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This paper analyses Japan's COVID-19 response drawing on a survey of more than 3200 prospective international students affected by the (colloquially named) #JapanTravelBan. The paper charts the evolution of Japan's COVID-19 response from the earliest border restrictions in February 2020 to the eventual blanket reopening to international students in Summer 2022. Subsequently, survey DATA provide evidence of (1) the drastic mental health effects for prospective international students during this time, (2) students' loss of agency due to the protracted uncertainty of both policy and communication from the Japanese government, and (3) potential damage caused to Japan's reputation as a study destination. Drawing on these findings the paper offers broader suggestions for appropriate student migration policymaking: greater transparency, attention to students' security throughout their study sojourn, an emphasis on stability, and resilience to crises.

The various possibilities that social media offers to language learners and teachers have long been recognized by researchers within the field of language instruction, and many studies have been carried out in an attempt to address and unpack its potential contributions. This paper aims to review such research on the use of mainstream social media in language teaching and learning published in "Computer Assisted Language Learning," a top tier (i.e., Q1) journal indexed in major citation index systems (e.g., Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus), between the years 2016-2020 inclusive. For the purposes of the study, a total of 23 articles that meet the selection criteria is reviewed and presented in five sections. The first section deals with the majority of the articles, which are found to be on the use of social networking in language teaching and learning. In the following sections, studies on the use of videoconferencing, wikis, blogging and forums are discussed. Collectively, the studies reviewed in this paper outline a critical role for the use of social media in language instruction and the study aims to provide valuable insights for researchers, teachers and learners.

This paper compares the SAT and "juken." It does this at three levels of analysis: structure, function, and participant communications. While the prior two rely on publicly available information and established theories, the latter is based on the analysis of data collected from social media. The findings of this paper are that, while the two examinations are structurally and functionally similar enough to appear ready points of comparison, their differences are profound enough to make such comparisons misleading. Among the consequential differences discussed are that, as opposed to the SAT, the "juken" is a longer, more consequential process that is more likely to impose dependency upon its participants. In combination, these differences result in a higher-pressure process that challenges its participants not only intellectually, but socio-culturally, and characterologically. As a result, this paper suggests that, whereas the SAT serves a functional role in determining university admissions in the US, the "juken" is a central facet of Japan's institutionalized education and socialization process.

There are two important dimensions to successful second language learning: what goes on inside the classroom and what goes on outside of the classroom (Richards, 2015). This paper investigates smartphone use for online learning of English among Japanese university students using online surveys and semi-structured interviews. The investigation includes the most frequent smartphone activities, including language use, the main language of these activities, and the reciprocal evolutionary relationship of engaging in smartphone activities in English and the level of language skills perceived. The results show that despite the affordability of user-generated content web technologies, Japanese participants primarily accessed online language receptive skill activities. In addition, the results show the reciprocal evolutionary relationship of two complex dynamic systems: (1) use of English digital English context system; and (2) English communication competency system for participants. Finally, the paper discusses how the use of English online offers a growing range of opportunities for students to engage in activities beyond the classroom, and how they are used.

In this paper the results of an online survey (n=210) regarding the usefulness of Facebook for informal L2 learning will be presented. Participants were individual Facebook users who study either German (n=118) or Japanese (n=92). By using a combination of open and closed questions, the mostly quantitative findings of the survey indicate that for most participants Facebook is a suitable tool for improving their L2 skills, because the network enables them to establish or to maintain social contacts with native speakers and to have authentic opportunities to express themselves in the L2. As particularly effective activities, participants mentioned reading and writing L2 posts on the networks' timeline, exchanging private messages, and commenting on friends' posts. As far as effects on L2 learning are concerned, most participants noted an improvement in their reading and writing skills, as well as an expansion of their vocabulary and cultural understanding. Some respondents, however, raised concerns about the formal correctness of the language they encounter on the network as well as insecurity regarding communication with strangers. The information participants provided on their informal use of Facebook led to the conclusion, that learners of L2 German and learners of L2 Japanese show similar tendencies in using the network for their L2 learning. In contrast to using social networks in educational settings, their informal use allows learners much more freedom to decide when, how often, with whom, on which topic, and in which way they wish to interact in their target language on the network.

There is increasing interest in how educational technologies can be used to promote and create meaningful learning opportunities and, more specifically, how social media tools can be harnessed to encourage language learning through online interactions. Educational social media tools, however, thrust student learning from a private space into a public one and raise ethical concerns regarding digital surveillance. Drawing from Norton's (2013) conceptualisation of language investment and identity and Bourdieu's (1990) thinking tools of habitus and field, this paper explores the attitudes and experiences of 30 Japanese exchange students studying at a high school in Australia, as they engage with the educational social media platform, Edmodo. This action research study aimed to encourage language investment by providing an online space for students to develop their English language identities in and amongst their Japanese peers. However, this study found that many of the participating students resisted and/or disliked using Edmodo because they felt restricted by the platform, highlighting the need for students to have a sense of autonomy in the midst of teacher control and surveillance. Additionally, this study reveals that the students who engaged regularly, and without the prompting of the teacher, were students who were academically stronger, suggesting that students' self-efficacy is closely linked to language investment and the willingness to develop their language identity.

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the social media posts of prefectural governors in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. It investigates the correlation between social media activity levels, governors' characteristics, and engagement metrics. To predict citizen engagement of a specific tweet, machine learning models (MLMs) are trained using three feature sets. The first set includes variables representing profile- and tweet-related features. The second set incorporates word embeddings from three popular models, while the third set combines the first set with one of the embeddings. Additionally, seven classifiers are employed. The best-performing model utilizes the first feature set with FastText embedding and the XGBoost classifier. This study aims to collect governors' COVID-19-related tweets, analyze engagement metrics, investigate correlations with governors' characteristics, examine tweet-related features, and train MLMs for prediction. This paper's main contributions are twofold. Firstly, it offers an analysis of social media engagement by prefectural governors during the COVID-19 pandemic, shedding light on their communication strategies and citizen engagement outcomes. Secondly, it explores the effectiveness of MLMs and word embeddings in predicting tweet engagement, providing practical implications for policymakers in crisis communication. The findings emphasize the importance of social media engagement for effective governance and provide insights into factors influencing citizen engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of social networking systems has enabled communication to occur around the globe almost instantly, with news about various events being spread around the world as they happen. There has also been much interest in the benefits and disadvantages the use of such social networking systems may bring for education. This paper reports on the use of Twitter in a Japanese university course, and the effect it had on the participants' autonomy. The second language learning motivation and metacognitive skills of 34 Japanese university students studying in a foreign cultures class were measured using both open-ended and closed-ended items in a questionnaire. The results suggest that only students who have high linguistic self-confidence will display progress in taking charge of their learning habits and becoming autonomous in their study as a consequence of using a social networking system in class.

Excessive workloads are a concern for teachers across the world. Overwork puts pressure not only on the physical and mental health of teachers, but also on their ability to provide quality education to their students. Nevertheless, many teachers struggle under the weight of excessive workloads, and have very little input in the top-down policies that impact their everyday working lives. In Japan, where overwork is a pervasive problem, teachers and their allies have been using Twitter to share their stories and advocate for more manageable working conditions, and this has coincided with an increase in mainstream attention to the issue. This paper presents a qualitative content analysis of highly engaged 'tweets', to identify how one form of social media is being harnessed to bring wider public attention to an otherwise neglected educational issue. The study has implications for teachers in other parts of the world looking to develop their agency through social media advocacy.

Highlighting minorities and crime survivors through public discourse is essential for their support and protection. However, advocating for minorities is challenging due to the fear of potential isolation from one's social circles. This reluctance contributes to the societal phenomenon known as the "spiral of silence," significantly impeding efforts to support socially vulnerable individuals. This study centers on a pivotal instance where the silence surrounding sexual abuse in the Japanese entertainment industry was disrupted, in which the late company president had allegedly abused idol trainees of the company for decades. Utilizing extensive data from news media and social media, the study probes the engagement dynamics of public attention to this scandal. Results indicate that users on social media provided earlier and greater coverage for this scandal compared to news media outlets. Furthermore, television demonstrated a significant delay in addressing this issue compared to other news media, such as tabloids, magazines, and online news. Regarding social media engagement, idol fans exhibited a more subdued response to the issue compared to the general public. Notably, fans more loyal to the company tended to be slower to mention the issue, with a higher likelihood of standing in defense of the perpetrators. Moreover, conflicting attitudes were observed within the fan communities, culminating in an observable "echo chamber" phenomenon. This paper presents a novel examination of the process of disruption of social silence and offers critical insights for aiding vulnerable individuals in environments dominated by an unacknowledged spiral of silence. This study is novel in that it suggests a reinterpretation of the "spiral of silence theory" in the age of social media, through a comprehensive analysis of relevant social media data and news media data. This contributes to the body of research that has analyzed the spiral of silence theory online., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Tanihara et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The social-media news website "Reddit" boasts a huge readership with over 35 million unique visitors for December 2011 alone. Content is generated by users, who submit links from other websites to the various sub-forums. Users also have the ability to comment on links, providing the means for a community to be developed. Both content and comments can be promoted or demoted based on a voting system. This paper focuses on the creation of a sub-forum on Reddit for the purpose of submitting the work of EFL learners, the notion being that other Reddit users, primarily native English speakers, may be crowd-sourced in order to provide feedback, comments, or corrections for students to read, and provide grounds for cross-cultural communication. Firstly we provide a detailed overview of what Reddit is. Following this, we introduce a particular type of comic that has an enormous popularity on Reddit: rage comics. Literature regarding electronic literacy, the use of comics in language learning, and computer-mediated communication is then covered. We then detail the methodology used to introduce, create and submit such comics with our learners. Lastly, we share the results of a questionnaire designed to reveal student perceptions of the project, and discuss possible considerations for future implementations.

Seamless learning has been recognized as an effective learning approach across various dimensions including formal and informal learning contexts, individual and social learning, and physical world and cyberspace. With the emergence of seamless learning, the majority of the current research focuses on realizing a seamless learning environment at school or university. However, the utilization of the collected learning logs still remains a challenge yet to be explored. In this study, an e-book with ubiquitous learning system called SCROLL is developed to collect and analyze learning logs in the seamless learning environment. Moreover, this paper presents our analytics in contribution to bridging the learning between e-Book learning and real-life learning. An experiment was conducted to evaluate (1) whether VASCORLL 2.0 (Visualization and Analysis System for Connecting Relationships of Learning Logs) is effective in connecting the words learned through e-Book to those learned from real-life, and (2) which social network centrality is the most effective to enhance learning in the seamless learning environment. Twenty international students participated in the evaluation experiment, and they were able to increase their learning opportunities by using VASCORLL 2.0. Furthermore, the betweenness centrality was found useful in finding central words that bridge e-Book and real-life learning.

Background: Despite being a pandemic, the impact of the spread of COVID-19 extends beyond public health, influencing areas such as the economy, education, work style, and social relationships. Research studies that document public opinions and estimate the long-term potential impact after the pandemic can be of value to the field., Objective: This study aims to uncover and track concerns in Japan throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing Japanese individuals' self-disclosure of disruptions to their life plans on social media. This approach offers alternative evidence for identifying concerns that may require further attention for individuals living in Japan., Methods: We extracted 300,778 tweets using the query phrase Corona-no-sei ("due to COVID-19," "because of COVID-19," or "considering COVID-19"), enabling us to identify the activities and life plans disrupted by the pandemic. The correlation between the number of tweets and COVID-19 cases was analyzed, along with an examination of frequently co-occurring words., Results: The top 20 nouns, verbs, and noun plus verb pairs co-occurring with Corona no-sei were extracted. The top 5 keywords were graduation ceremony, cancel, school, work, and event. The top 5 verbs were disappear, go, rest, can go, and end. Our findings indicate that education emerged as the top concern when the Japanese government announced the first state of emergency. We also observed a sudden surge in anxiety about material shortages such as toilet paper. As the pandemic persisted and more states of emergency were declared, we noticed a shift toward long-term concerns, including careers, social relationships, and education., Conclusions: Our study incorporated machine learning techniques for disease monitoring through the use of tweet data, allowing the identification of underlying concerns (eg, disrupted education and work conditions) throughout the 3 stages of Japanese government emergency announcements. The comparison with COVID-19 case numbers provides valuable insights into the short- and long-term societal impacts, emphasizing the importance of considering citizens' perspectives in policy-making and supporting those affected by the pandemic, particularly in the context of Japanese government decision-making., (©Masaru Kamba, Wan Jou She, Kiki Ferawati, Shoko Wakamiya, Eiji Aramaki. Originally published in JMIR Infodemiology (https://infodemiology.jmir.org), 01.04.2024.)

The anti‐vaccination movement is dangerous because of its influence on vaccine hesitancy. Nowadays, social media platforms become significant sources of anti‐vaccination information; therefore, combating their proliferation needs to be addressed by the relevant authorities. Previous studies suggested two policies to mitigate the negative influence of anti‐vaccination information online: attaching caution banners from healthcare authorities and engaging in censorship of anti‐vaccine supporting information providers. However, these recommendations were obtained without considering how the users form their sentiments. In this paper, we explore the influence of the existing network of vaccination‐related Facebook pages on an individual user's vaccination sentiment using agent‐based modelling (ABM). We use the ABM implementation of the Zaller model to convert the user's information consumption to their vaccination sentiment. Our simulation results show that the application of the two policies leads to improved sentiment on vaccination, reinforcing existing suggestions obtained by different methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is one of the disaster-prone countries. Then, various disaster education is conducted in schools and local communities for alleviating the damage caused by disasters. However, according to various surveys, disaster prevention awareness among young people is known to be lower than in other age groups in Japan. Therefore, we worked with Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, on establishing an ICT-based program on disaster prevention and mitigation to raise awareness of disaster prevention and mitigation among young people. The program is based on the workshop consisting of town watching and group discussion using DITS/DIMS (disaster information tweeting and mapping system) proposed in the previous studies. In this paper, we introduce the contents of the established education program on disaster prevention and mitigation for the young generation. Moreover, we report on the results of the workshops for disaster prevention and mitigation using this program at several junior high and high schools in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The results of the post-questionnaire show that many participants had a positive impression on the developed disaster education program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harassment on the Internet, particularly on social media such as Twitter, has reached a level where it can, without exaggeration, be characterised as a real-world societal problem in Japan. However, studies on this phenomenon in the Japanese language environment, especially adopting a victim-centric perspective, are rare. In this paper, we incorporated the concept of online harassment and reviewed existing studies about online harassment from Japan and abroad. We then conducted a detailed case analysis of the "flaming" of a female journalist and those who targeted her on Twitter. Based on our analysis, we observed that there were three layers of users who targeted the journalist: influencers, users who responded to the instigation by influencers, and trolls. Each harassed the journalist, but in a different manner. Given Japan's particular difficulty of imposing domestic regulations on social media companies that are mostly from abroad, we propose and describe possible measures that individuals and their employers should consider taking., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2021 Tonami A et al.)

This paper discusses the challenges of disseminating COVID-19 information to migrant populations by sharing our trial-and-error approach. In 2018, the Migrants' Neighbor Network & Action (MINNA), a consortium of individuals and organizations that addressed the issues of accessing relevant information and services for migrants in Japan, was launched. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the MINNA attempted to investigate and improve access to health information among Vietnamese, Nepali, and Burmese migrants in Japan. We had three assumptions in distribution of information to reach a large audience, such as building a multilingual website, requesting stakeholders to disseminate information, or posting on Facebook. None of our assumptions were sufficient to reach the target audience in the context of COVID-19, as total number of views that accessed our materials were less than 300 at most. We viewed these myths as the result of overlooking critical elements of effective communication strategies. Eventually, MINNA managed to establish communication with the manager of a Facebook page with the largest number of followers from the Vietnamese community in Japan. Compared with our previous attempts, the messages were delivered to a large audience on the Facebook page, such as the article on COVID-19 vaccines that was viewed more than 300,000 times. In public health emergencies, interactive process of information dissemination is necessary. It is a key component for risk communication and should be prioritized. Breakthroughs in communicating with a larger audience could be possible through partnerships with online communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how the constructs of false self, preference for online social interaction (POSI), compulsive internet use (CIU), and online disinhibition affect social withdrawal in a social media context. The mediating effects of moral disengagement and cyber aggression are also tested. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected using an online survey (n = 533) from consumers in Japan. This study used structural equation modeling and PROCESS to examine the proposed relationships. Findings: The study revealed that false self positively affects moral disengagement while online disinhibition positively affects cyber aggression and moral disengagement. Preference for online social interaction and compulsive internet use both positively impacts social withdrawal. Cyber aggression and moral disengagement were established mediators between false self/ Preference for online social interaction/ compulsive internet use/ online disinhibition and social withdrawal. Research limitations/implications: Although restricted to cyberaggression, owing to the reciprocal relationship between cyber victimization and cyberaggression, cyber victimization can be included for further study. This study expands the understanding of social withdrawal within the context of social media. Practical implications: Based on the findings, policies and programs that address mental health that build self-esteem, self-confidence and reduce anxiety ought to be undertaken. Managing and formulating guidelines on anonymity should also be taken into consideration. Originality/value: This research demonstrates the crucial constructs that affect social media users negatively from the aspects of cyberaggression, moral disengagement and social withdrawal. It also establishes the importance of mental health in reducing adverse effects from social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the traditional sources of financial knowledge in Japan are financial advisors and investment groups, the digital era and artificial intelligence have made other sources of information, such as social media and mass media, more influential. As such, it has become important to examine the socioeconomic, demographic, and psychological factors influencing the use of these information sources in the context of investment decisions. However, little research has been carried out to examine such associations using a large-scale nationwide dataset. We fill this gap by utilizing a dataset comprising almost 65,000 active investors from one of the largest online security companies in Japan, ensuring the representativeness and generalizability of our results. We show that active investors are more inclined to use social media and mass media than financial advisors and investment groups. The probit regression model shows that the use of each of the four sources of information is strongly shaped by an individual's characteristics, which, to some extent, are not mutually exclusive for each source type. The study results imply that the government should regulate and monitor the quality and accuracy of the information disseminated by mass media and social media and educate investors on how to critically evaluate and verify the information that they receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geotagged social media data have been used widely for visitor monitoring in protected areas. The data might, however, over or underestimate visitors from specific countries due to nationality bias, i.e., differences between nationality of actual visitors versus those visitors who post on social media. This study aimed to quantify nationality bias in social media data for visitor monitoring. We conducted a questionnaire survey in Nikko National Park, Japan. Questions covered the nationality of visitors and their usage of social media, and other visitor attributes and behavior. Foreign visitors had significantly different attributes and behaviors compared to Japanese. Non-Japanese Asian visitors were overrepresented in Instagram and Facebook data. In comparison, the X platform was more representative of all visitors. Nationality bias in different platforms needs more attention and further study in different areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Headache is a common public health problem, but its burden could be avoided by raising headache awareness and the appropriate use of acute medication and prophylactic medication. Few reports on raising headache awareness in the general public have been reported, and there are no reports on headache awareness campaigns through social networking services (SNS), or social media, in Japan. We prospectively performed a headache awareness campaign from March 2022 through 2 SNS, targeting nurse and wind instrumental musicians, because they are with high headache prevalence.Methods: Through the 2 SNS, the article and video were distributed, respectively. The article and video described the 6 important topics for the general public about headaches, which were described in the Clinical Practice Guideline for Headache Disorders 2021. Just after reading or watching them as e-learning, we performed online questionnaire sheets to investigate the awareness of the 6 topics through the 2 SNS. The awareness of the 6 topics before and after the campaign was evaluated.Results: In the SNS nurse-senka, we obtained 1191 responses. Women comprised 94.4%, and the median (range) age was 45 (20 to 71) years old. Headache sufferers were 63.8%, but only 35.1% had consulted doctors. In the SNS Creatone, we got the response from 134 professional musicians, with 77.3% of women. The largest number of respondents were in their 20s (range 18– 60 years old). Headache sufferers were 87.9%. Of them, 36.4% had consulted doctors, 24.2% were medication-overuse headache. The ratios of individuals who were aware of the 6 topics significantly increased from 15.2%-47.0% to 80.4– 98.7% after the online questionnaire in both SNS (p < 0.001, all).Conclusion: E-learning and online survey via SNS can improve headache awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This debate examines the impact of infodemics – an over-abundance of information – on social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of its external effects, social distancing behavior (SDB) shares fundamental properties with public goods, whose potential for undersupply has been examined extensively in the social sciences. Although the negative effects of infodemics have been emphasized by governments and international organizations, theoretical models suggest that infodemics may work as a mitigation mechanism. That is, infodemics may enhance people's SDBs. Based on original survey data, we show that media exposure can positively increase SDB. We conclude by discussing two public health implications. First, the media plays an important role in motivating SDB. Second, even if infodemics can increase SDB, we must be wary of their ability to pose other, non-negligible dangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of disastrous events in Japan, safety information and rescue requests, as well as emergency alerts and damage situations, have been shared on Twitter. However, even victims who are familiar with smartphones or similar devices and social media cannot easily share detailed information, such as the coordinates or address of their current location, which are essential components of safety information and rescue requests. Moreover, local governments and rescue experts have difficulty in gathering such tweets from Twitter. In this paper, we propose a novel system to enable the victims to share their safety information, make rescue requests, and enable quick information gathering for decision making by local government staff or rescue experts. The proposed system is a Twitter-based safety confirmation system named T-@npi. Using the proposed application, the users can easily submit their safety information and send rescue requests on Twitter. The users who want to confirm the safety information can check it quickly on Twitter or via this system. Furthermore, the registered safety information is displayed on an online map to support rescue and assistance activities by local governments and rescue experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to compare impressions of COVID-19 vaccination and influenza vaccination in Japan by analyzing social media (Twitter®) using a text-mining method. We obtained 10,000 tweets using the keywords "corona vaccine" and "influenza vaccine" on 15 December 2022 and 19 February 2023. We then counted the number of times the words were used and listed frequency of these words by a text-mining method called KH Coder. We also investigated concepts in the data using groups of words that often appeared together or groups of documents that contained the same words using multi-dimensional scaling (MDS). "Death" in relation to corona vaccine and "severe disease" for influenza vaccine were frequently used on 15 December 2022. The number of times the word "death" was used decreased, "after effect" was newly recognized for corona vaccine, and "severe disease" was not used in relation to influenza vaccine. Through this comprehensive analysis of social media data, we observed distinct variations in public perceptions of corona vaccination and influenza vaccination in Japan. These findings provide valuable insights for public health authorities and policymakers to better understand public sentiment and tailor their communication strategies accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important that both static and dynamic information is efficiently used to create a suitable tourism plan. However, collecting, accumulating and managing dynamic information can cost tourists time, money and energy. In the present study, an original tourism support system was designed and developed with the purpose of reducing the burden of tourists who are unfamiliar with the urban tourist destinations in particular. An original tourism planning support system and web-geographic information systems (Web-GIS) were integrated into a single system, and two original functions were implemented. The system was operated targeting Osaka City, Japan, for a period of one month. The information concerning 529 sightseeing spots was collected from tourism-related web media and then saved to the database of the system beforehand. During the operation period, a cumulative total of 160 users accessed the system. Based on the questionnaire survey results, most of the main functions were highly rated regardless of users' travel experiences to the operation target area. Additionally, based on the access log analysis results, it was clear that the use of the system was in line with the purpose of the present study, as the number of visits to the page for the main functions were high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First of all we wish to reveal certain universally-structuralist qualities, same as culturally-relative features of scandals and their mediation in a non-Western society. Secondly, we will illuminate how the mass media take active part in processing political issues in Japan, where as anywhere else in the media-saturated modern industrial world politicians significantly depend on the media (and vice versa); where political live shows and news programs - including scandals - became an important force, at times driving public sentiment while eventually generating support for opposition; and where wealth and its surplus is inevitably tied to a higher potential to grasp and secure power. We will then proceed to the main part of the paper, where we focus more closely on Japanese political scandals whereby preparing theoretical ground for a discourse analysis in the scandal case study of Ozawa Ichirō - one of the most powerful political heavyweights, and simultaneously one of the epitomes of political corruption in Japan. In our endeavor we were motivated by the fact that there exists plethora of literature on scandals in the west, but a detailed media discourse analysis of Japanese scandals is still lacking in academia worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excessive workloads are a concern for teachers across the world. Overwork puts pressure not only on the physical and mental health of teachers, but also on their ability to provide quality education to their students. Nevertheless, many teachers struggle under the weight of excessive workloads, and have very little input in the top-down policies that impact their everyday working lives. In Japan, where overwork is a pervasive problem, teachers and their allies have been using Twitter to share their stories and advocate for more manageable working conditions, and this has coincided with an increase in mainstream attention to the issue. This paper presents a qualitative content analysis of highly engaged 'tweets', to identify how one form of social media is being harnessed to bring wider public attention to an otherwise neglected educational issue. The study has implications for teachers in other parts of the world looking to develop their agency through social media advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Media is pervasive, and today it is transforming how individuals communicate with each other and also how people now discover and share information. Regardless of genre, social media, today equate to a powerful, influential, and revolutionary model for exposing and diffusing public opinion. The Web and social media sites in particular, are an increasingly important component of crisis and emergency communication. For crisis communication practitioners to act effectively on behalf of organisations, they must monitor and track both traditional and new media sources for information and issues, and respond accordingly. This paper presents findings from an exploratory study into the use of social media during recent natural disasters in Australia, Japan and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Data on the perceptions of medical students on international experience in non-English-speaking high-income countries (HICs) are very limited. This study aimed to assess the perceptions of medical students in Japan toward overseas experience while in school and post-graduation, as well as to characterize the support they require to pursue their profession in international settings. Methods: A cross-sectional national survey was administered online between September 16, 2020, and October 8, 2020. Participants were recruited from 69 medical schools using snowball sampling through acquaintances and social media platforms. The survey results were analyzed by two researchers. Results: A total of 548 students from 59 medical schools responded to the survey. Among them, 381 respondents (69%) expressed interest in working abroad, while only 40% seriously considered it. The majority of students responded that they would like to pursue clinical training abroad for a short term or while they were medical students (54%) or during a residency/fellowship (53%). The most popular regions among the respondents for future international experiences were North America and Europe. Finally, the most reported reasons for hesitation to work abroad were language barriers (70%), followed by lack of clarity regarding career options after working abroad (67%), difficulties obtaining medical licensure abroad (62%), and the lack of role models (42%). Conclusions: Although nearly 70% of participants reported a high interest in working overseas, various barriers to working abroad were identified. Our findings identified key problem areas that could be targeted when promoting international experiences for medical students in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated how personal characteristics such as generalized trust, self-consciousness and friendship, and desire for self-presentation are related to the subjective well-being of university students who use Twitter in Japan, including the effects of their online communication skills. We conducted a survey in May 2021 with Twitter users and analyzed their log data between January 2019 and June 2021. The log data of 501 Twitter users, including the number of public tweets, retweets, and emotional expressions among different patterns of social media (e.g., Twitter only, Twitter + Instagram, Twitter + LINE + Instagram, etc.) and academic standings, were analyzed using ANOVA and stepwise regression analyses. The results showed that the number of tweets and retweets, with and without photos/videos, increased in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019, and the ratio of positive sentences remained almost the same for the two-and-a-half-year period of this study. However, the proportion of negative sentences increased slightly. It is clear that the factors which affected the university students' subjective well-being differed depending on the respective patterns of social media use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural disasters are events that humans cannot control, and Japan has suffered from many such disasters over its long history. Many of these have caused severe damage to human lives and property. These days, numerous Japanese people have gained considerable experience preparing for disasters and are now striving to predict the effects of disasters using social network services (SNSs) to exchange information in real time. Currently, Twitter is the most popular and powerful SNS tool used for disaster response in Japan because it allows users to exchange and disseminate information quickly. However, since almost all of the Japanese-related content is also written in the Japanese language, which restricts most of its benefits to Japanese people, we feel that it is necessary to create a disaster response system that would help people who do not understand Japanese. Accordingly, this paper presents the framework of a question-answering (QA) system that was developed using a Twitter dataset containing more than nine million tweets compiled during the Osaka North Earthquake that occurred on 18 June 2018. We also studied the structure of the questions posed and developed methods for classifying them into particular categories in order to find answers from the dataset using an ontology, word similarity, keyword frequency, and natural language processing. The experimental results presented herein confirm the accuracy of the answer results generated from our proposed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]