Kakuko Miyata

The Wired — and Wireless — Japanese: Webphones, PCs and Social Networks

Once upon a time, not so long ago, people were rooted to their homes and workplaces by computers that were wired in place by electric and Internet cables. In those days, the magic book was called Wired magazine. Its vibrant pages told all that was avant-garde about the Internet and other forms of computer-mediated communication. Its name evoked how computer-mediated communication electronically connected people to the world. Then mobility came. First, portable computers – originally 11 kg backbreakers – shrank into portable notebooks weighing 2–4 kg. Software became standardized and the Internet globally available, so wherever people went they could connect with the network. Personal digital assistants, such as the Palm, became capable of accessing the Internet. However, the most widespread change was the birth of mobile phones, which became as common in people’s pockets and handbags as their keys. By the turn of the 21st century, mobile phones had become webphones (our term): capable of connecting to the internet to use the web and exchange e-mail and short text messages.1 Meanwhile, Wired magazine had become a ghost of itself, declining 29% from 240 pages in September 1996 to 170 pages in June 2004, with the editors noting ruefully that their 28

What Affects the Spiral of Silence and the Hard Core on Twitter? An Analysis of the Nuclear Power Issue in Japan:

We test the Spiral of Silence theory about Internet use in Japanese Internet society. We looked at Twitter and analyzed whether the Spiral of Silence theory would hold for it. Twitter’s speed and scope of information dissemination is fast and extremely wide ranging. For these reasons, Twitter is an appropriate field for analyzing the influences of the Internet on the formation of public opinion. By integrating social investigation and behavioral log analysis, we test a model that incorporates an individual’s attitudes (measured via a questionnaire) and an individual’s communication network structure and actual communication behavior (measured via behavior log analysis). The results from our analysis show a positive correlation between individuals’ perception that their opinion represents the majority view and the number of times they have spoken out. Moreover, while homogeneity of opinions of a personal network on Twitter influenced speaking out by a majority group, homogeneity of opinions does not influence speaking out by a minority group.

Association between Selective Exposure and Attitude on Twitter

In this study the analysis was carried out in order to find the condition under which the selective exposure occurs in Twitter. Specifically, the association between the selective exposure and the attitude was analyzed linking together the private activity log available on Twitter and the data obtainable through social research. As the result of analysis, it was found that the selective exposure tends to be strong to the retweetee, whereas the selective exposure tends to be weak to the followee and @tweetee. Furthermore, it became evident that the levels of the political participation, recognition on the importance of nuclear power plant, non-confidence in television news, anxiety, and the recognition of majority are associated with the strength of the individual selective exposure on Twitter.