Asako Miura

Use trend analysis of twitter after the great east japan earthquake

After the Great East Japan Earthquake in Japan 2011, numerous tweets were exchanged on Twitter. Several studies have already pointed out that micro-blogging systems have shown potential advantages in emergency situations, but it remains unclear how people use them. This paper presents a case study of how people used Twitter after the Great East Japan Earthquake. First, we gathered tweets immediately after the earthquake and analyzed various factors, including locations. The results revealed two findings: (1) people in the disaster area tend to directly communicate with each other (reply-based tweet). On the other hand,(2) people in the other area prefer spread the information from the disaster area by using Re-tweet.

The Development of a Positive Community using Virtual Space for Cancer Patients

This research investigated the effect of using a three-dimensional online chat environment on community development for cancer patients¿ mental health. In the support group, from two to five patients and one facilitator chatted in virtual space for a one and half hour session every week for three years using avatars with emotional expressions. The messages in the support group were analyzed by text mining tool. The results showed that the frequency of positive emotion words increased, on the other hand, the negative words decreased after one year. The percentage of participants¿ messages gradually increased with the sessions. The informational support in messages for improving their QOL (quality of life) increased during the three years. These data showed that the virtual support group promotes patients¿ positive emotions, QOL, and autonomy of the self-help group.

Analysis of Community Development using Chat Logs: A Virtual Support Group of Cancer Patients

In this paper, we report the results of a support group of cancer patients who use a 3-dimensional chat system. We examined the sequences of their messages and intervals with chat logs to evaluate the community development by conversational data. The users tended to send serious messages during long intervals, and the roles they played in the conversations changed as a sense of community emerged.

Young People’s Reactions Change Elderly People’s Generativity and Narratives: The Effects of Intergenerational Interaction on the Elderly

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the young listener’s reaction on the development of generativity and narratives of elderly people. Thirty-four males between the ages of 60 and 82 participated in this experiment in which the listener generations (young/elderly) and listener reactions (empathic/neutral) were controlled. The participants shared and taught their wisdom gained from their past experiences through narratives. Results showed that many elderly people spoke about “lessons from experiences of failure” when there was an empathic reaction from young people, and such narratives were promoted by an increase of generativity. These results suggested the impact of the younger people’s reaction on the elderly people’s psychological development and behavior.

Cultural Differences in Perceptions of Intragroup Conflict and Preferred Conflict-Management Behavior A Scenario Experiment

This study focused on cultural differences in perceived relationship and task conflict within groups and preferences for active and agreeable conflict-management behavior. Task conflict (low vs. high) and relationship conflict (low vs. high) were manipulated within subjects in a 2 × 2 × 2 (culture) mixed design. Japanese (n = 100) and American (n = 121) undergraduate students rated each scenario with respect to task conflict, relationship conflict, and preferred conflict-management behavior. Results showed that task and relationship conflict were mistaken for each other in both cultures; however, Americans misattributed strong task conflict to relationship conflict more than Japanese. Cultural differences in preferred conflict management also emerged. Japanese preferred active conflict management more than Americans in the strong (vs. weak) task conflict situation when relationship conflict was low (vs. high), whereas Americans preferred active conflict management more than Japanese when relationship conflict was high—regardless of task conflict. Finally, Americans preferred agreeable conflict-management behavior more than Japanese when both types of conflict were low.

Media and Sentiments in the Great East Japan Earthquake Related Tweets -- Social Media as "Meta Media"

Around the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, Twitter was put to use as an infrastructure to aid in obtaining information, functioning also as metamedia for sharing the flow of information from other media. The earthquake-related information included matters of questionable veracity, vicious rumors, and controversy, and evoked vigorous discussion and argument. In this study, we used tweet logs to analyze the emotions induced in the tweet contributors by the media, and thereby examine the psychological effects of the media on the contributors.

Intergenerational interaction between old and young in creative task

ABSTRACT By comparing intergenerational to same-generation interactions in creative activities, we aimed to reveal characteristic behaviors of older and younger adults in intergenerational interactions using a wooden block task. Four categories (“Proposal request”, “New proposal”, “Reactions to proposal”, “Assessments of partner’s behavior”) were extracted from conversations during task performance. In intergenerational groups, the ratio of utterances of “Proposal request” (encouraging a new proposal to partner) were higher than in same-generation groups for older adults. In intergenerational groups, older people assumed the role of encouraging younger people to suggest new ideas, and older people’s such empathic behaviors might provoke lively arguments.

Media Priming Effect: A Preregistered Replication Experiment

Iyengar et al. (1984, The Evening News and Presidential Evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(4): 778–87) discovered the media priming effect, positing that by drawing attention to certain issues while ignoring others, television news programs help define the standards by which presidents are evaluated. We conducted a direct replication of Experiment 1 by Iyengar et al. (1984, The Evening News and Presidential Evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(4): 778–87) with some changes. Specifically, we (a) collected data from Japanese undergraduates; (b) reduced the number of conditions to two; (c) used news coverage of the issue of relocating US bases in Okinawa as the treatment; (d) measured issue-specific evaluations of the Japanese Prime Minister in the pre-treatment questionnaire; and (e) performed statistical analyses that are more appropriate for testing heterogeneity in the treatment effect. We did not find statistically significant evidence of media priming. Overall, the results suggest that the effects of media priming may be quite sensitive either to the media environment or to differences in populations in which the effect has been examined.

Intergenerational interactions when transmitting wisdom from older to younger generations

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of young people’s reactions to changes in older people’s generativity when wisdom is transmitted to the younger people. Participants included 48 male adults aged 63–77 years. Each participant was assigned to either the condition of “wisdom from experiences of failure” or the “wisdom from experiences of success” condition. Participants expressed narratives to younger “listeners” or recipients, who were confederates and were instructed to respond either empathetically or neutrally. Results showed that only in the “wisdom from experiences of failure” condition, generativity was promoted when young recipients responded in an empathic manner. Generativity decreased when the young recipients responded in a neutral manner. Based on these results, the differential effects of responses from younger individuals to older persons’ transmission of stories about negative experiences are discussed.