Arbitrariness of information — Media, Japan, and France

Upload: 22 April 2019, Last update: 23 April 2019

Arbitrariness of information is what people need to be aware. In particular, when we watch TV news, TV news are made artificially means that it has arbitrariness of information. Some information is buried behind what is spoken. This is a not surprising fact since we cannot convey the exactly same situation to others. First, the perception of what has happened is different in every person and it is going to be conveyed via a medium to others. It’s sure that certain amount of information cannot be transferred. What important is that whether people are aware of the arbitrariness.

As some say that history is his + story, history is arbitrarily combined and built up to some extent. There’s huge amount of information which people didn’t choose, got buried in history and cannot be seen at present.

Compared with France, it feels like many Japanese still receive information as it is and do not care the arbitrariness of information. I know some people do care it, but I have an impression that the number of people aware of arbitrariness of information is quite lower. For example in France, more people have less trust in media. The media defiance of the public is often talked.

We should not see information as it is and should be careful of arbitrariness of information. Especially mainstream media are often influenced by pressure directly or indirectly, we need to get information from as many sources as possible.