This paper discusses what contributions quantitative methods （roughly

equal to statistical methods） have made to media research, especially to traditional

mass communication research. Keeping in mind that statistical methods

and case-study methods are not mutually exclusive, this paper points out a

threefold merit of the former. First, statistical methods enable researchers to

infer how widely various uses and effects of the media are distributed in the

population（ e.g., the uses and gratifications study from the 1970s onward）. Second,

easier replicability of theoretical hypotheses has made for cumulative

advancement of a specific research area （e.g., the agenda-setting effect

research）. Third, counterintuitive findings sometimes found in empirical data

would bring an opportunity for coming up with a new theory（ e.g., the two-step

flow of communication model）. Conceptual models （or hypotheses） that the

empirical studies of mass communication have advanced and cumulated so far

are defined as middle-range theories Sociologist Robert K. Merton once advocated.

These models are common properties for media researchers. Even if

some of the models might become less relevant in a new media landscape in

the 21st century, we should seek to make the best use of these properties to

“see further on the shoulders of giants.”

　Statistical causal inference refers to the effort to clarify causal directions,

which go beyond simple correlation. Causal inference using survey data is an

extremely useful analytical tool in social science, which is a comparatively difficult

subject for carrying out experimental research. Its techniques are becoming

more sophisticated and its applications are rapidly expanding. However, in

media studies, analysis of statistical survey data utilizing causal inference is

rarely carried out, especially in Japan.

　　In this article, in an effort to deepen the understanding of causal inference

for the readers, the author investigates what significance it holds with regard

to media studies. In addition, the author explains the basic concepts and the

analytical framework of causal inference using longitudinal panel survey data.

Panel survey data has many advantages in carrying out causal inference, but

there are also several weak points. In contrast, though cross-sectional survey

data is generally regarded as less suitable for causal inference, it has a practical

advantage to compensate for the weak points of panel surveys.

　In content analysis, which is defined as a scientific method for objectively

analyzing messages in communication, there are various rules that must be

adhered to―similar to the methods in other social sciences. In this article, the

author focuses on whether reliability tests are carried out and verifies the current

status of content analysis in Journal of Mass Communication Studies. As a

result, the author found that the reliability tests required in content analysis

were not sufficiently carried out, and that stricter adherence to the rules was

necessary. Furthermore, when considering the proliferation of data analysis utilizing

computers with higher reproducibility, it becomes difficult to define content

analysis as only a quantitative and empirical method. Because of this, there

will be a need in the future to consider the tradeoff between reliability and

validity, which is an issue in content analysis, in order to establish a new role

for it as a method for achieving a balance between the two.

With the dramatic changes in the media environment in recent years, the

traditional models of mass media influence are being reconsidered. In this article,

the author considers these research trends and introduces the empirical

insights of survey experiments that examine the effects of information exposure

in the current media environment. Specifically, the author introduces the arguments

surrounding the minimal media effects theory, which were first raised in

the 2010s. Next, the author focuses on the concept of cues that function as heuristics,

and delves into the social consequences that result from changes in the

media environment by laying out the insights provided by survey experiments

related to the effects of media exposure. Finally, the author argues the importance

of explaining the insights gained through experimental research carried

out in the context of the real-world media environment by referring to the

arguments surrounding the problems of external validity and exposure-based

pretreatment.

　With the spread of information and communication technology, various

forms of log data are constantly being accumulated. In this article, the author

examines the use of log data in quantitative media studies.

　　First, in the context of the growing amount of social focus on log data, or

big data, the author offers a general view of computational social science, which

has been proposed as a field of research that uses big data in social science

research. The author also examines the relationship between computational

social science and media studies. Based on this, the author outlines the problem

of how the approach of computational social science alone is insufficient on the

basis of concern regarding media studies. Finally, as a solution to these problems,

the author introduces case studies of a comprehensive analytical approach

that tie together statistical social survey data and log data.

　In community media research in Japan, it has been pointed out that there

is a bias in studies centered on the viewpoint of media companies and a lack of

audience research. In addition, the number of community media studies has

been limited to introducing only a certain aspect of the community media looking

at a specific period of time. So, it has been suggested that it is necessary to

comprehensively understand community media business processes―from the

beginning through its continuation until its eventual end （or growth）. Therefore,

this study aimed to analyze community media using the media business

process model and conducted a case study of Amami FM’s 10-year business,

which began community broadcasting as a cultural device. Three qualitative

methods were applied including in-depth interviews with the people related to

business operations, analysis of 10-year programs and in-depth interviews with

the organizers, as well as six focus group interviews consisting of listeners of

the station. The results presented the need for analyzing the media process of

creating, sustaining and developing from the three perspectives of ⑴ business,

⑵ audiences and ⑶ communities. Furthermore, the findings indicated that it is

effective to consider a new model in understanding the community media as a

cultural device.

　This report examines the Supreme Court decision （December 6, 2017） on

the receiving fee lawsuit of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation （NHK）, and

considers the way public broadcasting and receiving fees should be.

　　The Supreme Court of Japan decided that there is a legal obligation to conclude

a receiving contract, but this judgment must be said to be anachronism in

that it does not take into account the trend in the latest theories and the

changes in the broadcasting environment. The judgment raises two problems.

The first is that the suspicion of the violation of the constitution cannot be

wiped out, and the second is that the rights of viewers may be lost and the way

of public broadcasting may be distorted.

　　The most important role of public broadcasting is to monitor the public

power as a journalism institution, but it is hard to say that NHK plays such a

role. The viewer can correct the attitude of NHK by refusing to pay the receiving

fee. In order not to prevent the exercise of such viewer sovereignty, the

conclusion of the receiving contract should be interpreted as an effort, not a

legal obligation.

　The Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association （JBA） Broadcasting

Standards were established at the same time as the first commercial radio

started in Japan in 1951. It was not legal at first, but independently established

by commercial broadcasters in Japan born in the post-World War II democratic

movements.

　　Thereafter, the revised Broadcast Law requires that broadcasters establish

program standards and Japanese commercial broadcasters apply JBA Broadcast

Standards to their program standards and revise them repeatedly in accordance

with changes in society and the media environment.

　　This article explores the history and background of JBA Broadcast Standards,

and the autonomous and independent attitude of commercial broadcasters

in Japan that has always been criticized by both the politically powerful and

the general public based on various publications of JBA

This paper focuses on the example of NHK’s welfare program Heartnet TV

（NHK ETV）, for reexamining the public broadcaster’s role of incorporating

“silent voices” via social media. An important issue for rethinking public broadcasting

journalism of the digital era is to connect various types of marginalized

audiences’ “silent voices” to the wider public sphere. In this respect, many studies

suggest the importance of examining democratic process through the interaction

between broadcasting and social media.

　　Nevertheless, few empirical studies examine how broadcasting journalistic

practices could be restricted by incorporating “silent voices” via social media.

For this reason, this paper examines whether the existing television journalism

could both incorporate various voices and represent them in words easily

understood by members of the wider society. Heartnet TV is a challenging journalistic

practice that tries to use minorities’ voices on social media for representing

social reality to the wider public.

　　This paper conducted qualitative discourse analysis by referring to program

contents and audiences’ interpretations in the official BBS and Twitter

regarding two of the program series: ⑴ the series regarding the Sagamihara

Disabilities Murder（ 2016）, which was a hate crime against people with mental

disabilities and ⑵ NHK’s Suicide Prevention Campaign “Television for Surviving”

（since 2014）, which has been projected for reducing young people’s suicides.

Many opinions regarding these program contents appeared in social

media from people affected by problems.

　　Finally, this paper concludes that there is a contradiction between both of

the two roles mentioned above: incorporating various opinions and representing

its complex reality in words at the same time. This result also suggests a structural

problem regarding a democratic process centered around autonomous

audiences and shows revising the traditional sender-receiver relationship on

complex media landscape as a task.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how television documentaries as a

particular mode of expression were formed through an investigation of the

composition of sound recording as a prehistory of television documentaries.

　　By tracing the genealogy of the radio programs Man on the Street, which

started broadcasting during the occupation of Japan at the end of World War

II, and Social Survey, one of its spinoffs, this paper examines the formation process

of television documentaries from the following three points. First, this

paper focuses on the fact that particular documentary aesthetics were imported

under the leadership of the General Headquarters （GHQ）, and examine these

modes of expression within the dynamic of broadcast policy. Second, it examines

how Japanese staff who actually produced these programs merged their

ideas with the occupation army’s to create a unique form of Japanese radio documentary.

Thirdly, it demonstrates how the democratic program ideas presented

by GHQ became sharply distinguished as what would be called Rokuon-

Kōsei. These points are investigated from a detailed technical, historical and

formal analysis.

　　This paper presents two concluding points: 1） that opinions of socially vulnerable

communities became newly accessible in radio broadcasting after

World War II and 2） that this was made possible by a brusque and minimalist

editing method that was developed with the intention of broadcasting these

subaltern opinions with little modification. This genealogically leads us to the

television documentary The Real Face of Japan, which was produced with a

new montage theory that until then had not been done in the documentaries

and culture films, and was subsequently highly praised by documentarists and

critics. Thus, this paper offers a new analytical point of view for reviewing

early television documentaries through describing the formation process of documentary

modes of expression called Rokuon-Kōsei in earlier radio documentaries.

　This paper describes the newspaper activities and press policies in wartime

colonial Taiwan by analyzing local newspapers and the archives of the

Taiwanese Government-General and Army, materials that were rarely examined

in previous studies.

　　Three major newspapers, Taiwan Nichi Nichi Shimpo, Taiwan Shimbun

and Tainan Shimpo played a leading role in the Taiwan press system, and

restrictive media control was temporarily eased in the 1930s. However, with

the rise of Japanism, the use of Chinese was abolished in 1937 due to the

change of the Government-General’s policies. Henceforth, in wartime, the integration

of newspapers was promoted, creating a complex relationship between

the Japanese journalists from the mainland, local Japanese and Taiwanese journalists

and the Taiwanese Army. First, weekly newspapers were reorganized,

but unlike on the mainland of Japan, Taiwan’s press community, which did not

have a restricted paper supply, was aiming to expand their newspapers into

South China and the South Seas.

　　However, in 1944 the Government-General decided to cease all publishing

of the six daily newspapers, and the Taiwan Shimpo was launched. However, in

1945 the Taiwanese Army supplanted the Government-General and directed

the media policies. The Taiwanese Army denied the Government-General’s conventional

colonial rule and tolerated democratic speeches, because it was necessary

to improve morale and obtain the cooperation of the Taiwanese people

regarding the war. Thus, critiques of the Government-General and private citizen

leaders were made, the identity of the Taiwanese people was somewhat

recognized and articles written from the perspective of commoners began to be

published.

　　After Japan’s defeat, Taiwan Shimpo was transferred to the Taiwanese,

and the Taiwanese launched new media outlets one after another. Here, Taiwanese

journalists, who were critical throughout the war, proactively criticized

the Republic of China and advocated for Taiwanese society in both Chinese and

Japanese during the early postwar period.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the animation industry in Japan saw the emergence

of distinctive consumers, called “anime fans.” This brought quantitative and

qualitative changes in products in the animation market. The aim of this paper

is to reveal how animators dealt with this change and how they reformed their

working culture. The authors have shown that the working culture underpinned

market movements in the 1970s and 1980s.

　　Historically, animators preferred working as freelancers on a piece-rate

system rather than as regular workers on a fixed salary. This was due to their

meritocratic occupational norm. However, the number of animation programs

increased during the anime-boom period, and animators were forced to cooperate

with a much broader workforce to produce many programs suitable for the

diverse demands of fans. This limited animators’ discretion. In this study, the

authors wanted to understand how it was possible for the animation industry to

continue supplying the workforce necessary to adapt to market changes during

this time.

　　For this purpose, the authors analyzed texts in animation magazines from

the perspective of the labor process theory, which explains the relationship

between workstyles and the transformation of markets. One of the key concepts

of this approach is workers’ shared norms. The authors also employed

ethnomethodology, which elicits vivid insights regarding such norms, to analyze

round-table talks and interviews with animators working at animation magazines.

　　While animators understood the quantitative expansion of the animation

market as limiting their discretion, there was a disparity in how they coped

with the situation. The older generation recognized their skills in detail and

relied on networks built by longtime co-working. The younger generation

accepted the new situation and found their occupational value in the new working

environment through the occupational image of “the artisan.” This image

reflected the new occupational competence and made the formation of peer

communities of young animators possible. This industrial transformation sustained

the supply of a broad workforce, which drew on various expressions during

the anime-boom period.

　This paper focuses on the Korean “daily toon,” a specific genre of webtoon

（a portmanteau of the words “web” and “cartoon”）. In these toons, a character

appears as an avatar presenting the writer’s perspective. Present research considers

the melancholic representation of youth in the early years of daily toons.

Daily toons featuring authors’ experiences were often drawn quite frankly, as

one would write or sketch in a diary. Youths developed an affinity for these

toons, as their production and consumption reflected facets of young people’s

everyday life. Focusing on these points, this research aims to examine: ⑴ relationships

between the three aspects of the melancholic motif appearing in early

daily toons; ⑵ the structure of feeling of the younger generation and ⑶ personal

homepages as private spaces online（ where episodes were published serially）.

　　In the early 2000s, young people shared ambivalent emotions arising from

social changes following the 1997 financial crisis. They were tasked with maintaining

the role of standard-bearers for social change, while also experiencing

feelings of self-pity and loss. In the early daily toons, depressive feelings are

represented by three themes, namely: ⑴ thinking and self-reflection; ⑵ loss and

loneliness and ⑶ emptiness and lethargy. Such melancholic motifs can be interpreted

as symbolizing youths’ depression and sense of loss, utilizing the properties

of personal homepages as private spaces for self-expression. In real life,

young people’s collective actions toward social change occur in spaces such as

public squares, where their behavior and practices represent emotions such as

anger and resistance. In contrast, the motifs in the early daily toons can be

interpreted as representing more personal emotional processes （such as fear

and pity） among youth.