Japanese French Frontiers of Science Symposium

1. Social and Cultural Meaning of
Networks
Shinya ICHINOHE
Keiwa College
Niigata, Japan
Background :
Information Law

2. Made by Vincenzo Cosenza

3. Outline
• Social Media and its Impact
• Social Media in Japan and East Asia
• The Great East Japan Earthquake and
Networks

4. Social Media and its Impact

5. Differences among services
• Open or Closed
• How to categorize
friends
– Make Groups what
you want show (g+, Fb)
– Make Lists which you
want to see (Tw)
• Integration between
search and SNS

6. Social Media and Revolution
• Social Media Supported Rebel Campaign happened
in Tunisia, Egypt and…
– Moldova's "Twitter Revolution" April, 2009
– #iranelection (Iran) #urumqi (China)
• Divided over the role of social media
• Social Media is not the sole cause of revolution
• Revolution in “Organizing” (by Daisuke TSUDA)
– Connecting and organizing people to join in the
movement
– Appealing their Legitimacy to ask for the support from
outside

7. UK Moscow
by Nicobobinus Photo by mpeake
Occupy Wall Street (US)
By david_shankbone

8. Social Media in Japan
and East Asia

9. Social Media in Japan and East Asia
• Gradually domestic providers lose their
position

10. mixi
• Japanese SNS, started in 2004
• It had the largest share (subscribers) in
Japan
• But recently the leading position come
to be doubtful.

11. Mixi has already dropped
from the top?
• Nielsen excluded visitors (clicks) from external
links to mixi
Nielsen Netview, Nov., 2011

12. • Korean biggest SNS, Started in 1999
• Owned by SK telecom

13. You too, Cyworld?
• Korea Times pointed out that Visitors of
Facebook in Korea surpassed Cyworld.
Source: Rankey.com

14. by KESO
• Sina weibo (Twitter Clone) has 100 million subscribers
(Global: Twitter 300 million / Facebook 800 million)

15. A new Twitter record made by
Japanese: “Castle in the Sky”

16. Tabelog
• Manufactured (fake) comments on the famous
Restaurant listing site “Tabe-log” (Eat Log)
• Some agents sold to restaurants the paid service
to write good comments and ratings.
• Japanese Consumer Affairs Agency started
investigation and Tabelog issued warning about
39 companies.
• Suggestion: Necessity to build reliable network in
advance

17. The Great East Japan Earthquake and
Networks
Photos by Rumiko Yoshida

18. Communication Restriction Control
Blue: Restricted Red: Connected
平成23年版 情報通信白書 / White Paper on Telecommunications 2011

19. Search “Earthquake” on Yahoo! Japan
Source: Yahoo! Japan Staff Blog

20. Outside Tohoku
• Social Media were used by many people in
Tokyo Area
– Especially about train delay and other specific
topics
– Realtime Search by Google ( suspended last july)
– Firehose (Streaming API) Provided by Twitter

21. NHK allowed simultaneous
distribution through Live
Streaming service
Radiko, IP Simulcast Radio,
Nico Nico Nama Housou temporally removed area
( After unauthorized transmission) restriction

22. Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant
and Live Streaming
Photo by fumi
People wanted unedited sources about the accident.
Niconico nama housou and Ustream streamed
most of all press conferences by government or TEPCO.

23. False Rumor:
harmful materials in rain ?
Somebody
tweeted the rain
after fire were
harmful and was
retweeted again
and again
ICHIHARA (Chiba Oil
Factory) , 11th Mar. 2011,
Photo: asahi.com

24. Which became more reliable?
NHK (Public
Broadcasting)
Portal Site
Social Media
University /
Research Institute
Government
Broadcasting Station (Private)
Newspapers
Source: NRI “Research on Media Access associated with the disaster”, 29th, Mar., 2011

25. Which became less reliable?
Government
Broadcasting Station (Private)
Social Media
University / Research Institute
Newspapers
NHK (Public Broadcasting)
Portal Site
Source: NRI “Research on Media Access associated with the disaster”, 29th, Mar., 2011

26. Google Person Finder
• Started 3 hours after the
earthquake
• “crowd sourcing” trial
– Papers put in the board of
shelters are shot, uploaded.
– Their texts are input in the
service by users manually
– They called cooperation through
Twitter
– 5000 users contributed
• “We trusted people” (Masashi
Kawashima from Google)

27. Project Fumbaro(hang on) Eastern
Japan
• Amazon Wishlist was used to show what refugees
need and users could send them soon.

28. Supporting Elder People
1. Younger people work and
support for them
2. Set up more community
radio station
3. Develop simple and easy-to-
use device.
WX02A (Willcom)

29. Summary
• In South Korea and Japan, domestic web services (SNS)
is losing their leading positions.
• As for Japanese context, social media is not deemed as
tool of connecting people for social (political)
movement in spite there are many tech savvy people.
• The Great East Japan Earthquake made us recognize
the importance of social media together with
traditional media to exchange localized and realtime
information.
• In other hand, we need to consider how to support
elder people continuously.