UTS日本語授業の自由研究レポート：

既存メディアに影響したソーシャルメディア

- 序論

ティモシー・ジョン・バーナーズ＝リーは１９９０年にWold Wide Web (WWW)を考案し、ハイパーテキストシステムを実装・開発した人物である（ウィキペディア、2013）。 インターネットが普及する前はテレビや新聞やラジオのようなメディアからのみ最近のニュースや情報を得る事ができた。そしてインターネットが広がると同時に、情報を手に入れる方法も増加した。 その方法の一つはソーシャルメディアである。 現代社会では、人々は完全にインターネットに夢中になっている。

しかし、インターネットの開発とともにテレビやラジオや新聞などの既存メディアに対する興味が徐々に減少しており、若者層にFacebookやTwitterやブログのようなソーシャルメディアが流行っている。なぜなら、天気、スポーツ、ニュースなど、ありとあらゆる情報がインターネットでいつでも手に入れられるからである。その上ニュースサイトでは記事に対する自分の意見をコメントできるため、人々はこのような自分自身も意見を投稿できるウェブサイトを好むのではないだろうか。そのことを検証するためインタビューを行った。

本稿では、インタビューの結果によって得たデータを集め、他の研究者の記事を分析し私が予想する現象が起こっているかどうかを検証する。

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以下では、まず既存メディアとソーシャルメディアの定義を示し、インタビューや記事のデータによって現代の状況を説明する。次に情報源とその情報の信頼性を検討する。そして最後に今後、既存メディアとソーシャルメディアがどのように変化していくかを予想し述べる。

- 本論

自宅から出なくても友人と会話ができたり、写真や動画を共有できるアイディアはインターネットが普及し始めた時からとっても魅力的だった。そこでさらにソーシャルメディアというウェブサイトやソフトウェアが発明された。しかし、他者との関わり方や写真•動画の共有の仕方が変化したばかりではなく、情報が広がる速さ、またその情報をどのように受け取るかも変わってきている。既存メディアとソーシャルメディアのことをわかるため、まずはこの二つの定義を示さなければならない。

定義

既存メディアとはインターネットが発達した前のマスメディアの事である。このレポートではラジオや新聞やテレビを既存メディアとして取り上げている。

ソーシャルメディアは誰もが参加できる情報発信技術を用いて、社会的インタラクションを通じ広がっていくように設計されたメディアである(Kaplin 2009, 翻訳)。それはFacebook•Twitter•Tumblr•Reddit•2ちゃんねる•4chanのようなウェブサイトとブログなどのサービスを含んでいる。SMHやNYTやYahoo!NEWSには一般人は記事を投稿できないので、ソーシャルメディアに含まれないが、WordPressやBloggerで作ったブログや個人サイトはソーシャルメディアとして調査している。つまりソーシャルメディアとは人々が自分の意見や感想を投稿できる場所である。

japan.internet.comの記事によると、去年インプレス R&Dのインターネットメディア総合研究所はソーシャルメディアの利用動向調査を行い、その結果を示したものが以下のグラフである。

**グラフ１：**ソーシャルメディア人口推計値

このグラフによると、２００８年から２０１２年にかけてソーシャルメディア利用者が1.9千万人から約３倍の５千万人に増加している事がわかる。そのことから、人々はより多くの時間をラジオ•新聞•テレビではなくインターネットに費やすようになったのではないだろうか。これを証明するため４人の日本人にインタビューをし、さらに他の友人を対象にアンケートを行った。

インタビューの説明と結果

インタビューした日本人は、現在オーストラリアに留学し英語を勉強している２１歳の学生３人と、２８歳のUTS科学博士号である。

使用しているメディアやそのメディアに費やす時間、他人の意見の重要性や情報の信頼性、様々なメディアの違いについて質問をした。どのような情報を信頼するか、そして自分がネットでどのくらい能動的だと考えるかを知るため、「自分で投稿やコメントしますか。」と質問した。

インタビューの対象者は全員ソーシャルメディアで自分の意見を述べず、ネットでも論じないと回答した。Eさんは個人個人の意見を見るのが好きだと答えた。情報に対して様々な人の意見があるから、いろいろな意見を聞くことで自分の意見が変わることもあるというのが、４人の共通意見だった。このインタビューを通して、私はソーシャルメディアの方がもっと情報を集めやすく、もっと便利で社会的ではないかと考えた。しかしどの情報を信じるか、どの情報が正しいかはメディアの利用者が自分自身で調べなければならないと思う。

情報源と信頼性

信頼性についての質問の結果は様々であった。「日本のマスメディアは、まったくといっていいほど信頼できない」とKさんが言った。 このKさんの意見から、情報源によって信頼性も変わるという私の考えは強くなった。 WさんとNさんはソーシャルメディアの情報を全然信頼できなし、Yahooニュースのようなサイトしか読まないと述べた。ネットでデマが広がることがあるため、その２人と同じように考える人は多いと考える。例として、2011年の震災時にはコスモ石油の爆発により有害物質が雲などに付着し、雨などと一緒に降るするというデマがインターネットで広まった（ 吉次　2011）。

変化している社会 

事故や事件が発生した時だけではなく、日常的もメディアが人の生活に影響を与える。どんな国でもある程度、政府がマスメディアを操作しているのではないか。インタビューやアンケートによって、人々はこの政府による操作を理由にマスメディアに対する信頼を少しずつ失っていることが分かった。 さらに、佐藤（2011）によると、既存メディアを発信する大手テレビ局等は大都会に集中しているため、震災が地方で生じた場合、被災者への情報伝達が困難になり得る。事故や事件が起きた場合、情報が早く伝達することは非常に重要だと考える。 震災時、既存メディアに比べソーシャルメディアを利用した方が被災者はより早く情報を得る事ができた。ソーシャルメディアを使い情報は驚くべき速度で世界中に広まる。その上、忙しい毎日を過ごしているサラリーマンや学生はテレビのニュース番組に費やす時間がないため、自分に必要な情報を手に入れたい。そこで、インターネットやスマートフォンを使うと必要な情報を効率よく手に入れることができる。2011年の総務省の調査によると、１０代から６０代以上のどの年代でもパソコンを主に用いているものの、10代の半数近く、20代の約3分の1がソーシャルメディアを利用する際に携帯電話やPHS、スマートフォンを主に利用する等、若者の間でモバイル端末でのソーシャルメディア利用が一般化している。

 

**グラフ２：**ソーシャルメディア利用に主に用いる端末（年代別）

従って、簡単に最新の情報にアクセスできるので、インターネットが利用可能な携帯電話やスマートフォンはテレビやラジオや新聞よりずっと便利で現代若者にとってずっと魅力的なのではないか。

結び

最後に、私を含めインタビューしたWさんとNさんとKさんは既存メディアが完全に無くなってもあまり困らないと考えている。一方で、コンピューターとスマートフォンの使い方を知らない高齢者にとって既存メディアのない生活は不便であるとEさんは答えた。でも、現在の世界の状況や研究の結果をみたら、ソーシャルメディアが主な情報源だということは明確である。

- 結論

本稿では、ソーシャルメディアと既存メディアの定義を示し、ソーシャルメディアの利用動向のグラフを使って、ソーシャルメディアの人気を明確にした。４人の日本人のインタビューを行ったがデータが不十分だったため、アンケートを作成し友人に回答してもらった。集めたデータをまとめたら様々なことが分かった。まず、既存メディアとソーシャルメディアの信頼性は人によって異なるということだ。日本のマスメディアは全く信用できないという人もいれば、情報源によってその信頼性は異なると考える人もいた。また、ネット上であまり投稿やコメントはしないが、テレビ•新聞•ラジオよりネット掲示板やソーシャルネットワークを使う人が多いことや、若者層に比べ既存メディアが主に使われている世代があるということにも気づいた。

これからソーシャルメディアはさらに人々の情報伝達の主流となっていくのか、既存メディアの利用者はどのように変化するのか、スマートフォンやiPadなどのインターネットの便利さが新聞のような既存メディアを衰退させるのか。そのような点について今後我々は考えるべきだと思う。

- 参考文献

• ウィキペディア　2013　「World Wide Web」　＜http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web＞ 2013.05.25
• Kaplan, A.M. & Haenlein, M  2010, ‘Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media’  Business Horizons, Vol. 53, Issue 1, pp. 59-68.
• japan.internet.com　2012　「日本の SNS 人口、前年比143％ — 「Facebook」約3倍、「mixi」微減」　＜http://japan.internet.com/wmnews/20120615/7.html＞ 2013.05.25
• かさこ　2012　「Yahoo!ニュース個人の意義～震災で明らかになった既存メディアの限界」　＜http://blogos.com/article/47433/＞ 2013.05.27
• 吉次　由美　2011　「東日本大震災に見る大災害時のソーシャルメディアの役割」＜http://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/summary/research/domestic/133.html＞ 2013.05.29
• 佐藤　和文　2011　「多メディア時代の震災報道」　＜http://blog.kahoku.co.jp/web/archives/2011/10/post_299.html＞
• 総務省　2011　「ソーシャルメディアの可能性と課題」＜http://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/whitepaper/ja/h23/html/nc232310.html＞

Kickstarter, kickstarter, kickstarter… This service is changing they way the world works - games, movies, tech and now even anime is using Kickstarter to gather funds for creating their projects. This time around we have Studio Trigger who brought us Inferno Cop and Little Witch Academia and coming out with Kill la Kill in Fall has decided to use kickstarter as a platform to aquire funds for creating a sequel to Little Witch Academia.

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The original Little Witch Academia (LWA) was creating during the Young Animators Training Project 2013 where basically the japanese governments funds the creation of anime. This new studio has staff from the original Gainax who worked on Gurren Lagann and _Panty & Stocking* so naturally the whole western community is super hyped.

/a/

Their initial goal was to raise 150,000$ and they gave us 30 days to do this. Well in the first minutes of the kickstarter page going live a thread on both 4chans /a/ and reddits r/anime appeared with a discussion of this event. I backed this project when it had around 30,000$ already, so 1/5 of the way. At that time I already thought that this is going very fast, but what happened in the next 3 hours completely blew my mind. Not only did the project get funded in less than 5 hours after it was put up, but the thread on /a/ reached over 6k posts with the last 1k being something along these lines: ” today is the day /a/ saved anime”, “project funded, good job /a/nons”, etc. From the post you could see that some people backed from 50$ to the maximum 10,000$ (which is craaaaazy if you ask me, but I gave my 100 to support based Trigger). Of course the producers were not expecting the project to be funded in 5 hours and now they are thinking of stretch goals.

Later on there were even discussions on how Japanese otaku don’t like this system and don’t like how local studios are seeking help from gaijin (foreigners). Also as it seems they didn’t like the anime as much as the western audience did (which is strange as we love this show).

Oh you can also view the episode here on YouTube, but they said they will take it down at some point:

So what do I think about this? 

There are 2 things that can come from this: they succeed and set an example for the industry or they succeed here but fail on everything else. What do I mean by that, well…

- They will succeed with this project no dobt, hell they are already sitting at 300,000$, which is double what they wanted.

- The anime industry in Japan might start to recognise westerners as a potential new audience for their works and they might even change the way they think before releasing a new anime, like actually considering us western otaku. If this happens, it will be a serious game changer, because all non japanese otaku combined I think have more people then just japanese otaku. And if all these people can legitemetely get their hands on the shows they love and if these shows are reasonably priced (in comparison to the countries economy) then the studios could make more money then if they concentrate on Japan alone. What else could happen is that the prices on anime could fall in Japan and increase overseas, potentialy leveling them equal.

- On the other hand though everything could go horibly wrong. What I mean is that japanese otaku tend to bycot shows or even studios if they cater for foreigners, especially koreans. There have been cases like this before. In this case even if LAW2 is a success because of kickstarter and crowdfunding, japanese otaku might just boycot Kill la Kill when it comes out thus making Trigger lose money and potentially disband. (it will be time for /a/ to save anime again).

But right now its just a guessing game as to what happenes next. Lest wait and see. This could eiher be the day/month when gaijins proved that they care about anime and that their voices and opinions should be heard, or the time when japanese otaku destroy a briliant studio because they are racist.

Dash IT! from Alexandr Tanana on Vimeo.

For lunch today my parents took me to Lido. Lido is a restaurant and a small amusement center located 10 minutes away from the center of Riga. Not only does it look like a building from the countryside of Latvia, but the food there is also traditional and specific to the more rural regions of Latvia. And of course it is extremely delicious!

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The atmosphere both outside and inside is very calm and beautiful. Plus since the song and dance festival of Latvia is happening right now, everything has more traditional themes then usual. And there was a group from the city Rezekne who was singing some folk songs and tunes, here is a video:

Album with photos (scroll half way):

ラトビアと言えばやっぱりユールマラだな〜  Ja tu gribi kaut kur atpūsties tad brauc uz jūru, uz Jūrmalu! Солнце, пляж - отдыхай, плавай, загорай.

Jūrmala is a small city on the coast line 20km away from the capital Rīga. Its like Goal Coast in a way, nice beaches, lots of people and a lot of attractions. I went there with my family and our family friends just for a stroll and to spend the nice day outside at the beach.

Here are some pics on my

When I arrived back home and set foot in my house again after 3 years of being abroad, I could not help but notice the 12 year old TV in our living room. It was a Sony Trinitron and looked something like this, I dont have a picture of ours and we already gave it away. とにかく、it was old and outdated, a serious upgrade was required. Thankfully my dad was on my side on this one and so we set out to buy a new TV, yay!

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One of our (Latvias) main electronic companies, Elkor, had a sale on Samsung TVs, so naturally thats where we went. At first we were contemplating on getting a 50” model, but after some measuring it was evident that a TV of that size simply wont fit in between our cupboards and wardrobe.

So we decided on looking at various 46” models instead. The one that caught my dads eye was the F8500 series TV. The reason was that instead of the 1700Ls price ($3400) there was a 600Ls discount and thus it was only 1100Ls ($2200). Can you imagine that?! A $1200 discount on a TV which was made in Q2 of this year!

Aside from the very alluring price tag, the design on this model is something you would expect Apple to make. Brushed aluminum, beautiful curves, elegant design. I was sold just by that. The UI of the OS is still Samsung, but I can live with that.

This baby has everything you would want and more. Smart TV, Internet connection via Wifi or cable, 3D, even a Siri-like voice command interface and a Kinect-like gesture control system. The last 2 though don’t work perfectly, but hey they are not the main selling point of this TV, so I don’t care.

The image is beautiful. When watching 1080p shows, YouTube videos or anime it is just breathtaking. The colors are so pretty and everything looks like its in 3D even without the glasses.

Three times I tried launching .mkv files through a USB and the TV crashed on me every single one. But playing anything from my MacBook Air via an HDMI cable works so I am happy.

Here is a link to a review of the TV when it was announced and the video of announcement itself.

2013 summer season of anime has officially started today with a marvelous new show by Kyoto Animation: Free!

Here is a list of what I am looking forward to and picking up, not guaranteeing that I wont drop some though:

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1. Free! - Hot guys swimming. Need I say more? ah yes: made by KyoAni. next
2. _Danganronpa* -  Survival game, based of a video game, sound cool, my fellow club members are saying it will be good, so might as well
3. Monogatari Season 2 - Based Shaft, most anticipated series of this season. Lets see if shaft can make it as good or even better than Bake 1
4. Genshiken Nidaime - Currently watching Genshiken 1 and 2, loving the series and the characters, definitely looking forward to this. Its an anime about an anime club, how can I not watch it.
5. The World God Only Knows III - An anime about a video game god conquering girls season 3, yea of course. I read most of the manga so looking forward to seeing how they anime this arc.
6. Blood Lad - people say its gonna be good, so why not. Vampires.
7. Watamote! - as mentioned here, I AM SO HYPED FOR THIS.
8. Gin no Saji - a guy goes to the countryside to study farming… Not that intriguing right? Made by the same guy who made FullMetal Alchemist.
9. _Kimi no Iru Machi_ - great manga, good OVAs. Expecting the anime adaptation to be good as well. Love story with drama.

Oh wow I am planing to watch 9 thing this season. Where will I find the time O.o

 Click on image for website with the chart.

This afternoon (night in Sydney) my friends were complaining about another change in their daily life. This time it was the CityRail website. According to Wikipedia: “CityRail ceased trading on 30 June 2013 and was replaced by Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink.” Which of course means that the website had to be redesigned as well with the new company logo and new colors. I personally don’t mid the new orange color scheme , they only changed the color itself but not the gradient. I wish they would get rid of that 3Dish look of the buttons and headers of the timetables and trip planer. But oh well I can’t really complain.

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People don’t like change, it doesn’t really matter if the change is to the best or worst, but its done, get used to it. In this case, they didn’t change the functionality, they only changed the color scheme and the logo, so really its not that big of a deal.

Also what my good friend Cindy said on twitter: “It’s the reason why they had to do trackwork - website revamps”. If this is true, god bless Australia.

After my crazy flight yesterday I am home, finally, after 3 years, I am home. Riga has barely changed in these past 3 year that I have been away. Some improvements here and there, we got new trams! (pics on Flickr, and link at the end of the post). There are so many things I have missed, like our beautiful and quiet parks, our gorgeous Art Nouveau style architecture, our clean fresh sea air, our delicious european food (+ potatoes) and of course our blazingly fast and reliable internet.

My main purpose was to get a new passport as this one is about to expire in November, and of course to see my parents. But just after one day of being back I feel like I have never left. There are so many things that are dear to me here, so many memories, so many feels. I will be back in Riga for another month, I will keep posting some stuff out what is happening here and what I am up to and of course continue my regular posts about tech and anime (especially with the new season starting next week).

link to photo album:

(That is not my plane)

It was a good plan, a simple plan, nothing crazy… But it turned into soooo much more because of one small mistake, one small slip up… I am talking about my trip back to Latvia. The original plan was to fly from Sydney to Singapore, spend 1 night and most of the day there with my good friend Wilmer then catch a flight from Singapore to Helsinki the next day, lastly connecting to a flight from Helsinki to Riga. Well the Qantas check in people at  Sydney International Airport had a different plan for me…

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Prequel

The whole reason I am heading home instead of my usual 1 month trip to Japan over the holidays is because my passport is due to expire in November (4 months away). And since Australia does not have a Latvian embassy, so I pretty much had no choice but to go home. That was fine, I can see my family and the leftovers of my high school friends that are still there.

The first problem came to be when our tour agent accidentally booked my tickets from Singapore to Helsinki on a wrong date, so instead of spending 3 hours in transit in Singapore I had to spend 27. Bummer… Well I came up with this great plan that Wilmer would pick me up and I would just hang out with him for the day. No problem right? Latvian citizens don’t need a visa to singapore if staying under 90 days, so I thought I was all set. Thats what the plan was, up until yesterday when I went to check in.

26th of June, 11:30am

My flight was at 1:05pm so I arrived two and a half hours early. The lady at Qantas check in informed me that I will not be able to disembark into Singapore as my passport is only valid for 4 months, but the law requires a foreign passport to be valid for at least 6 to enter the country/city. That was the first blow. Then she (and 2 of her colleagues who she called for assistance) told me that I am not allowed to spend more than 24 hours in airport transit as it breaks some other rule… So they said that I have no choice but to change my flight. I went to the Qantas ticket stand, explained my situation and asked if there is a possibility to get on tomorrows flight. And the answer was… NO. All booked all full, they cant help me. This is when I started to lose it, I called Finnair (the other airlines which I am flying with) office in Sydney to ask them to change my ticket from Sing to Helsinki from the 27th at 11:30pm to the 26th at the same time. And of course they couldn’t do that. So I woke up my mom and asked her for help, she tried getting hold of our travel agent, but that didnt work (obviously it was 4am in Latvia at the time).

The moment I found out I cant disembark in Singapore, I called Wilmer to inform him of the situation. He was amazing! He kept me calm and helped me find other routes with other airlines that would get me to singapore before 11:30pm on the 27th. A huge thanks for all the help and I am sorry I couldn’t meet you in Singapore.

I was already ready to give up and go home, but I had 1 last chance. It was 12:05 already, so 1 hour left to my flight from Sydney. I went up to the Qantas check-in counter again, and there was a different lady. I explained to her the whole thing and she said she will help me get around this and get me to Singapore today. WOW! She tried her best but then another problem arose… Apparently the flight I was supposed to take was already full cause I had a very late boarding. (Well its not my fault your other staff told me I couldn’t take this flight!). She called a manager who offered me to go to Singapore with British Airways at 3pm instead. At this point I was happy to accept anything, as long as I can leave Sydney and get to Singapore in one piece. They somehow managed to check-in my baggage (though I doubt it will reach Riga, will write an update when home) but I had a boarding ticket to Singapore! YES! The nice lady from Qantas also gave me a $30 food voucher to have lunch, because I had to change my flight.

So at this point I was frantically calling Wilmer and my Mom and telling them what is happening. After finally getting my boarding pass we (me and mom) decided that we will change my flight from Singapore to Helsinki from the 27th night to the 26th once the travel agent opens up at 8am. While I was on the plane, my parents did just that!

Singapore (26th 9:40pm)

8 hours later I am in the most beautiful airport I have ever seen, Singapore. My parents changed my tickets so I had to board the 11:30pm flight to Helsinki today (26th), meaning I had less than 2 hours to re-checkin and tell them to find my luggage. Well lets hope they did.

The 12 hour flight to Helsinki was good, I slept for 8 hours so I feel kinda ok. They also served strawberry Meiji yoghurt for breakfast!!! That made me really happy.

Helsinki (27th 6am local time)

So now I am sitting here in Helsinki airport, waiting for another hour for my flight to Riga when this crazy journey will end. I feel fine and I am relieved that I this whole situation managed to sort itself out without any extra costs.

Riga (27th 1pm)

I am now home, safe and sound, eating all the delicious food my mother made for me.