In this study, to feel someone is watching me is defined as the “feeling of being watched.” Using crowdsourcing, we investigated the effects of feelings of being watched by a first-party, secondparty, third-party, and supernatural entity on social preferences and subjective happiness.

The results showed that the intuitive factor positively impacted subjective happiness, as a variable partially mediated by the feeling of being watched by supernatural beings. In contrast, the intuitive factor positively impacted prosociality, as a variable completely mediated by the feeling of being watched by supernatural beings. Therefore, it is clear that the intuitive feelings of being watched by supernatural entities are essential in both cases.

These results suggest that subjective happiness and social preferences may differ depending on what is assumed as monitoring subjects and how we recognize them. In particular, they also suggest the need to reconsider the contemporary significance of supernatural beings.

Efforts are underway to attract interregional immigration by every local government throughout Japan to deal with the population outflow from rural areas to urban areas. However, few studies on population migration in Japan have analyzed migration at the municipal level or those from large cities to rural areas so far. In this study, to clarify what kind of socioeconomic factors are associated with migration from large cities to rural areas, we analyzed the relationship between migration from large cities to rural areas and socioeconomic factors (53 variables in total, including income, employment opportunities, amenities, etc.). In general, it is difficult to use many variables in regression problems due to the limitation of the number of variables that can be used in a model and the problem of multicollinearity. To address these problems, we used elastic net regression, which has a weak restriction on the number of explanatory variables and a feature in which the absolute values of the regression coefficients become close if they are strongly correlated (Grouping effect). As a result, 20 variables were selected as relevant to migration, including the basic variables of the gravity model: distance between the source and destination cities, populations at the source and destination cities. Future study includes analyses of the relationship between personal characteristics such as age and whether they are raising children on migration and migration, as well as evaluation of the impact of each factor on migration using panel data.

This paper examines the guarantee of editorial freedom and its ideal form in the digital age. With regard to editorial freedom, in Norway, its guarantee has been actively discussed in the context of media policy. Therefore, this paper first clarifies the significance of studying editorial freedom today. Then, while analyzing Norwegian media policies related to editorial freedom, I attempt to identify and discuss some universally important senses that can serve as a reference for media studies in Japan.

As for editorial freedom in Norway, the paper points out that there are three directions. Namely, (1) to guarantee (legislate) the editorial freedom enjoyed by editors and to strengthen the principle of editorial independence, (2) to support and subsidize media that fulfill democratic functions, and (3) to clarify the responsibilities associated with the exercise of editorial privilege.

On the basis of the discussion of these directions, this paper first argues that there is room for government involvement in editorial freedom, taking into account the media environment as a whole. However, it confirms that the institutional design should be carefully considered. Second, from the perspective of the overall design of the media environment, it is noted that subsidy regimes for editorial media can be effective if they are designed in such a way that editorial independence is not violated. Particularly, I argue that it is important to implement the guarantee of editorial freedom and the subsidization of editorial media linked to it as a set. Third, regarding the discussion of responsibility, this paper discusses the possibility of collaboration between media and online platforms and the design of redress systems for online, confirming the importance of clarifying the responsibilities that accompany the exercise of freedom. This paper argues that such an approach to editorial freedom enables the Japanese press to play a democratic role.

While emojis have infiltrated daily digital communication, there is a lack of understanding of emoji usage behaviours and their individual differences, leading to miscommunication among users with different usage tendencies. In light of this, the present study explored individual differences in the frequency and categories of emoji use across age, gender, and personality among individuals aged 10-29. The current research conducted an online questionnaire on Simeji and analyzed responses from 1289 participants, with answered emojis categorized through Unicode. Research results are listed as follows. (1) individuals in their 20s used emojis more frequently than 10s and tended to use ‘face-hand’ and ‘event’ categories. (2) women used emojis more frequently than men and preferred using the ‘emotion’ category. (3) Extraversion, openness, and neuroticism scores were positively correlated with emoji frequency. The scores of neuroticism, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness were also related to the categories of frequently used emojis. The current findings suggest the diversity of emoji use among young generations and the relationship between usage behaviors and personal characteristics.