-related with changes in theories of politics, economics, linguistics and anthropology.

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Chiiki, tentatively rendered as"local community", has been an important keyword in the development of empirical communication studies in Japan. Since 1970s on, Chiiki Media ron, or"community media studies" has deliberately established the concept of chiiki Media, or"ccommunity media", as a sort of mass media with their readers/audience sharing the common experience of their geographical space. Those community media, often more public in their nature than merely being profit-seeking businesses, have been viewed and discussed from localistic perspectives. During 1980s, however, community media were often more commonly speculated from universal viewpoint of industrialism, in the framework of national governments' Chiiki Joho-ka, or"community informationization" policies, which promoted diffusion of various types of newly invented communication media. Recent academic discussion tends to emphasize the need of revisiting, renewing, and revitalizing localistic perspectives.

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Disaster research from the view point of communication has recently started, and few researchers carry out this kind of studies. They have focused on the studies of human behaviors such as panics and rumors, disaster information such as warnings and evacuation orders, and disaster reporting of television and radio during disasters. The great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake occurred in 1995 posed many problems to the disaster research. For example, before the earthquake many researchers believed broadcasting played crucial roles in disaster reporting, but the earthquake suggested the importance of newspapers.

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As a matter of fact, the theories of ethics of journalism include various challenges to"the right of editing (Hensyu-ken)" in Japan. In this paper, first, the author considers three typical challenges to"the right of editing", which are <a>"news-ombudsman" theory, <b>"press council" theory and <c>"the liberty of inner journalists" theory. Then, the author extraits several merits and demerits of each theory. In conclusion, the author clarifies that journalists' serious and continuous fight against"the right of editing" only brings genuine ethics to the journalism in Japan.

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War may be defined as an expressive form of conflict through the armed forces of nation states. The study of war should be the study of peace. Nowadays one of the points of argument concerning war and journalism centers around the revision of the Japan-U.S.Security Treaty. And other point regards war news coverage in relation to the controversy between the right to know and national security. I think it is important to consider the following points. Japanese journalism should aim to continue giving a living ideal to the war-renouncing Article 9 in the Constitution of Japan and also aim toward Security Alliance between multi-nations, particularly Asian nations holding up a global perspective.

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In postwar Japan the concept of the"Kokyosei" in Japanese, which is difficult to translate into foreign languages, but could be put into English as"public characteristic" or"public welfare", has been used so often as the grounds for the administrative regulation of every mass communication media. Because of the ambiguity of this concept and its powerful effect in media politics, many scholars made efforts to describe the concept clearly and strictly. Using the keyword of"public sphere" in English and"Offentlichkeit" in German, Tatsuro Hanada has recently presented his discussions to explain the essential meaning of the" Kokyosei" for broadcasting institutions by interpreting that the public value of broadcasting should be placed on the function of constructing the"public sphere" through broadcasting.

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Today, the media industry is going through historic transformation period. The rapid development of digital technology is merging telecommunication, broadcasting and computing industries together giving great impact upon the future of mass communications. This paper reviews and analyzes this transforming process of media industry into information/telemedia industry.

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This paper's aim is a consideration of how to think about computer networks. Some economical, jurisprudential or social relations are not concerned here. For example, "information rich-poor" perspective is suggestive, but does not talk about the characteristic of computer mediated communication (CMC) itself. "Cyberspace" metaphor is interesting and productive. It tells well about some features of CMC and"new" online relationships. But it's"medium deterministic viewpoint" is restricted and inadequate, because CMC might reflect some cultural biases and the"new" online communities might be only"new" narrow relationships. We should not analyze CMC only as medium itself. Then how should we talk about? Analyzing CMC leads to reconsidering our background assumptions about communication or community. From the viewpoint of communication study, this is the first task we should do.

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TV Rating by means of meter systems exercises a strong influence over TV programming in Japan. But the systems have structural errors unique to this panel-rotation survey method. The entire sample consequently becomes distorted either toward the side of large families or toward the side of elderly families both of which are heavier TV viewers. The TV Rating principle is inconsistent with the diversity principle of TV programmes in society. An appearance of many pay channels by digital satellite may decrease the influence of TV Ratings.

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Propaganda and Campaign have a different history. However, the direction of their developments is very similar. Propaganda has made a change from open activity of indoctrination to soft persuasion including advertising. Accordingly, propaganda studies have also shifted from technique analysis to effect analysis. Campaign has also made a change from vehement attack to destroy social vices to mass persuasion. In parallel with this change, campaign studies have made a similar change from activity analysis to effect analysis. As a result, propaganda and persuasion have become to be regarded as almost same persuasive communication. However, there is one point to distinguish between them. It is whether a persuasive activity is based on self-benefit or not. New studies to pay attention to this point seems to be expected. In addition, with the realization of virtual society another new approach to this problem seems to be waited.

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Freedom of speech or of the press is both ideally and historically conceived. In the course of its development, this freedom has been used as an ideal and in its formality for the purpose of protecting its value securely. This attitude was decisively important amidst the fierce battle against the oppressive government. However, in a stable democratic society, some reasonable coordinations between this freedom and other individual rights or social interests are often required. For this purpose, it is a task of today to get at the root of the guarantee of this freedom and also to discuss the reason why we protect free press. This study will contribute to reconsidering the values and limitations of this freedom under the development of new media technologies including Internet, which are considered to be beyond our traditional understanding of the freedom of speech.

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In Japan the word"access" or"right of access" began to be discussed in the mid-1970s. No.573 (October 15, 1974) of the"Jurist", one of the most popular law journals featured articles and discussions on the right of access to mass media. Jerome A.Barron, Access to the Press-A New First Amendment Right, Harvard Law Review, vol.80, p.1641 (1967) stimulated scholars' interests in the concept. In recent years the right of access to government information has been important issues.

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In modern ages, state ensured its independence by equiping soreveignty. In turn, people won soreveignty through civilian revolution and built nation-state with nationalism. This kind of order based on nation-state became the basis of international politics. Thus, for emerging countries, building nation-state became the supreme proposition. Recntly, globalization of international communications revealed the issue of sovereignty. Sovereignty has tendencies toward absolutization and relativization. However, the absolutism of sovereignty is a primary requisite for political and economic independence. Therefore, tensioned relations in connection with sovereignty are hardly dissolved. However, Cross-nationalization of international communications will possbly lead to the common human and cultural community beyond existing frame of nation-state, which could be a form of new nationalism.

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The study of"Ethnicity and Media" in Japan comprises two research fields, "ethnic media" research and"media ethnic image formation" research. Both began when media researchers realized the existence of ethnic minorities who carried different cultures with them, such as the time when a wide variety of newcomers arrived in the late 1980s. There are three traditions in the field: mass communication research; urban sociology; and ethnic relations. The study has been developed through the interaction of these three traditions. Several tasks remain to be done by researchers: surveys from the minority viewpoint, and from the globalization viewpoint. Theory oriented studies are also needed.

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Structural analysis in mass-communication research is chaotic. This paper proposes a proper method in this field, introducing the famous work of Radway, which considers both time and space structure of narrative. Moreover, we explain its significance as social Freudianism. By analyzing mass culture, which is TV drama in this case, we can visualize the"esprit du temps", the representation of the unconsciousness of the people living in that age.

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This paper puts forward a republican view on freedom of expression to discuss the legitimacy of the media's self-regulation of so-called hate speech in Japan. The issues concerning such self-regulation make it evident that the idea of free speech has lost its real meaning and I argue that going back to the idea of republican freedom is indispensable to reconstruct the idea of free expression. By discussing the republican view, I suggest that the problem with the current way of settling the arguments of hate speech is that a third party is eliminated from negotiation processes between the media and complaints.

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The present paper reports an on-going study on images of the Internet. By employing a content analytic approach, visual images of advertisement in a series of the"Internet Magazine" were coded and interpreted. It was found that the"conduit" metaphor is pervasive and seemingly privileged when we think and talk about the Internet. In it, communication is understood as a transfer of"information" from sender to receiver. I suggest that the Internet can be understood alternatively, from a"constitutive" view of communication, which perceives that meaning is constantly constructed, reconstructed, and maintained communicatively in occasions of social interactions.

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The Internet is rapidly becoming popular in Japan also. In this paper, I report some results of our survey of Internet users and examine its potentials as a mass medium. Optimistic idealists evaluate highly its interactivity in communication and think that many people are getting to use the Internet as a medium to participate in a'virtual community'. Contrary to their expectation, our survey result shows that only 5% of users participate in the'virtual community' actively and the majority of users are a passive audience of the WWW.

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The purpose of the present research is to investigate how the Kennedy Administration controlled the flow of information and news during the missile crisis in 1962. This study was carried out by making use of both previous literature and primary sources which were disclassified in the last decade. This study concludes that the administration learned a lot from the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and highly valued the control of information throughout the crisis. To the administration, control of information -- news release, strict restriction of leaks, and communication through the press -- was indeed an important diplomatic weapon for standing against the Soviet Union.

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