The New International Information and Communication Order (NIICO) is a movement dedicated to bridging the information divide between the northern and southern hemispheres. This movement was led by the non-aligned countries, who stimulated vigorous debates in UNESCO meetings, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Arab countries, which have historically imported large amounts of Western media content, also participated these debates and attempted to bridge the information divide between themselves and Western countries. For example, Mustafa Masmoudi, an ex-minister of information of Tunisia and a member of the MacBride committee, contributed immensely to the issuing of the Mass Media Declaration that was finally adopted in the 20th General Meeting of UNESCO in 1978. In this paper, through an analysis of news agencies, of information organizations and of the expansion of national broadcasting capabilities, I reveal how Arab countries collectively attempted to modify the established information structures in accordance with the rise of NIICO. Additionally, I reveal how a series of collaborative attempts made by Arab countries became ineffective when many Arab states prioritized the strengthening of their national informational capabilities over these attempts.

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This paper aims to examine local cooperative action with regard to books during the third and fourth decades of the Meiji Period (1897-1912). It hopes to reveal the changes in the modes of cooperation concerning books and the effect these had on community-based organizations. The paper will focus primarily on cooperative action and local associations within Saitama Prefecture, using the example of reading rooms and traveling libraries with elementary schools, teachers, and youth groups (seinen-kai). Before the introduction of the traveling library in the third decade of the Meiji Period (1897-1906), elementary schools were utilized as the primary function hall for all local community events. Reading rooms for youth groups were set up in these elementary schools. However, the establishment of such communal reading rooms required many resources, from finding or even building new rooms, gathering books to staffing them. Consequently, reading rooms were largely managed by teaching staff and were used exclusively for educational purposes. The fourth decade of the Meiji Period (1907-1912) saw a proliferation in interest from local people in cooperative action concerning books. The central prefectural administration introduced traveling libraries, and held various events in elementary schools throughout Saitama Prefecture. While the initial impetus was the aim to provide schools with books for youth groups, the traveling libraries soon also targeted the community at large. This change to the function of traveling libraries represented a move away from cooperative action concerning itself exclusively with educational purposes, and towards everyday matters, including amusement. In order to fulfill these duties, the traveling library needed day-to-day bases to work from. In the case of Saitama Prefecture, new youth groups were established or old ones revitalized to support these endeavors. As such, the traveling library played a vital role in the rebuilding of local communities throughout the entire prefecture.

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The majority of research on television in Japan has concentrated on its influence and effect as a medium. There has been little research about content ; i.e., the television programs themselves. This research demonstrates the potential of studies into television utilizing television archives. Through extensive use of the NHK archives, it focuses on the way television, especially documentary programs from the 1950s to 1960s, have portrayed Tokyo as an urban space. The transformation of these images of Tokyo from the 1950s to 1960s is demonstrated through an analysis of the content of television programs and their context. The television documentaries of the late 1950s portrayed Tokyo as an urban space of the lower classes. The first television documentary series, entitled Nihon no Sugao [The Real Japan] (1957-64), presented images of Tokyo from the viewpoint of the lower classes. In other words, this series featured the lives of people living in the outskirts of Tokyo, portraying them in a condescending way. In the early 1960's, the images of Tokyo in documentary programs underwent a great transformation, as these programs began to take on the character of public relations. The reason for this change was that the 1964 Summer Olympics were held in Tokyo and its image needed to be clean and orderly so as to portray Tokyo as a city ready to host the Olympic Games. Thus, following the announcement of the decision to hold the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the images of Tokyo began to shift from internally oriented to externally oriented ones and images of Tokyo as an urban space of the lower classes were excluded. The analysis of archival television images of Tokyo from the 1950s to 1960s reveals the historical context by whether or not the images portray the city from the viewpoint of the lower classes.

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Korean film historians traditionally regard 1923 as the foundation year for the country's production of fictional motion pictures. In contrast, this paper argues that the movie Ai no kiwami-made earlier in 1922 by the Motion Picture Unit of the Japanese colonial government newspaper Keijo nippo-ought to be regarded as the starting point for movie production in Korea. While earlier research has tended to separate Korean film history from that of the Japanese empire, this paper claims that films made in colonial Korea should be studied as part of the history of the Japanese empire. It argues that studies of national cinema need to reflect the historical circumstances when a particular film was made.

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This paper is a study of the history of media, and focuses "man-on-the-street" interviews as a form of public opinion. More specifically, we discuss the radio program, Street Interviews (Gaito Rokuon), along with discourses regarding the program, in order to demonstrate how the interviews broadcast on this program were disseminated as messages representing public opinion. The radio broadcaster created the program with the aim of capturing public opinion by using "man-on-the-street" interviews. The process through which these interviews were circulated among the public was strongly affected by the following two circumstances : First of all, the views broadcast on Street Interviews were circulated not only through radio, but also through various interrelated media, including newspapers and magazines, and came to be regarded through this process as messages representing public opinion. Secondly, Street Interviews, which intended to use "man-on-the-street" interviews that represented public opinion, was faced with various problems and criticisms. These problems, with which mass media programs using such interviews street voices continue to be confronted to this day, were already important issues during the time of Street Interviews. This study emphasizes the need to analyze the process through which "man-on-the-street" interviews are disseminated as typical examples of public opinion from the perspective of media history, focusing on Street Interviews as a starting point. Our analysis will eventually make it possible to reveal the role of the "man on the street" in the post-war history of public opinion.

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Employing Robert Entman's news framing analysis, this article analyzes editorials and news articles in two Japanese newspapers, the Asahi Shimbum and Yomiuri Shimbun, on the 2001 history textbook controversy, and argues that the two national newspapers framed the controversy differently according to their differing definitions thereof. Entman's news framing analysis is a research paradigm that allows us to analyze a series of news articles and find a certain kind of news framing among them, without using a previously proposed framing. In this respect, his research paradigm fits this research in which there are no clues to assist the finding of a previously proposed framing. More precisely, his paradigm encourages us to find the definition of a newsworthy event or issue and related-information, and allows us to identify which aspects of news are more salient or less. The controversy that this analysis targets is about the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and the history textbook that the Society attempted to publish for Japanese middle school students. This controversy actually brought about both domestic and international confrontations and problems. Yet, the analysis finds that Asahi in its editorials defines the controversy as Japan's domestic problem while Yomiuri explains it as an international or diplomatic problem between Japan and other states such as South Korean and China. Accordingly, in their series or news articles, Asahi presents domestic controversies and critics of the history textbook more saliently while Yomiuri reported the controversy between Japan and, South Korea and China more saliently. Although their framings appear not very clearly for many casual readers, the content analysis allows us to see their different framings in different newspapers and may encourage us to rethink newspapers' ideals such as objective journalism, neutrality, and impartiality.

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This study examines the relationship between exposure to women's fashion magazines and the drive for thinness among younger women, focusing on the specific context of Japanese society. In fact, such a correlation is well documented in a certain number of studies. However, most of these studies only give a broad picture of the situation and tend to simplistically present the drive for thinness among young women as a consequence of exposure to fashion magazines. As such, factors unique to Japan are not to be taken into account. In fact, Japan boasts a host of fashion magazines published with a degree of segmentation unseen elsewhere. Furthermore, magazines present models not only as being "adorable," but as "congenial" figures as well. This paper takes stock of the specificity and the variety of content found in Japanese fashion magazines, which also take advantage of the Internet. Our statistical analysis has revealed that how "adorable" a model was the biggest factor in influencing the drive for thinness, with "congeniality" playing a minor role. However, when the reading tendencies of respondents are utilized as a moderating variable, "congeniality" significantly comes into play with regard to the regular readers of a given magazine that is supported by the popularity of a particular model.

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This paper discusses "speech regulation by proxy," in which governments enlist private actors as proxy censors, and the transformation of such regulation. In this paper, the author examines problems with regard to contemporary speech regulation by proxy and the control method of the new regulatory system, by comparing speech regulation by proxy in the 1950-60s and contemporary speech regulation by proxy on the Internet in the United States. Firstly, the author considers Seth Kreimer's article Censorship by Proxy and clarifies the implications in and limits of his discussion. Then, the author presents the differences in the circumstances, structures, and effect on free speech between speech regulation by proxy in the 1950-60s and contemporary speech regulation by proxy on the Internet, and considers new problems related thereto and doctrines that can meet these problems. This paper shows contemporary speech regulation by proxy on the Internet functions as prior restraint on speech, overly restricting the flow of information without transparency in certain circumstances.

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