As I wrote in my previous article “Changing style of information from passive to active“, the way people get information has changed. In this context, there’s a concern that people are going to get the information they prefer and member of a society are going to be divided more.

Since people are now accessing information not passively but actively by using google, Yahoo!, and others, they are searching the information they want meaning that they see less information they are not curious about than the situation before the Internet appeared. Certainly, there is list of news, for example, on the yahoo! headline, but as a current tendency people are now getting information by following the favorite sources of information on Twitter, be friends with on Facebook, and so on. This situation means people can follow the opinions similar to them and gather together.

And if the media having specificities like NewsPicks which is focusing on business news emerge more, people are going to be divided along with their preference of information. Diversification of media platform enable us to get more access to information depending on preference of each person, on the other hand it might divide a society by preference.

However, the multiplication of the sources has positive aspect as well. If the mainstream media try to spread propaganda, it was easy to spread in the past because people were accessing to information mainly from TV or newspapers, but now the way has become diverse and people are not easily manipulated. This is effective if a person uses several or more sources of information to get multiple perspectives.

In order to avoid being biased, we need to get multiple perspectives for a topic, or have places where we can get other opinions like in debates. If not, those who having the same opinions will gather, make groups with similar people, and people are going to be divided.

The Internet is practical and necessary in our life, but as people tend to search by their preference, there’s a possibility that the formation of people’s opinion will be made by getting favorable information to them. People need to have a habit of getting opinions far from theirs, otherwise our world would be divided by the information we get.

Flexibility of a society can be described in (at least) two ways below.

One is whether a society can support those who went outside of the framework of a society – in this case they were originally born within it, but prefer to spend time beyond the framework. For example, in general, students are demanded to live in a school where the life is standardized. But a handful of them have different perspectives, they can expand them on their own, and can get our of the framework intellectually. Famously, Edison dropped out from primary school and he left the great inventions in our world.

Another case is whether we can comprehend people coming from outside of framework – this is different from the one explained above since the example of this case is for instance, migrants originally living in the place outside of framework and entering into it. The flexibility here means not whether we can accept the entering of migrants physically, but the flexibility of a society that for example in school, whether school can flexibly respect people having different sense of values like religions, customs, and others. In school where Japanese students are mostly organized in the same standard, whether they can flexibly respect the students coming from different context.

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Upload: 19 February 2019, Last update: 20 February 2019

When I watch French TV programs, I come across debates and international news a lot more than watching Japanese TV. (this depends on the time and the TV programs I watch though)

Japanese TV has debates or commentators exchanging opinions, but in most of cases they are not digging into the topics and they are just talking the surface of it. Also I’ve been wondering why news programs on TV in Japan cover so many entertainment news like romances or interviews of celebrities. That may be because Japanese TV stations tend to be attentive to the ratings of each program, they may be trying to attract more audiences by broadcasting familiar topics of the public than broadcasting international news or assigning time to a little difficult matters.

Take a case of France, France has more debates on TV. Debates on TV give opportunities for the public to think about politics. Though I’m sometimes impressed by some of commentators strongly pushing their opinions without hearing enough others’ comments in debate, TV programs in France takes more time for debate. Moreover, they also cover international topics by putting more time than Japan, like DRC’s election, Venezuelan political situation, and so on.

The importance of international news and political debates on TV is giving opportunity to think about the current news to the public. This provides people with the habit of thinking about what is going on in their society and the world. Although people are also curious and I don’t oppose to cover celebrities’ news, Japan should take more time to the TV programs which needs people to use their brains, like debates and international news. Besides, if Japanese people do not have knowledge on international topics, they will be left behind from the globalized world.

It should be more recognized that everyone can express opinion in a society although there are quite less number of celebrities speaking out their political opinions in Japan. There are even some people condemn that celebrities and comedians should not talk about politics because they do not have knowledge. What is really important is that in a democratic society, everyone can express opinion and the society should be generous to all of opinions.

This is the foundation and a society can be built on it. Japan must break though current situation that people hesitate to express opinion including comedians, celebrities, and students. Some might have lesser knowledge than others, but it doesn’t mean that they should not mention opinion. Certain number of people have been misunderstanding that point. When you know better than others, you can teach it to others and both should deeper understand by thinking and questioning about the topic. Each person has each perspective and it is worth sharing.

Meanwhile, the public should have better media literacy to decide whether the opinion mentioned by a celebrity is worth supporting or not. Otherwise those who are fan of celebrities are going to be easily influenced by their expressions.

And just because a person is a huge fan of a celebrity doesn’t mean that he should agree with the political opinion of the celebrity. Each person should have media literacy and should think whether the opinion is supportable or not.

Upload: 16 February 2019. Last update: 14 December 2019.

Even though I have an impression that the Japanese government is more being closed to the public or giving information one-sidedly, when we look at US and France, they are trying to reflect the public opinion by using the Internet and have political dialogue with citizens.

First in US, as Japanese citizens have been using it to stop the Henoko landfill, the White House has the petition site called We the People which was created by the former president Barack Obama[1]. It enables people to get a official response from the government if they could assemble “100,000 signatures in 30 days”[2].

As another case, France is now conducting the grand débat national (national grand debate) from 15 January to 15 March 2019 in terms of “local meetings”[3]. There are many debates held, for example the President Macron talked with mayors and students, and the Minister of justice had a debate in a prison[4]. On the website of the national grand debate, it says that people can organise and join local meetings, and also can post their propositions online.

In Japan, there are petition sites every person can start a project, but it doesn’t guarantee that the government responds like the one in US. And in the case of Henoko, Japanese used the American system meaning that Japan doesn’t have similar way of expressing opinions. The advancement of technology can reflect the opinion of the public to politics more efficiently if the system is set up. Even the cases of US and France I describes in this article, I think we can have better ideas and make a better system that the political system can assemble civil opinion effectively.

The scale of a society gets larger, it is more difficult to have transparency between the decision makers and citizens. The political dialogue between them is important and technology can be a solution to reflect public opinions to politicians effectively.

[1]Pew Research Center’s article on the background of the petition system. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/12/28/the-background-of-the-we-the-people-website/ Accessed 15 February 2019

[2]https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ Accessed 15 February 2019

[3]https://granddebat.fr/# Accessed 7 February 2019

[4]http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2019/02/15/01016-20190215ARTFIG00289-grand-debat-les-detenus-font-entendre-leurs-voix.php Accessed 15 February 2019