The Japanese government has been advocating “Society 5.0” in recent years to balance economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by leveraging innovative science and technology such as AI, IoT and robots. It is believed that data utilization between the government, municipalities and private business operators are indispensable in achieving Society 5.0, and much attention is on the promotion of open data that makes data available for secondary usage. Nonetheless, there are also many municipalities that find difficulty in promoting open data due to their concerns toward increased workloads and cost effectiveness. This study intends to increase acceptability in municipalities on promoting open data and aims to work on practical research to resolve local issues. In particular, the promotion of open data in municipalities will be focused on local disaster prevention information, which is attracting attention within the past several years. While taking into account the issues pertaining to open data on disaster prevention information, information useful during disasters were suggested to become open data following a survey on needs when the Kumamoto Earthquake occurred in 2016. An educational disaster prevention app that utilizes open data was planned and developed, followed by a demonstration experiment. Consequently, the conversion of information during disasters into open data was found to be useful and the study contributed to increasing residents' awareness on self-helping during disasters. Through these results, the study successfully deepened government agencies' understanding towards promoting open data and making municipals' information during disasters into open data.

Though the broadcasting system in Japan has emphasized plurality, diversity, and locality, terrestrial television is becoming increasingly concentrated in Tokyo. Before 1975, however, there was greater diversity than at present, partly due to the existence of “free networks” and “cross networks”. Networks involving the educational broadcaster Nippon-Educational-Television (NET) and the semi-educational broadcaster Mainichi Broadcasting System TV (MBS-TV) developed particular diversity. NET and MBS-TV sought to produce programs that could secure high audience ratings even while being educational or cultural in nature. As a result, large numbers of quiz shows were created at the end of the1960s.

This study analyzes the phenomenon of “the quiz station” historically, and reveals the influence of regulations of program types on affiliated television stations through their networks. The conclusions are as follows. The quiz show format was highly entertaining, while still enabling educational stations to fulfill regulations about the quantity of educational programs they broadcast. It was also an effective format when an affiliate station in Osaka sent information to Tokyo. That is why “the quiz phenomenon” occurred. In this way, regulation of program type quantities influenced not only television stations, but also their network relationships.

This study identifies the news production process of investigative reporting at a local newspaper as a case study, which is the report of Kochi Prefectural government financing under cover by the Kochi shim-bun. It received the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association Prize in 2001. This study identifies the process from the phase of basic research that gets a clue for news and the phase of expansive research, to setting up the news first by interview to journalists.

Especially, this study focuses on an editorial right that is pointed out as structural problems for Japanese mass media, and discusses how the executives with editorial rights affect the news production process.

The findings are that the journalist made an effort to manage information, selected interviewees carefully and avoided sharing information in his company because of apprehensiveness of intervention by executives. Moreover, executives proposed some conditions, postponed reporting the news and presented an alternative plan because of the risk of reporting. On the other hand, journalists asserted executives to report, responded to the conditions which executives proposed and used the pressure outside of the organization.

This study is single case study and interviewed only journalists. However, this study found that editorial rights affect the news production process empirically as Ishikawa (2003) and Hanada (2013) pointed out. Further studies are needed in order to generalize. This findings suggest that it is important not only to focus on journalist's news gathering activities, but also to focus attention on interaction between reporters and editors in the organization for improvement of quality and quantity of investigative reporting.