ISSN1882-9171

Journal of Socio-Informatics
Vol.6, No.1 Sep. 2013［Special Article］

2012 the Society of Socio-Informatics, SSI, Annual Conference, Keynote
Symposium
Socio-Informatics and the World :Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)
Tohoku University Toshiyuki MASAMURA
Waseda University Mamoru ITO
Nagoya University Masaru YONEYAMA
Gakushuin University Kaoru ENDO
Gunma University Kenichi ITO
The University of Tokyo Hideyuki TANAKA
Socio-Informatics and the World :Toward New Sharing and Creation (Empirical Session)
Institute of Information Security Takeshi HIROMATSU
The University of Electro-Communications Toshizumi OHTAThe University of Tokyo Yoshiaki HASHIMOTO
Mitsubishi Research Institute Fumihiro MURAKAMI
Gunma University Atsushi IWAI
Gunma University Yoshinori TOMIYAMA［Refereed Research Notes］

Development of Public Relations Concepts, Theories and the Media
Technology
Tomoki KUNIEDAThe Society of Socio-Informatics

Journal of Socio-Informatics
Vol., No.Sep. 

◆CONTENTS◆［Special Articles］
 the Society of Socio-Informatics, SSI, Annual Conference, Keynote Symposium
Socio-Informatics and the World :Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

Tohoku University Toshiyuki MASAMURA
Waseda University Mamoru ITO
Nagoya University Masaru YONEYAMA
Gakushuin University Kaoru ENDO
Gunma University Kenichi ITO
The University of Tokyo Hideyuki TANAKA…

Socio-Informatics and the World :Toward New Sharing and Creation (Empirical Session)

Institute of Information Security Takeshi HIROMATSU
The University of Electro-Communications Toshizumi OHTAThe University of Tokyo Yoshiaki HASHIMOTO
Mitsubishi Research Institute Fumihiro MURAKAMI
Gunma University Atsushi IWAI
Gunma University Yoshinori TOMIYAMA…

［Refereed Research Notes］
Development of Public Relations Concepts, Theories and the Media Technology

Tomoki KUNIEDA … Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.   the Society of Socio-Informatics, SSI, Annual Conference, Keynote
Symposium

Socio-Informatics and the World:
Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)Toshiyuki MASAMURA, Tohoku University
Mamoru ITO, Waseda University
Masaru YONEYAMA, Nagoya University
Kaoru ENDO, Gakushuin University
Kenichi ITO, Gunma University
Hideyuki TANAKA, The University of Tokyo

Masamura: Let us now begin with the keynote
symposium.

The second issue is how we analyze todays

This symposium is the first for The Society ofSocial Informatics.

ical perspectives of Social Informatics, I think.

There are two symposiums

society as an information society based on thattheoretical framework.

It has been over ten

being conducted with the same theme, namely

years since the establishment of the two societ-

Social Informatics and the world: Toward newies ― the Japan Association for Social Informat-

ways of sharing and creation.

ics (JASI) and The Japan Society for Socio-

This is the the-oretical section of the symposium, and its pur-Information Studies (JSIS) ― which were thepose is to discuss how Social Informatics shouldparent organizations of this society.

be viewed theoretically.

this time, information technology has dramati-

DuringIn terms of these theoretical aspects, I thinkcally advanced, and informatization has had

there are three issues in Social Informatics.

a remarkable impact in terms of its spread and

The first issue is the type of theoretical frame-depth. The way in which we view this kind ofwork to be constructed as a basic theory of So-

information society is the basic issue for this so-cial Informatics.

ciety.

The key issue here is howinformation or media, which are the core

The third issue is how Social Informatics willconcepts for Social Informatics, should be de-address the various issues of todays society.

fined.

Prof. Hiromatsu took up the issue of the Great

This is not merely an issue of terms, but

an important issue that will establish the analyt-East Japan Earthquake yesterday.

The issue ofSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

the earthquake, especially the nuclear accident,

Gakushuin University.

Prof. Endo has also

is something that we who study Social Informat-

studied various issues pertaining to todays so-

ics also cannot ignore. This is because al-ciety from a social theory basis, with a specificthough the advancement of science and tech-focus on electronic media.

nology has been positively evaluated as a factor

todays presentation, she will publish a booksupporting the development of society, it be-entitled Ï#Ô%)%$
Þ%#$%
'X* Þ 

came obvious through the accident that science? Þ 
 
#I
ćy
*
Ï#
ē!*X%N#mN-and technology involve great risks, and as such,

I *O*yĩt.

sometimes pose a danger to todays society.

In relation to

Finally, the fourth presenter is Prof. Kenichi

We deal with information technology, and I

Ito of Gunma University.

think it is necessary to properly consider thethe theory of Habermas, who is well known inrisks brought about by technology as well as theSocial Informatics.

relationship between technology and society.

cuss the public sphere.

There are many other issues, but it is also a task

has recently published a book entitled īI)-

imposed on Social Informatics to solve variousy)%
*
*%
?ľ%$#*  y
ī*N*O*yĩt.

Prof. Ito has studied

Today, he is going to disIn addition, Prof. Ito

These are the professors who are going to talksocietal issues.

today.

Let me introduce the professors who will takethe podium today.

ty of Tokyo will be the commentator.

The first presenter is Prof.

Mamoru Ito of Waseda University.

Prof. Hideyuki Tanaka of the Universi-

has studied various issues related to todays so-

economics.

ciety with a focus on mass media from a social

spective of an empirical researcher.

theory standpoint.

Prof.

Tanaka specializes in network or information

Prof. Ito

He recently wrote a bookHe will comment from the per-Now, let us proceed with the presentations.

entitled  !#$%
')*
*
/*%
%#-

Prof. Mamoru Ito, please begin.

# *)
?@*
$
#I%NONNX #
!*#X* #Om$* st.

Ito: I am Ito from Waseda University.

The second presenter is Prof. Masaru Yoneyama of Nagoya University.

Prof. Yoneya-ma specializes in philosophy.

Today, I would like to give a lecture which
speaks to the question of what is information?

He has studied

Speaking for myself, I have spent my life

Leibniz, a famous figure from the seventeenth

working primarily in the field of media and cul-

century.

tural studies.

He recently wrote books entitled

My mainstays have been empiri-'*I*y)% *
$*
?$N$* *#N$t andcal analyses of representations in media texts,'*I*y)%* )
?/mO*! #* *#N$t.

its processes and its relation to social move-

Some of you may wonder why we should study

ments.

Leibniz now: Leibnizs philosophy is the origin

in defining what information is.

of informatics.

However, I have had enduring interest

What is information?

I think that it is meaningful to

There have been

have Prof. Yoneyama discuss Social Informatics

many a predecessors who have provided in-from the perspective of philosophy.

valuable definitions of Ŕinformationŕ.

The third presenter is Prof. Kaoru Endo of

Seekingan answer to this question must necessarily beJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  a recursive process, as it serves as the basis ofcommunicating itself meant that within the fieldacademic activity, providing the raison dêtreof information science and technology, elimina-

for the existence of informatics and socio-tion of Ŕnoiseŕ in order to achieve accurate

informatics.

transmission came to figure centrally in concep-

Moreover, this question is inti-

mately related to the issue of how we may seri-

tualizing information.

ously engage in the analysis of information phe-that such conception of information prefiguresnomena that are burgeoning in various forms

a modern subject.

even as we speak.

actively conscious subject.

It is with this in mind that I

would like to proceed with my lecture.

That is to say, it requires anThus, the concept

of information is founded on a modernist think-

In short, today, I have no intention of statingŔInformation is such and suchŕ at all.

However, we may say

ing which presumes the modern subject with

It isconscious intention.

more important to contemplate matters from

Tamito Yoshida was one of the most rigorous

multifaceted perspectives, where information

thinkers to have conceptualized information

serves is the foci.

from the modernist perspective.

So rather than define infor-

His work is somation, I would like to use information as a cor-well-known that we need not dwell on rehash-ner stone from which to begin our discussion.

ing his work in detail here.

Suffice it to saythat Yoshida concept of information as transfor-

Now, let us recognize that we have encountered several significant definitions of informa-mation and expression of pattern was supreme-tion thus far.

ly simple.

The presiding chair of the ses-That is to say, a pattern is trans-sion, Toshiyuki Masamura, as well as Tamito

formed, expressed and then accurately trans-

Yoshida included, many academics have pro-mitted to the next pattern by a subject who canvided invaluable prescriptions on information.

accurately recognize it as such.

Given such preceding conceptualizations of in-

Needless to say, the contributions made with-formation, I am of the opinion that a more en-in this modernist framework are vitally signifi-

compassing conceptualization of information iscant.

desirable, and is indeed crucial to invigorate ac-tion vis-a-vis resources and information-filled

ademic discussions.

space, thus defining a resources-information

Yoshida situated his concept of informa-So, how may we think about information?

space processing paradigm. This model posits

Initially, information as a concept was inserted

a resources-filled space on the one hand, andwithin inquiries into what it informs or commu-

on the other, there is an information-fillednicates.

space. By measuring changes in the resources-

Considered to relay knowledge orfacts about its natural or material objects, infor-

filled space, observable data is begot.

mation was characterized as that which informs

cognitive information.

or communicates knowledge or its objects.

tive information, evaluative information which

That is to say, conceptions of information wereassesses data can then be yielded.

founded within a basic framework of thoughtpremised on this evaluative information, com-that privileged cognition and intellectualism.

mand information is achieved, enabling

Emphasis being put on the act of informing orThis isPremised on this cogniFinally,

resources-filled space to be processed.



IfSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

resources-filled space is reorganized, thisthat as an extension of this information systemchanges what is observed and thus changes

is a social information process which we might

cognitive information.

call a human-machine system.

This feedback loop

The nuclear accident was a wakeup call to in-which connects resources-filled space andinformation-filled space is the characteristic ofvestigate this issue.

Enormous budget was ex-

resources-information space processing para-pended on creating the resources-information

digm.

space processing system which we call SPEEDI,
but this time, it did not function well.

The information in circulation in this model

Many ofneed be noise-free and accurately relayed fromus here are well-aware of this.

input to output.

The information involved in

failure, the monitoring system in the disaster-cognition and recognition serves as the basis ofstricken areas of Fukushima did not operate as

the information model here, and it is obviously

it should have.

important to consider information from this per-numerical value to the radiation that was being

spective.

released and was actually simulating outcomes

For instance, Masamura just now addressed

Due to a power

It did, however, configure aof the disaster. This we came to know of after

the issue of scientific technology and informa-

the fact.

tion technology, and SPEEDI system in refer-

However, for a significant period of time, theence to the nuclear accident can typically besimulated outcomes of the accident based on

situated within the resources-information space

configured radiation amount were not publicly

processing paradigm.

released.

It is a system compris-

The rationale for this, as we all

ing a monitoring system that measures and re-know, is that because the data was based on acords radiation, and a simulation system based

theoretically configured radiation amount thaton predicted wind direction and weather shifts,

was seen as equivocal, it was deemed inaccu-

which amalgamates the information into anrate and thus not worth an official public re-evaluation and produces command informationlease.

in order to aid in the evacuation of residents.

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science

This kind of information system of which

This was the initial judgment of theand Technology (MEXT), but then, it was later

SPEEDI is one example is very invaluable in or-

released.

der to find a solution to e.g., an environmental

such that the geographical names in the dataor resource problem caused by a complex web

were concealed.

of factors.

It is the imperative of socio-

local residents and local government authori-

informatics to contribute toward societys needs

ties came to know of the existence of such infor-by constructing and appropriately evaluating

mation that they came be able to access the da-such information systems.

ta.

However, the data was released
It was only much later when

However, it is also important to recognize

What I am trying to point out here is that anthat on another level, there were other issues

information processing system which seems tosurrounding SPEEDI that socio-informatics

be an exclusively machine system does not re-must now raise.

main so, because the information it yields must,

That is to say, let us recognizeŤJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  in the final instance, pass through a human-machine system, this system of interface be-machine system where human decision is in-tween human beings and machinery, is the bat-

volved in the information process. Distinct

tleground = research field of socio- informatics

from the mechanical function that the system

which calls for synergistic cooperation between

serves, human intervention gives rise to various

the humanities and sciences.
Having recognized this as such, my lecture is

distortion, bias and problems.
Intervention by humans or other organism

an argument to proceed toward a more encom-

gives rise to the generation of new informationpassing conceptualization of information.

which may or may not be accurate; it may also

So, let us return to the first query that was

create a situation where needed information isposed and consider what is conveyed throughnot transmitted, or only select pieces of infor-

information. Put plainly, I would like to ex-mation are passed on.

Such was the focus oftend the argument that just like knowledge or

Nishigaki Toorus discussion which grappled

objects of knowledge, aspiration, will and affec-

with this particular characteristic of social infor-

tion, which could not be fully apprehended

mation.

within a framework of intellectualism, can also

I would like to revisit another illustrative incident.

be conveyed.

Aspiration, will and affection do

not take on apparent Ŕformsŕ.

Nihon Housou Kyoukai (NHK) changed

It may thus be that my argument is not so

the manner in which they provided tsunami information after they came to recognize theirnew.

shortcomings after the recent state of affairs.

dents do not just receive the meaning content

Previously, whenever they would broadcast in-or knowledge of the lecturers words.

formation regarding when and where a tsunami

so apperceive the level of aspiration, power andhad hit, they would include specific informationenergy through taking in whether or not Ŕthis

as to whether the first wave was Ŕ-centimetersŕ

teacher is sincere/insincereŕ or Ŕthis teacheror Ŕū-centimersŕ.

has enthusiasmŕ or Ŕis cutting cornersŕ.

However, this, they real-

For instance, when I am lecturing, stuThey al-Thatized, led to the residents experiencing a false

is to say, aspiration, power or energy is being

sense of safety which discouraged them fromtransmitted.

taking evacuation measures. NHK thus took

It is likely that we perceive such matters as

the decision to change the style of their initial

we lead our everyday lives.

reporting.

They saw that providing the infor-should not neglect to see that besides humanmation that the first wave was Ŕ-centimersŕ

vigor and sincerity, there also exist the emo-

could, in a sense, be a mis-communication, andtions of pleasure and displeasure.

that how a piece of information is interpreted

haps be that our full sensations are receptive toby each and every resident and determines

pain and delight.

their course of action need be taken into con-ural, obvious point, but have researchers spe-sideration.

cializing in information or information phenom-

It may be said that the sphere of information

Moreover, we

It may per-This seems to be such a nat-ena not neglected to address this issue?

processing system which sees it as a human-

Is it

not necessary to fully engage with these aspectsūSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

tion, taking into account that which remains in

more?
Just now, I indulged in giving a somewhat
scrappy example through my discussion of thethe sphere of Ŕthe virtual of thingsŕ is extremely
important.

student-lecturer relationship, so I ought to per-In terms of thinking about todays media en-haps invoke the words of a th century literati,

vironment, it intimately informs how we can

Hugo von Hofmannsthal, for more sustenance.

theorize collective behavior mediated throughHe speaks of Ŕa feeling of infinite ecstasy thatinternet today or such social phenomena thatwords cannot conveyŕ or Ŕthat which do not

we might regard as a form of collective erup-

take certain formsŕ.

tion.

What these wordings lit-

erally refer to is information and what may becalled information phenomena.

Finally, I would like to suggest that by broadening our conception of information in thisNow, the philosopher who most drew atten-

manner, information theory which is fully en-tion to the non-cognitive nature of information

gaged with the virtual of things and affection

was whom Masamura just introduced as thecan play a decisive role in constituting thefoundation of informatics, Gottfried Wilhelm

shape of future society which need deeply wres-

Leibniz.

tle with the future shape that an advanced in-In I
Ï* X*O*yĩ ( Ɨ Ť) we see him

make a concerted effort to think through thisproblem, the problem of affection.

formation society will take.

I cannot stressenough the importance of wresting the concept

Simultaneously, when we begin to considerof information away from the confines of cogni-

information which takes into account aspiration

tive or intellectualistic perspective, that is toand affectivity, another plane which we mustsay, from a perspective which privileges the val-consider is the realm of Ŕthe virtual of thingsŕ.

ues of efficiency and convenience, because

When we receive information, a framework

while these values may be necessary for ourof intellectualism premised on a conscious sub-survival, surely it is not sufficient, and thus theject, a modern subject equipped with conscious

concept of information must be released into

intentionality, has long neglected to address theanother theoretical space.

plane which is Ŕas yet not fully made consciousŕ.

In considering how the field of socio-

It has neglected to recognize the im-

informatics will develop henceforth, there areportance of examining information phenomena

two pressing issues that must be addressed, thewhich has already given rise to and generated

first being how to promote technological ad-affectivity and has already been accepted byvancements in the mechanical information pro-the body, even while it as yet remains to fully

cessing system, and the second being how to

be made conscious.

measure social maturity of human-information

Yamauchi Shirou, whose

field is in Medieval Philosophy, expressed thisprocessing system.

plane as Ŕnot that which is recognized in revela-

stand the distinction between these two issues.

tion, but is recognized symphonically.ŕ I do

However, I am still of the belief that the firstwant to make the assertion today that when weand second issues should be considered rela-consider information processes and informa-

tively, and that the concept of information, orI believe myself to under-Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

the very abundance that the concept of infor-

time, scholarship has been whittled down inex-

mation can still offer to us must be the spring-orably to the pursuit of truth, and it is this wor-

board for further research.

rying imbalance in human endeavor that I take

I will end my dis-cussion on this final note.

as the departure point for my talk today.

Thank you for your attention.

Despite embodying value in itself, truth has
been deemed to bear no relationship to value

Masamura: Thank you very much Prof. Ito.

judgments, and at the same time discussions of

The concept of information we have so far may

good and evil have tended to be expunged fromhave been captured within the intellectuala great many disciplines and sciences.

framework premised on the modern subject.

beauty, it appears to be seen as almost com-

The new society of the future needs to be free ofpletely irrelevant today.

such an intellectual framework.

As for

For me, this isOnce, when I said, Im involved in aesthet-what this stimulating presentation pointed out.

ics now, one fellow academic even retorted,

Next, please begin your presentation Prof. Yo-

Oh dear, youre beyond the pale, then. De-

neyama.

spite this situation, it is precisely because issues
such as beauty have become so alien to so

Yoneyama: Hello, Im Masaru Yoneyama.

Themany scientific disciplines, and because I donttitle of my talk, What is Beauty to Informa-

want to see our discipline falling into the sametion? may not make much sense, but my sub-rut that, at this important juncture in time whentitle, namely Connecting Informatics to Cul-

the two socio-informatics societies in Japanture, sums up what I want to discuss today.

have united to create the Society of Socio-

Firstly, allow me to look at the word sympo-

Informatics, I have chosen to discuss the likes

sium, which is derived from the Greek wordof beauty in relation to information and infor-$ĩ!*$* , the drinking party favored by Pla-

matics.

to for his /O*y%$, so if we remain true to theSuch a statement will likely elicit the immedi-

original meaning, we should be discussing theate response that there are any number of ex-

subject of love as we sip wine.

amples of beauty being talked about in relation

It is actually inthat vein that I want to talk today.

to scholarship.

In fact,

People would say What about

what Im going to talk about is probably betterthe beauty of mathematics? and point to thesaid and listened to with the help of a drink orelegance of this or that theory. I am of course

two, but I hope youll bear with me despite be-

not totally unaware of such matters.

ing stone cold sober.

on entering college, I gained an appreciation,

After all,From the time of ancient Greece onwards,

however limited, of the beauty of math when I

truth, goodness and beauty have tended to bejoined friends in the Department of Mathemat-

uttered in the same breath almost as an insepa-

ics in reading tomes on the subject, and myrable triad of values that are very closely tied tograduation thesis was in fact in the field of

all human endeavor, including scholarship.

mathematical economics.
However, I couldnt help feeling that the

However, it would appear that over the space ofƗSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

beauty of math had very little connection to thenote that the things I mentioned just now

real flesh and blood me and the life I was lead-brought on the second crisis in economics (theing.

I think, in fact, that my interest in mathfirst crisis being, of course, Marxs critique of

was perhaps spurred by a longing to get awayclassical economics), and ― this is the impor-from my messy real world existence and im-tant part ― this second crisis has been designat-

merse myself in the world of ideas.

ed by the likes of Joan Robinson and Hirofumi

I was ea-

Uzawa as the crisis of economists.

ger to escape reality.

whistle-blowing.

In a book that I wrote later, I described theThat  s

The issue here is how the

beauty of math as an exquisite, frozen beauty,way of life of people involved in a certain aca-

adding I dont want to snuggle up to that beau-

demic discipline relates to that discipline.

ty and freeze to death. I found the beautiful

There are even people who say that economists

truth of math to be immensely abstract and re-are immoral.

moved from the outcries of raw humanity.

says that such people are dead right. I feel

And I also felt it to be totally ineffective as a toolthat informatics specialists must avoid becom-

to counter wrongdoing.

ing like that.

This might be a good point in time to recall

And theres a part of me too that

Surely we have learned fromǩǪƗs Blackthe very human agonies of Pascal, who was an

Monday, which was brought about by a field ofoutstanding mathematician.

Though I dont

information processing theory known as finan-

bear comparison with the likes of Pascal, thecial engineering, and from subsequent events

agonies that I myself went through when I was

related to the global economy ― and also fromstudying theoretical economics as an under-/

graduate were of a similar nature.

ing it can be to blab constantly about the won-

There waswhere Japan is concerned ― how mislead-of course a certain elegance to the general equi-ders of the Information Age.

librium theory solutions presented by my pro-are involved in the field ourselves need to re-fessor, but I couldnt help feeling, excruciating-think the way we live.

ly, that something was being lost or maybe hid-

goodness and beauty in the name of truth,den behind all that elegance.

shouldnt we be taking a fresh look at truth inSomething, for example, like what is lost

Surely we who

Rather than excluding

the light of beauty and goodness?

when you define man as Homo N* *N%$, orSo, how can we do that?

Well, if our stancethe feelings of a scholar trying to defend hisis that our research concerns only the truth,

particular discipline, or the exclusion of value

and that goodness and beauty are irrelevant,judgments, rejection of interpersonal utility

then I think we need to ask ourselves, Arentcomparisons, or acatalepsy ― the impossibility

you ashamed of such an attitude? But whatof comprehending the feelings of others, or so-

can we do in more concrete terms?

called market fundamentalism ― the primacythat what Id do is pose the question How doesof markets and individuals.

scholarship move people? This leads on to an-Things like this,although they all overlap in parts.

I thinkother question, namely Can the truth really

And thats why I think that its important tomove people? and then straight on to anotherǪJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

about what exactly could be regarded as the ex-tion.

emplar of truth.

stand jokes and such like unless you have their

Ordinarily, you might think that the answer tothat last question is fairly obvious.

You cant expect an audience to under-

cooperation, and without such cooperation, no

If youre a

information of any kind can be communicated.

young student eagerly searching for the truth,Its precisely because information can stimulate

you would probably respond with objective

action that it is information.

truth, the kind of truth that, in all fields except

doesnt prompt action because it is the truth.

math, you arrive at by establishing proof.

But

It is precisely because people choose to recog-

we no longer live in such a happy-go-lucky era.

nize certain information as the truth that they

Most fields of philosophy of science have aban-

are moved to take action.

doned the concept of reality.

It certainly

Cognitive theory

To give an example of how this can work in a

too has abandoned its traditional normative

negative way, self-fulfillment of a prophecy isand critical approach to science, and eventhe same kind of thing.

while taking a positivist approach, people feelexamples of actions that people take that can-that truth is clearly something that can no lon-

not in any way be regarded as rational deci-

ger be discussed and doubt is being cast on thesions.

ideal of objectivity.

cial panics is an example in the area of econom-

Holding the idea of objectivity up as a golden

Professor Masamuras analysis of finan-

ic rationality.

rule forces us to think of beauty or love as mere

There are countless

Theres very little you can doonce people get taken in by such an event.

impulses based on body organs and substances

In his ȅ$$* $*#I
ī*%O, Descartes wrote

circulating through them, and to equate them

about the need to wait until a passion subsides

with justice, honor and other concepts that are

to a certain extent before reason can determine

in the final analysis just trends, since one auto-

our actions.

matically tends to ignore anything that cannot

events ― the sadness, for example, caused by

be formulated objectively.

an earthquake or tsunami.

Put in a nutshell,

Passion is roused by external
But even if passion

you end up viewing knowledge as the same asis sparked by external events, surely we should

things that can be made explicit.

at least talk about aspects of rational efforts

Thats the same as trying to rely on things

made after that passion has subsided to a con-that appear to be clear without any commit-

trollable level. And if thats the case, then thement from people.

issue becomes one of the level at which we talk

What you could call a logi-

cal inevitability bolsters that.
compels it.

Inevitability

about how we act or move others.

But the same inevitability may wellThat in-cludes things like taking an action because webe powerless with respect to moral wrongdoing.

believe it to be good, or beautiful.

Do people really act out of compulsion?

Surely it is only when things like this are talk-

Might it not be attractiveness that motivates us?

ed about hierarchically by various entities that

Surely its because we feel that we can commit

information concerning matter, life, society,to something that we act, isnt it?

The fact isand culture can be properly discussed, and it isthat commitment is indispensable to informa-

only when it stands on this foundation thatǩSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)for example people and machines, make con-socio-informatics too can attain a solid position.
There are all kinds of beauty.

MASAMURA et al.

There is thetact.

But despite this, we normally never get tonatural beauty of, for example, the crystalline

talking on that level, and I think we need to ask

structure of many substances or the logarithmic

ourselves why.

spiral of snail shells that so impressed the math-I think its because, even when were talking

ematician Jacob Bernoulli that he asked that it

about culture and such like, we rarely get fur-might be engraved on his tombstone (whichther than dealing with it on the same level as

was, however, in the end apparently engraved

substances.

with something else). There is also the beauty

substance level, we need to recognize that the

to be found in works of art or in the way insame atomistic approach cannot be applied towhich people lead their lives.

society and culture.

And I cant help

Even if we notch up success at the

feeling that any discussion of society would be

We need to remind ourselves of the existence

incomplete without touching on these variousof concepts such as Auguste Comtes hierarchi-

kinds of beauty.

cal classification of sciences, which is rarely ev-

But we dont do that in reali-ty.

er discussed seriously these days.

One of the

In reality, particularly in Japan ― and this ap-

reasons that I attach importance to Leibnizsplies to academia too ― we tend to be so im-Ï* X*O*yĩ when thinking about informatics ismersed in the society in which we were bornthat I can make use of that kind of hierarchicaland raised that we just allow inertia to carry us

approach.

along, and seem incapable of conducting our-In the sense that two objects cannot occupy

selves in anything but set ways pre-ordained by

the same space, they are impenetrable.

that society.

cannot be penetrated.

This is what Bergson referred toas the closed society and closed morality.

But

They

If each is thought of asa very tiny object, its like ignoring whatever iseven when talking about goodness or morality,

inside even if it exists.

should we really be satisfied with sticking to thistic approach from ancient times.

closed stage?

Im talking here also about aca-

looking at this in the context of what Leibniz

demics clinging to and trying to defend a disci-

was trying to say using the concept of monads,

pline that theyve created.

even if we reject the theory of interactionism atThats been the atomisHowever,Its only when something is recognized as

the substantial level, we should be able to talkopen rather than closed that there can be any

about interpenetration at the emotional or spiri-interactions between it and other open entities.

tual level, since it is possible to think about theTardes revision of Leibniz to provide his con-relationship between monads and their similari-

cept of open monads shows this kind of possi-

ties and differences.

bility.

Organisms come together and coexist.

So, lets try thinking about individual cultures

People come together and form a society, andas monads.

cultures come together to create a new beauty.

tures, rather than being satisfied with multicul-

Actually the same thing could happen eventuralism, which atomistically says nothing morewhen things of a completely different nature,than that there are many different cultures, andWhen considering various cul-

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

rather than beating about the bush with thebeauty to information?

My answer is that it ismessage of joining hands and acceptance ofwhat accompanies information when the powerother cultures contained in the term intercul-

to elicit the maximum commitment and inter-turalism, I think that we should go for a morepenetrability of both sides in a situation inproactive perspective of spanning and going be-which information is mutually treated as infor-

yond individual cultures.

The term transcul-mation is brought about not as the result of aturalism has been coined recently for this ap-

kind of natural inevitability or moral command,proach.

but rather as attraction.

Taking this perspective would also enable us

Let me provide just one specific example ―to talk about the failures, if you will, of present-

an impressive piece of prose, even if an aca-

day research at universities and other institu-

demic paper.

tions.

come to mind.

I suspect it could be used to criticize

The words prosaic soundness
They refer to prose whose

conventional so-called interdisciplinary re-words have the power to stir people into action.

search ― what we used to refer to as natural

I feel that such a situation should make clear

science/humanities integration.

We call it in-

the pointlessness of discussing an impressive

terdisciplinary research now, but in effect itspiece of prose without paying attention to thejust like a chain of isolated foxholes.

We might

society and culture brought into existence by

be able to talk about interpenetration between

the lives of each and every person who writes

various disciplines in university.

and reads that prose.

If informa-tion is to communicate anything about sociocul-

The conduct of scholars who, like those in thetural affairs, I feel that it can only do so throughexample of economics that I mentioned above,

this kind of approach.

do nothing but try to defend their existing bodyThinking about beauty in relation to informa-of knowledge is neither a laudable nor beauti-

tion is about more than simply information de-

ful.

sign.

same kind of rut.

Im not talking here about improving theway a website looks.

So, I repeat, we must avoid falling into the

Any attempts to make do

Lastly, I would like to add that I think this re-with such moves are just going to hide a great

port is probably very close in nature to Profes-

Information society theory up to

sor Mamoru Itos approach of connecting the

now has actually seen a lot of that kind of thing,concept of information to emotion or passion,

but the written word, books, works of art, learn-since it should be possible to talk about beauty

ing, individual people or society, and in a nut-as the purification of passion. When talking

shell, information are surely about more thanabout information, looking at things such as thejust appearance.

Information is suffused withfear of risk, emotional contagion or mimicry,a force that compels us to make a commitment,

and panic should also highlight points at which

whether we like it or not.

informatics connects with the ȅ$$* $
*
#I

deal of stuff.

I believe that beauty

should be talked about within such a frame-

ī*%O tradition and the aesthetics based on thatwork.

tradition.

Lets return to the original question.

What isI chose to tackle the theme of this sympo-

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

(Video)sium, namely  Socio-Informatics and theWorld: Toward New Sharing and Creation in

The video I showed you is a TV ad of Google

the way I have because I feel that any genuine
consideration of the subject requires going

Chrome.

It expresses todays information en-

through what may well be described as a fairly

vironment, introducing Multifaceted aspect of atiresome discussion like this to reach beauty.

virtual singer Miku Hatsune.

It is my hope is that the Society of Socio-

Miku Hatsune is originally a trade name ofInformatics pays heed to the concept of trans-

voice synthesis software, which is also called

culturalism and practices to the hilt the open-

vocaloid, released in Ɨ.

ness that it advocates in its mission statement.

Using this software, you can easily make a

Thank you.

song and can have the software sing your song.
This twin-tail-haired girl is the personification

Masamura: Thank you very much Prof. Yoneya-

and Illustration expression of the software Mi-

ma.

This presentation has raised important is-

ku Hatsune.

sues.

Some points were also quite relevant touation as if a girl Miku Hatsune really exists

the presentation just made by Prof. Ito.

Thus, sharing the imaginary sit-and she can sing any song, users have started toThe

presumption is that established modern sci-

upload their own compositions.

ence, which excludes virtue and beauty and fo-

post their illustrations and films.

They also

cuses only on truth, is intellectualism, and that

The songs which Hatsune Miku sings exceed

this intellectualism should be relativized.

, now.

So-

As for some of popular Miku

cial Informatics needs to be constructed in thisHatsune songs, the number of the access ex-way.

ceeds  million times.

This is what I think the presentation

highlighted.

Next, Prof. Endo, please begin.

Even live events of Mi-

ku Hatsune materialized as hologram have been
held.

Endo: I am Prof. Endo at Gakushuin University.

Not only in Japan but also in the world.

A state of the collective Effervescence right oc-

Today, I have the privilege of speaking to you

curs.

on a theme Social-Informatics in the Age ofIn addition, a lot of albums collecting Miku

Electronic Reproduction.

songs and Miku games have been released.

When technologies such as photograph and

Flesh-and-blood persons enjoy costume-play ofmovie came up as the new media, a German

virtual idol Miku Hatsune. Such unprece-

critic Walter Benjamin called them mechanicaldented phenomena have been caused.

reproduction and wrote The Work of Art in

The backgrounds of such a phenomenon in-

the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in ǩ .

clude appearance of so-called UGM (User Gen-Id like to perceive the todays information

erated Media) such as Nico Nico Douga andenvironment as the age of electronic reproduc-

YouTube, where users can upload freely theirtion, referring to the issues discussed by W.

own making contents.

Benjamin.

it is said that Nico Nico Douga played a great
role.



As for Miku Hatsune,Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

In addition, Crypton Future Media, INC

visual, TV and Internet. McLuhan divided thewhich developed HATSUNE MIKU set up a

media history before and after Gutenberg, andposting site PIAPRO.

also divided the latter as the ages of explosion

Users can post theirown composition such as songs, illustrations,and inplosion.

texts and D models to this site.

Furthermore,

Benjamins contemporaries, called the their age

this site incorporates the licensing system

Graphics Revolution, while Benjamin called it

which easily enables secondary use and fan-the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

fiction of posted contents.

saw their age from the standpoint of media.

Adorno and Boorstin, two ofThey

Via such posting sites, users can refer, follow

Benjamin discussed his age as Change fromand remake the others compositions, and cre-the manual reproduction to the mechanical re-ate new contents in sequence.

production.

They are simi-

lar to each other, but differ from each other.

It is very strange viewpoint, bysome definition.

Despite difference, they share the same image.

Why Benjamin considered the media, using

Miku Hatsune represents the whole process

the term reproduction?

of linked collective creative activities. Miku

media and information as immaterial, as against

Hatsune phenomenon can be called a Art-

physical bodies as material.

work in the Age of Electronic Reproduction.

missing a important point?

Before proceeding to a discussion, we shall

Usually, we regard
But arent we

Recently, (physical) materials seem to be un-consider The Work of Art in the Age of Me-

popular.

chanical Reproduction written by W. Benjamintion Society has become moch-much-touted.

in ǩ .

Experts have started to insist from material af-

This is a very influential essay whichalmost every researcher on media has read.
However, the title is strange, isnt it?
famous that few feel its strange.

Since the ǩǪs, the word Informa-

fluence to spiritual affluence and from mate-

It is sorial consumption to spiritual consumption.

BenjaminAnd they have started saying The material in-

looked at the media in the light of mechanicaldustry is destined to decline.

reproduction.

Typical mechanical reproduc-

ahead, immaterial industry such as the service

tion is mass production of machines such asindustry and the information industry have po-

cars.

tential for growth.

Benjamin also called printing technology

In the days

So to speak, mind-body

Benjamin isdualism (material-immaterial dualism) or infor-

naturally regarded as a media critic, and it ismation rather than material perspective has

true.

been promoted.

as mass production of texts.

But we should pay attention to his title inwhich the questions what is information andHowever, the word material (mono inwhat is media are incorporated. He had

Japanese) has profound meaning.

tried to understand photograph, film and so on

to the Japanese dictionaries, mono meansin the same framework as mass production of person  ,  material  and  spirit  as well.

cars.

They explains mono as universal substanceAccording

The media history is generally periodized by(materiality) supposed to give rise to a phenom-

budding media such as orality, printing, audio-enon, while koto represents a phenomenonSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

the cutting-edge Miku Hatsune.

changing over time.
The dictionary describes the language system

Furthermore, monos are clustered together

which we are using in everyday life but not con-to form a koto. kotos constitute the world at

scious of. And the language system which im-a certain moment.

plies our recognition of the world incorporates

mono, and forms another koto gathering

the monism of person-material-information po-other monos. Miku Hatsune is realization oftentially.

Additionally, lets check a dictionary

such processes.

Someone creates a song offor the Japanese word koto which meansMiku Hatsune.

Then, based on the song, thething.

others create another Miku songs.

Then, you can find koto also meansevent and word.

The dictionary explains

Then a koto becomes aThis feed-back process is the function of information.

koto as a facet which mono is brought to re-

Up to here, we have considered mono andalization as some sort of action, function, statekoto in Japanese.

or relation.

indigenous to Japan?

Recently, a catchphrase From

Then, is it a phenomenon
But, probably not.

For

mono to koto with the intention to cause

example, a folklorist Kazuhiko Komatsu pointed

events rather than producing real goods is pop-

The concept mana, which is used in theular in Japan.

However, from their primary

Polynesian Islands and regarded as homologous

meanings, koto is realization of mono andwith soul in Japanese by Shizuka Maruyama,koto cant be caused without mono.

plays the same role with mono in JapaneseSuchin his O*
ȅ*$$$$* .

catchphrase above wont appeal because of los-Social anthropologists such as Marcel Maussing the primary meanings embedded in our fundamental culture.

and Claude Lévi-Strauss had marked mana.

That is, our fundamental culture viewed theworld as follows:

Mauss noted Mana is not only a power nor an

There are various monosentity but also a function, a quality and a state.

invisible in the world. They eventually collide Mana  creates various values and means

with each other and crystallization occurs,money as well.

which cause some koto.

Such mono mightas mono.

be called information.

So, we can regard

It expresses the same thing

They are similar in sound.

In the West, there is a word mono meaning

this crystallization as the information process,only one.

and can think that the world appears as it is at

Benveniste, a lots of words such as money,a certain time by such linkage.

memory, mimesis and mother, which are

From this point of view, we can understandAccording to a linguistic scholar

related to the foundation of society, are derived

the Miku Hatsune phenomenon as follows:from mono.

People have various monos (= aspirations) inman mathematician and philosopher Gottfried

their mind.

Wilhelm Leibniz got the idea monad which

They are connected each other,

mediated by the software Miku Hatsune, andcould be realized as a song.

And it is well-known that a Ger-means simple substance from mono.

I think that theAlso, a French sociologist Gabriel Tarde left

ideals mono and koto, which are traditional

many papers on monads and mimesis which isconcepts from the ancient days, could explaininteraction of monads.

ŤJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

meaning technology or skill.

Benjamin also had developed his own monadology.

In fact, theancient Greeks regarded art same as technolo-

He wrote  An idea is a monad.

That is, briefly speaking, each idea includes angy.

image of the world.

existence shifts to existence, the reason of shift

The task of description of

Plato insisted Whatever it is, when non-a idea is nothing less than envisioning the im-

is production.

Thus, production belonging toage of the world in condensed form.

Put sim-any technology (techne) is creation (poiesis)

ply, though an idea is an individual constituting

and a producer engaging in it is a creator in his

the world, the individual contains an image ofSymposium.

Benjamin also said A group

That is, techne in ancient Greek meansof concepts being used for describing an idea

creating something new despite the value oflets the idea appear as a asterism (constitution)

the object created.

of materialistic elements.

called poiesis in ancient Greek.

the whole world.

And ideas or

And a created object is
In othermonads are connected each other by mime-words, techne is an act to crystallize hidden,sis.

invisible mono/mana and realize a new world
by creating new now, here.

Now back to The Work of Art in the Age ofSuch interpreta-In this essay, thetion clarifies the importance of the title The

most famous thesis is The art loses aura by me-

Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Repro-

chanical reproduction. But what is aura?

duction.

Mechanical Reproduction.

Is

However, in Benjamins view, creation is not

it a problem that aura is lost?
In the context of criticism, extinction of the

producing anything from nothing but producing

aura is regarded as extinction of the reality or

non-existing yet from already existing, by crys-the sublimity of the world.

Critics such as

tallizing mono/mana. Such act is techne.

Adorno, Baudrillard and Boorstin claimed that

Thus, though it is poiesis (origination), it can

reproduction technologies deprive the art of thebe regarded as reproduction in fact.

authenticity.

stated that creation is poiesis (origination) be-

However, Benjamin seems to welcome theextinction of the aura.

Benjamincause it is reproduction, I think.

The important point toNow, lets think about loss of aura, thebe paid attention is that the title of this essay ismost famous thesis in The Work of Art in theThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Re-

Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

production  includes  Work of Art  .

Whydrew the comparison between artwork in the

It seems that words such as art andage of mechanical reproduction and that of theArt?

Benjaminaesthetics become obsolete. Has the extinc-previous age.

He thought the authenticity oftion of the aura truly resulted in the death of theartwork had been singularity, uniqueness andart?

Did Benjamin write this essay to insist

the value of adoration, which Benjamin calledthat?

To answer this question, we should con-

aura.

When the singularity (aura) was lostby the mechanical reproduction, the authentic-

sider the concept of the art.

ity became guaranteed by nothing.

The origin of the word art in the title of the

Did Benja-

min insist that though the artwork had been su-

essay translated in English is techne or arsūSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

preme before the age of mechanical reproduc-

the photograph as the art work in the age of me-tion, it has lost their aura and has been popular-

chanical reproduction.

ized and commodified as Adorno, Boorstin andwith the realization of illusion in the age of elec-

Baudrillard?

tronic reproduction.

Although aura which had guaranteed the au-

We are concerned

In June  , Miku Hat-

sune performed live in Los Angeles.

The flesh-thenticity of the artwork in the previous age has

and-blood audience was enfevered with Miku

lost, if poiesis remains, loss of aura means

Hatsune realized by hologram.

the birth of new art.

I think Benjamin had

cert, many live performances were held.

thought in such a way.

That is, he criticized

After the con-On the other hand, the Perfume, an idol

the authoritarianism or art supremacist based

group, copies the action of the android.

on the exclusive value of uniqueness and singu-

Perfume consists of  girls.

larity.

they perform with their hologram on the stage.

And he regarded such authoritarianism

would lead the world to the fascism.

The

But sometimes

Flesh-and-blood persons can be copied.

But in reality, Germany plunged into WorldIn the age when both images and actuals are

War II, Benjamin who was Jewish lost his life on

copied repeatedly as seen above, how should

the way of asylum bid.

we face the technology, the art and the cre-Then, would the art in

the age without aura really lead up to release
the culture from gnosis? Apprehensions ofBenjamin discussed the first technology andthe second technology in his The Work of Art

Adorno was right, wasnt it?
The question is left to us.

ation?

Also, though Ben-in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Hejamin lived the age of mechanical reproduction,stated The first technology can be described

we are facing the age of meta-mechanical re-by Only Once. …… The second technology

production, in other words, the age of electric

can be described by as many times as one

reproduction or bio-reproduction (biological re-would like. …… The origin of the second tech-production).

nology is playgame.

However, electric reproduction or bio- reproduction is related to the root of vital activities orhuman beings.

So, it is not new phenomenon

but fountainhead.

Then, it is important to cap-

This statement mightprovide us with a clue, I think.
Benjamin wrote an essay On the Concept ofHistory at the end of his life, and talked abouta painting by Klee called Angelus Novus.

Heture the essential features of bio-reproduction

wrote The Angel of History must look just so.

not from the material-information dualism from

His face is turned towards the past.

the perspective of mono/mana discussed be-

see the appearance of a chain of events, he seesfore.

one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles

But the representation of bio-reproduction is
new like Miku Hatsune.

Translated from German by Dennis Redmond.

rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his
feet  .

Benjamin was concerned with the movie andWhere weThat is, he insisted that we should

abandon the fantasy of progress, and that our(http://members.efn.org/˜dredmond/ThesesonHistory.html)

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

society could get along without the fantasy ofmation society, especially that of the Internet,

progress.

they expected that bidirectional communication
would become available.

Thank you for your kind attention.

In the age of mass

media, almost all the information had come
Masamura: Thank you very much Prof. Endo.

from the central part of the social system, there-

Reproduction is an important issue for Social

fore all they could do had been only to accept

Informatics.

it.

Benjamin wrote a classic book on

reproduction.

However, the age of mass media is over.

With the coming of the Internet, people expect-

Regarding his interpretation,

Prof. Endo said that the loss of uniqueness in an

ed that they would have a common space

object through reproduction should not neces-where everyone could be an addresser and as

sarily be interpreted in a negative sense, andsuch she or he participate in arguments freely.

that reproduction is linked with poiesis, andIn his book Habermas argues that the public

such reproduction is seen more often today.

I

sphere which once had come into existence andthink that this is what this interesting talk fo-

had functioned well gradually became corrod-

cused on.

ed.

Next up, Prof. Kenichi Ito.

Pleasebegin.

It was not only because the public without

property and education has participated in the
public sphere, but also because people quit ar-

Ito, K: My name is Ito Kenichi from Gunma Uni-guing itself.

versity.

changed: from the public who argues to the

He said that the role of the public

public who consumes.

Since the title of my speech is Deliberative
Democracy as a Social Information Process,The role ordinary citizens were expected towhose focal point is something close to good-play were not to argue but to consume the infor-

ness rather than beauty.

mation which they were given.

But perhaps I could

In this context

find some common points to preceding speak-the Internet emerged, and people expected thaters who emphasized that we had to extend theperhaps they could make something like a pub-concept of information concerning not only

lic sphere on the Computer-Mediated Commu-

truth but also something else.

nication (CMC) space in the Internet, where

I would like to talk about the possibility of thethey could, or easily participate in arguments,

public sphere in information societies. As youor reveal some facts under the veil of anonym-

know, the public sphere is a famous concept,

ity.

which Habermas, the German sociologist, sug-

However, when the Internet actually had

gested in his book, I
ī#%N#%O $*-

spread, people found that it did not go as ex-

#* 
*
ȅ%ON
ī!I.

pected before.

I think that it is an im-

For example, in an anonymous

portant theme for socio-informatics to consider

bulletin board system, it was true that they

how we can realize the ideal of the public

could post messages freely, but after a while

sphere in information societies or how the con-people found that the BBS was full of vulgar,

ditions for it have changed.

childish messages neither rational nor reason-

When people noticed the coming of the infor-

able, and they also found countless personallyƗSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

identifiable information which one should not

the earthquake of 

have exposed.

in  and the Hurricane Katrina in ū.

Some blogs were made into thetarget of flame attack.

as well as ǩ.

terrorism
I

People also found thatthink that there must be possibilities of the In-

it was much easier on the Internet the tenden-

ternet to play a positive role to make democracy

cies like group polarization would occur, whichreally work according to conditions.

means that people will support their attitudes or

My theme is on deliberative democracy,

opinions mutually and get a more and more ex-

which is a little distant from the Internet, how-treme conclusion than they would have if they

ever, it may give us some ideas.

were off-line.

By ǩǩs de-People thought the Internet

liberative democracy became one of the com-space they had made was perhaps not reason-

mon issues in political theories in the English

able space of argument, but something else.

speaking world.

An American jurist, C. Sunstein pointed out

The theory of Habermas pro-vided one of the foundations of this idea.

Inin his book ē!%ONЂN* (Princeton University

short, it is a political theory which considers it

Press , whose title in Japanese is $
#I
 #-

as a decisive process to deliberate, in other

 #
 
 ĩ
*
X*NNĩs ), that the infor-words, to discuss and to draw various conclu-

mation society or CMC space looked complete-sions.

ly different from the arena of democratic argu-

Many theorists discuss and they share somement.

points in common; they criticize the conven-

Nevertheless, on the other hand, I think there

tional understanding of democracy, assert reha-must be some positive possibility in the Inter-bilitation of interactive political processes andnet, which will promise of reproduction of the

expect realization of justice through them.

public sphere.

These theorists dont consider peoples inter-

For example, one of the topics

in  or Ť was Blogosphere.

This means

ests and preferences to be given and aggregat-

the space made of blogs and their interconnec-

ed, but consider them to be made in discussions

tions.

Of course the term reminds us of public

or social and political situations, and thats why

sphere.

It was said that the public sphere ofthey claim that it is important to execute discus-

blogs had played a role of the watchdog to poli-sion or deliberation.
Prof. Ryosuke Hirai summarized the merits ofticians in a certain sense.
In addition, the Internet is said to havedeliberation as below: Firstly, since selfish pref-

played an extremely positive role in the politicalerences will be removed during deliberation

changes in Tunisia or Egypt, which is called

processes, one can expect a strong justification

Arab Spring.

Since people expected that theof the result which will not be obtained in a

Internet played such kind of positive role, it ismere aggregation of preferences. Secondly,

difficult to judge rightly.

people are supposed to learn from each other

But I think that must

be possible.

mutually what they did not know, so delibera-

Besides, as Mr. Fumihiro Murakami pointed

tion has an educational effect.

It is to widen

out at yesterday  s symposium, the Internet

the perspectives of them.

functioned and helped people in many ways inthat competence or virtue as a citizen --- it mayǪThirdly, it is said

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

sounds somewhat anachronistically --- or sensedures or rules.

of community and solidarity will raise among

ate designs of deliberation process, reasonablepeople.

discourse and discussion may become possible.

This is another educational effect.

I think there must be such possibility.

Recently, Prof. Hajime Shinohara edited andpublished a book whose title was IїIOO y*/O#m/*NNĩ.

Therefore if we make appropri-

Many of the audience must have seen or readthe news last month (August,  ) about the DP

This book is obvi-

ously a reaction to the Fukushima Daiichi nu-

carried out in Japan.

clear disaster.

the DP of the Japanese government because the

The editor wants readers toSome people criticizedconsider the present way of social decision-

time spent for the DP was too short and theymaking on technology.

In this book, various

claimed that they could not accept this attempt

experiments using mini-publics are introduced.

as an authentic DP. Anyway, in this DP, the par-These experiments make mini-publics whichticipants discussed whether the nuclear power

consist of a rather small number of people, so

plant ratio in  should be zero, ū％, or  tothey are different from the public sphere whichū％.

Habermas proposed, and the participants arecreased considerably after the discussion.

asked to get into deliberation there.

VariousDP, it is considered positive that the partici-

One can find di-pants change their opinion during the delibera-experiments are carried out.

As a result, those who chose zero inIn

versified attempts in this book: In one case, ative process.

questionnaire to thousands of people may beor values are not unchangeable but they are

exercised; In another case, tens to hundreds ofmade up during the discussion with other par-people may actually be gathered to a place, par-ticipants.

ticipate in discussion, and have deliberation up-

ations to this point.

on various problems in order to get some con-that this DP ends up with merely degasification

clusions which will help decision-making oror the result might be really reflected in a poli-public opinion formation.

cy.

I think Deliberative Poll (or Polling, DP) is themost famous.

It is because peoples preferenceThis approach pays great considerOf course it is possible

Nevertheless we have to admit the factthat the Democratic Party Administration exer-

The Democratic Party Adminis-

cised DP.

tration of our country carried out DP on the

The space DP realizes is different from the

problem of the energy policy also in Japan the

public sphere which Habermas broached atother day.

that time, where anyone who wanted to partici-

I think many of the audience mustpated can participate. This is not the large

have read about it in newspapers.

public sphere but a small, mini-public.

Besides, there are various ways of delibera-Al-tion, such as consensus conferences, planningthough this is a small group and only a part ofcells (ȅO % y$҂OO in German), citizens juries

the whole society, DP is designed so that partic-

and so on.

ipants have a reasonable discussion and make a

Like the behavior of the on-line space, our ac-contribution to create an informed and stable

tual behavior of the off-line world is also much

public opinion.

influenced by the architecture such as proce-

liable?

ǩ

Why is this supposed to be re-Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

One of the important point is that participantsedge of the nuclear power plant problems or en-

are drawn from a random sampling without de-ergy policy can ask experts to explain merits

viation. This is in order to avoid self-selection

and demerits of this technology plainly enoughbias: If anyone who wants to participate can do,for someone without expertise to understand.

many of the stakeholders would come in.

Or one can ask them related questions like If

Since in ordinary public hearing or meeting

we turn the nuclear power plant ratio into zero,

about an energy policy, many stakeholders likewhat will happen to radioactive waste? During

the employee of an electric power company

the discussions for a few days, participants

participates, it looks like a biased public, farcome to make their final conclusions.

from neutral one.

DP is nothing more than a poll, participants

DP is designed to avoid thiskind of distortion.

dont make the conclusion as a group.

Since

Howev-

Otherwise some activists will participate who

er, it is said that after DP the distribution ofengage in various civic movements, and such

opinions becomes stable and it hardly change

activists behave factionally.

at subsequent polls.

Their dogmatic

attitudes are a little bit different from ordinary

Just now I said layperson, it is importantthat arguments must be understandable

citizens sense.

enough.

It is also important to learn over many hours

This is just like jury which consists ofor days. In usual opinion polls, even if people

layperson of laws gives a verdict of guilty or nothave little knowledge about the issue they

guilty in a trial.

asked, they have to disclose their attitudes for

publics aim to introduce the sense and judge ofor against some options, then their answers are

ordinary citizens into political decision making.

aggregated and becomes public opinions.

The experiments of mini-

Ac-

There is one idea that Prof. Munenori Suzuki

tually, in many cases they only follow the imag-of Hosei University pointed out in his book re-es told or showed in mass media, or they makecently, with which I was very impressed.

their options without considerations since it isthough one of the antecedents of deliberative

troublesome.

democracy is Habermas, the focal point of the

In addition, since they knowthat their opinions are hardly reflected in total

deliberative process has changed.

Al-

In the pub-aggregations of thousands or tens of thousands,

lic sphere of Habermass type, the openness

it is quite rational not to study or not to collect

was the key.

information.

enter the public sphere.

Of course not everyone is neces-

Whoever wanted to get in could
However, in DP par-sarily interested in various social problems,

ticipation was rather limited.

therefore it is natural as an ordinary citizen notparticipate in DP only as an experts.

to pay attention to some problems.

The design

designed to promote reasonable discussion andof DP takes these circumstances into consider-

got a fair conclusion by means of restriction ofations.

each actor respectively.

An expert could
DP wasDuring DP, participants are given some op-

Therefore, the ideal of public sphere which

portunities to ask experts whatever they want.

Habermass theory demonstrated was accepted

For example, a layperson who has little knowl-

as a too impractical or dreamlike, and some

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

people say it is valuable just because it keeps

This was a very timely report.

counterfactual.

However, we can think of theEast Japan Earthquake, the way in which deci-

way that ideal vision comes into existence.

sions should be made has been questioned in

The experiments of mini-publics show someterms of the issue of nuclear power stations.

possibilities.

We may discuss reasonably withIn the past, only the government, electric power

the help of some inventions where way our so-companies, and experts supportive of the use ofciety will go, how we should control technolo-

nuclear energy have decided the direction ofgy, or how we make decisions on energy poli-

nuclear energy policies.

cies.

Since the Great

From now on, howev-

er, various people, including experts who are

We tend to talk about CMC space or network

negative about the use of nuclear energy andand consider only the on-line communications,citizens, should participate in the decision-

however we should not think that only thosemaking process, which is also what people now

networks constitute the public sphere but wedemand. How can we achieve this?

should also take the whole process of communi-

how do we explore the role of the public spherecations which encompass the on-line communi-in the age of globalization?

cations into consideration.

has raised these points.

Some argue that it

AndThis presentation

Since we are already behind schedule, let us

is decisively important that architecture of thespace influences the behavior of the people es-

continue with the discussions.

pecially in the cyberspace.

your comments please.

But in my opinion

Prof. Tanaka,

it is also important in off-line world, which will
Tanaka: Would you let me comment.

be one of the really relevant themes of socioinformatics.

As Prof. Masamura summarized each report

This issue has been hardly argued

every time, I want to ask questions to eachbut is worth studying.
This is the last point.

The title of this sympo-

speaker.

sium is  Socio-Informatics and the World 

As a whole, I can consider theoretically what

which reflects the tendencies of globalization of

information is and what the task of Socio-

these days.

Informatics is.

In the globalized world, we haveto think of the possibilities of trans-nationaltion.

public sphere which transcends the borderlineof the nation-states.

Now, Id like to give each ques-

To start with, it is for the report of Prof. Mamoru Ito.

It will be critical if people

In this report, there was a topic

about the plane of the virtual of things.

can imagine the trans-national communities

As the subtitle of this conference is a newwhich consist of various nations who are also
the partners of argument.

But this is too large

sharing and creation, I want to ask according toa theme for this occasion.

I just mention the

keywords, Ŕsharingŕ and Ŕcreationŕ.

They arecommon in my questions.

existence of the problem.

I want to return to the question to Prof. Ito.

Thanks for your attention.

There was a topic about the importance of theMasamura: Thank you very much Prof. Ito.

plane of the virtual of things.

For example, itSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

was mentioned that the proof analysis is like in-

not a real live performance.

tellectualism rather than unconscious, and I

ers didnt sing even if they song something, andthink that it can be shared because of conscious

then the performance must not be a live perfor-

things.

mance.

Now, there were topics about the firstThat is, the sing-In that sense, according to the defini-level, the second level and the importance oftion of the traditional voice live performance, it

the plane of the virtual things, then, how canmay not be creative. I want to ask you what a

the plane of the virtual things be shared in any

creation or a new creation should be in the age

manner?

of meta cloning technology.

Although I dont know whether it is

not to be shared, I want to ask you how to share

In particular, as you mentioned free from thethe plane of the virtual things, if you have any

illusion of progress, I concern in #I$N* X

idea.

#NI *O*yĩ, the entertainment.

Im also interested in the relationship between

For example, I think that scientific analysis

creativity and the illusion of progress.

start with how to observe the unconscious behavior in behavioral science.

If anything, creation or innovation is consid-

The second question is for the report of Prof.
Yoneyama.

Furthermore,ered as progress or economic growth.

You mentioned that beauty has

been estranged from many scientific terms.

Name-ly, it is useful for quantitative expansion.

OnAs

the other hand, I think that there is a limitation

I also thought that beauty was difficult, I put ex-

to pursue only the quantitative expansion be-

actly myself apart from beauty.

However, as

cause of a variety of factors. In that context, I

todays lecture is very impressive, I can learnwant to ask you free from the illusion of prog-

many things from your lecture.

ress and a new creation in the future.

In that sense,as the question may be literally naive one or

The final question is for Prof. Kenichi Ito.

very primitive, I want to ask you what beauty is,

the Government case of deliberative democra-

a little more.

cy, numbers differed greatly.

In todays lecture, as you men-In

In your lecture,tioned the promotion of the commitment,

there was a topic that the preference of people

through your lecture, I have been consideringand values of people may vary.

whether it may be related to beauty or not.

pressive for me.

For example, in the lecture of Prof. Endo,

It was very im-

So, I want to ask you the pos-sibility of the convergence of the changes, atthere was a case of Miku Hatsune, and I think it

first.

Otherwise, will they change all the time

may be beauty in the sense that it also commits.

kinetically?

So I want to ask what beauty is, and simultane-With respect to the keyword sharing, if they

ously, from the viewpoint of sharing, I wonderchange forever without a convergence, by theif beauty can be shared.

slicing time point or the time point to share the

For the promotion of

the commitment, I want to ask how to share it

conclusion, the decision will differ.

That is, itin spite of diverse values.

may be hard to conclude the decision.

Next, I want to ask Prof. Endo about creation.

However, as you mentioned the effect that

Yesterday in the bus while talking about Per-mutilated change public opinion in the last part

fume, you said that the live performance wasof your lecture, while it is assumed that theJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

preference and values may vary, how will wethe level of the virtual become clearer?

share?

are difficult to see and hard to apprehend, but

Please answer these questions if you

They

they do function, and they do formulate the re-have any idea.
Thats all.

al.

Is it not necessary to turn our Ŕgazeŕ tothese things?
Masamura: Thank you very much Prof. Tanaka.

In terms of how we may consider sharing, I

Although all the questions are important, we

believe that the concept of interpenetration that

dont have much time.

was proposed by Yoneyama as a keyword is im-

Please limit your re-sponse to about three minutes.

First, Prof. Ma-

portant.

moru Ito, please continue.

It serves a vital role in discussions

about information phenomena.

We may per-haps interchangeably use the word imitation,
Ito, M: First, to address Tanakas question, I be-

but it may be that what remains in the level oflieve the question was in regards to how tothe virtual is the stratum that facilitates sharing.

share research space in addressing the virtual,

Far more than sharing what is visible and iswhich is invisible and cannot be easily per-clearly apprehended consciously and thus canceived.

be debated, it may be that there is less obstacle

It is of course with utmost difficulty that wein sharing what stays in the unconscious at the

can apprehend the virtual of things in empiricalŔlevel of the virtual of thingsŕ and thus easily

terms.

interpenetrative.

I share your concern and see the obsta-

ciety and in information phenomena indicate

cles of problematizing it in empirical studies.

this?

First, it must be recognized that the virtual isinvisible by its own nature.

Does not what we see in so-

This point is related to Kenichi Itos paper.

But this does not
ItIn other words, we speak of deliberative de-may be that this theoretical perspective of the

mocracy, but should we be satisfied with simply

virtual of things is what enables the consider-debating about democracy?

ation of the paradox that it must be real because

consider the role of affectivity which compels

it is the virtual.

us to engage in politics and how to understandmean that there is no reality to be found.

Should we notits relationship to political intelligence?

Let us consider the issue of justice or beautyThis,which was one of the debates raised today fromperhaps, is a question that should be addresseda perspective which allows for the virtual.

to Kenichi Ito.

Sometimes, we may think ŔIt seems that what
he is saying is right, but I still dont like it.ŕWe should note that American political scien-Ortists have already pointed out the importance of

we may, on the contrary, think ŔIt seems that heconsidering the role of affection in deliberative

is telling a lie, but lets go along with him any-

democracy.

way.ŕ Such situations do occur frequently in
our lives.

These are paradoxical situations,

Yoneyama: There were two questions, werentand if we turn our attention to such phenome-

there?

na, do not the problems contained in what I call

ty?



What exactly is this thing we call beau-

When I heard this question, I was remind-

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

ed of the times in classes when Ive been asked

could do so that they begin to want to shareby students Professor, what is existence?

rather than say Leave me alone! and turntheir backs.

Put in very simple terms, beauty is in a nutshell the purification of passion ― purification
as in septic tank water purification, the purifica-

Endo: I appreciate Prof. Tanakas radical ques-tion of dirty things.

tion.

pretty messy.
them?

Our lives are normallyJapanese popular idol group, Perfume yester-How can we make order ofday (Laughs).

Beauty is what happens when we makeorder of things.

It was just as well that I told him about aA lot of music videos of Perfume

are uploaded on YouTube.

Take anger or sadness or

They are not pirat-

some other kind of emotion that represents pas-ed, but officially uploaded for promotion. It ission.

a marketing strategy to increase sales by provid-

There are for example songs that tell asad story, but such songs are also often beauti-

ing music video freely.

ful.

When passion is tidied up and tamed inlocal idol group, became popular because ofthis way, when people are freed from the messy

their mechanically converted voice, music vid-

condition of their everyday lives, something

eos on YouTube and their parody videos creat-else comes into existence, and I want to called by net users.

that something beauty.

flesh-and-blood bodies, their charm appearedThough they really haveby faking mechanical bodies.

And so, regarding the second question about

Miku Hatsune has no flesh-and-blood body.

how we share beauty, take a person who is being spurred by passion, for example.

Perfume, originally a

She is just an image.

That per-Her live performance isson doesnt want to share it. Leave me alone.

only a course programmed beforehand.

Its my business.

has no aura, that is,  now and here  -acy,

Thats how the person feels.

Sheuniqueness and singularlity.

I want to be left alone with my sadness, so

However, Benjamin welcomed the depriva-

dont bother me. Somewhere in our hearts,
we all have this tendency not to want to sharetion of aura.

In the view of Benjamin, au-passion.

However, if that passion is purified,ra guaranteed the authority of artworks before

just look at how beautiful it becomes. I al-

the emergence of mechanical reproduction.

ready used the word beauty just now, but works

Benjamin might have thought the artworks

of art of various kinds, beauty of character, theshould be de-authorized.

beauty of nature when something in the natural

But provided that now and here-acy is suchworld excites you, all of these point to how pas-

emotion as committing any poiesis (creation)

sion can be purified, and as I said in my reportand encountering various manas, it does notjust now, this is not a matter of compulsion ornecessarily rise live. Being reproduced pre-inevitability, but rather attractiveness.

serves now and here-acy, I think.

When

attractiveness emerges as a force, I think people

Even if I were here as hologram, the fact re-come around to liking the idea of sharing it.

Imains that you and I are talking here and now.

think its when people realize that there are

In this sense, It is quite indifferent whether I amways of purifying passion and that they toohologram or not.

Ť

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

right.

As for the question of copyright, I think the

The progress belief justifies only the first

copyright is firmly associated with aura dis-

technologies.

cussed by Benjamin.

The copyright is a con-technologies means release from the progress

cept based on the uniqueness of the creation.

belief, that is admitting plural truth, continuing

A certain work of art is endowed with the copy-

trial-and-error, and standing on the side of actu-

right because of the fact that the work is uniquealist.

and created by identifiable person(s).

UnderEmancipation from the firstThats all I have to say.

the Copyright Act, the person credited and others are distinguished sharply.

Ito, K: Thanks for your comment, Prof. Tanaka.

Meanwhile, in the case of Miku Hatsune,

I told in my presentation that after the delibera-

weakening restrictions of the Copyright Act

tive process participants changed their opin-

made many users possible to join to create Miku

ions.

music. New creativity in the present days

whether people change their opinions repeated-changes from creation by one person to cre-ly or they find their own final position.

ation by co-laboration, or co-creation.

the Japanese Government exercised last month

The DP

was directed by James Fishkin of Stanford Uni-

Then, Ill take the question about the second
technology.

The question Prof. Tanaka gave me isversity.

Benjamin stated that the first

Prof. Fishkin exercised follow-up sur-technology is for the presence in time andveys and investigated how people changed

space.

This statement shows that Benjamintheir opinions, for example, six month later ofdidnt appreciate the uniquness and the singu-

the DP. According to Fishkin, in many cases, af-larity of the works of art.

ter the deliberations participants opinions be-

While on the other hand, Benjamin discussed

came remarkably stable.

This stability might

The second technologies fit right in with theexhibit that they learned something and ac-

proverb Once is counted none.

quired informed opinions.

They are ex-

I am not quite sure

periments trying various methods under various

about other experiments apart from DP, howev-

conditions unflaggingly.

er, in many experiments peoples opinions got

In other words, they

are playgames.

convergence.

For example, the core problem of Fukushima

Of course this doesnt meanthat people always reach a consensus.

In

Nuclear Plant Accident is just the problem ofmany cases values opposed to each other vio-

the only-once technology which one mistake re-lently.

sults an irreversible catastrophe, as U. Beckions hardly wave after the deliberation process.

pointed out in his famous book ē$)
ī*N#ĩ.

I tell you one more point which Prof. Ito men-

Nevertheless distribution of the opin-

In this sense, the second technology is impor-tioned.

tant in the present age.

I feel that it is understandable that someone

The only-once technologies and the works of

The problem of affection or passion.

says I admit your reasoning is right.

But I

art authorized by aura or uniqueness are sup-cannot accept your conclusion in passion.

ported by the progress belief, that is, a belief

the political process, passion plays an importantthat there is only one unique truth and only it isrole and we should not get rid of that aspect.

ūInSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation (Theoretical Session)

MASAMURA et al.

nineteenth century.

For example, many people surround theWhen we say modern society, we think of so-

Prime Ministers official residence and hold ademonstration against nuclear power plant atciety after the sixteenth century.

present.

They are driven by nothing but pas-

the nineteenth century when the system of

We have to admit that passion is an es-

modern society was established in a true sense.

sential element of political process although it

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries com-sometimes coerce people into brutal violence.

prised the age of transition from medieval to

Therefore, we have to take into consideration

modern, in which medieval elements and mod-sion.

both elements at the same time.

But it was in

On one hand,ern elements coexisted. Given this, I think

we cannot help feeling passionate movementsthat the presentations by the four professorsof people, and on the other hand, we have to in-suggested that todays society is gradually being

vestigate the possibilities of reasonable deliber-

disconnected from the state of society or theations.

state of intellect of the nineteenth century.

This is what we do actually.

First, Prof. Mamoru Ito and Prof. Yoneyama
Masamura: Thank you very much.

It is al-ready past the closing time.

So, let me summa-

rize todays symposium.

I would like to sayraised a question about what intellect should be
followed.

Intellectualism represents the supe-riority of reason over emotion.

Modern sci-ence was established in the nineteenth century,

two things along with my personal opinion.

and the two spoke of liberation from that intel-

First, at the beginning of the symposium I
mentioned three Social Informatics issues.

lectualism.

The presentations by the four professors seemtion is spreading further as informatization

to have addressed these three issues.

advances.

Prof. Endo reported that reproducCome to think of it, for example,

The presentations by Prof. Mamoru Ito andthe nineteenth century was the age of individu-

Prof. Yoneyama focused on the concept of in-alism, which is the attitude of claiming unique-formation, which is the first issue, the basic the-ness. This attitude is also seen in copyrightory.

protecting the uniqueness of books.

Next, Prof. Endos presentation viewed

But, copy-

the issues of the information society from a re-right has become gradually shaky with the de-production technology viewpoint, this address-

velopment of reproduction technology.

ing the second issue.

Also, Prof. Kenichi Itosshould not necessarily be interpreted in a nega-presentation addressed the public sphere,

tive sense, which is what I think Prof. Endo

which is a contemporary issue after the Great

spoke about.

East Japan Earthquake.

sphere discussed by Prof. Kenichi Ito seems like

This is the first point I

This

Also, the topic of the publica modern subject on the surface, but as you allwant to make.
The second point is that I think there was aknow, the concept of the public sphere began incertain commonality in the presentations by thea coffee house.

four professors, although this was not explicit.

ter half of the seventeenth century through theThat is, to put it plainly, todays society is being

first half of the eighteenth century.

disconnected from the modern society of theern public sphere was suppressed in a way dur-

Coffee houses arose in the latThe mod-

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. , No. Sep.  

ing the nineteenth century, but this is now be-

those of the seventeenth century.

ing reconsidered.

words, medieval elements and modern ele-This was explained by Prof.

Kenichi Ito.

In otherments coexisted in the seventeenth century,

As just described, todays society has been

and, in terms of phenomena, our current period

gradually disconnected from the modern soci-is similar to that era.

ety of the nineteenth century.

Leibniz came out in the seventeenth century

However, there

I think that the fact thatare various interpretations as to what thishas a very symbolic meaning.

means at all.

the scholastic philosophy of the medieval times

In terms of the transformation of

Leibniz linked

todays society, I think there are at least threewith the modern philosophy typified by Des-

viewpoints.

cartes.

The first is the idea of postmodernism,

If you look at this as an activity of intel-

lect, he did this with a really great vision.

Per-

which means that society is now no longer

haps we too have to establish Social Informatics

modern.

The second is the idea of reflexive

during a major turning point such as this.

modernization, which means that it is now a

Through this symposium, I think that it has be-

new modern era different from the modern era

come obvious that Social Informatics is an areaof the nineteenth century.

of study that has emerged at a major turning

And the third is thepoint of the era.

idea of new medievalism, which defines today as a new middle age.

We now would like to close the symposium.

The reason theseEveryone, thank you very much.

various ideas were born is that the contemporary period, in a way, has aspects similar toƗJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep.  the Society of Socio-Informatics, SSI, Annual Conference, Keynote
Symposium

Socio-Informatics and the World:
Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）
Takeshi HIROMATSU, Institute of Information Security
Toshizumi OHTA, The University of Electro-Communications
Yoshiaki HASHIMOTO, The University of Tokyo
Fumihiro MURAKAMI, Mitsubishi Research InstituteAtsushi IWAI, Gunma University
Yoshinori TOMIYAMA, Gunma University

Hiromatsu: Now, we will start the keynote sym-

society is expected not to be the domestic re-posium in  annual conference of the Society

gion, Japan, but the world.

of Socio-Informatics, SSI.

I am the chair of thistion of SSI is the role of not only viewing the

symposium and my name is Takeshi Hiromatsu

world but also dispatching our new findings.

of Institute of Information Security.

The planning committee of this conference de-Thank youvery much.

Another expecta-

termined a unified theme Socio-Informatics

While the Society of Socio-Informatics is ab-and the World: Toward New Sharing and Cre-breviated as SSI, this academic society wasation based on this background and the idea.

born as a newly integrated academic society

The two keynote sessions, Empirical Session

based on the fruitful results of JSIS and JASI.

and Theoretical session, are designed for the

In contrast to the fact that the initial character

theme.

J of the two old academic societies denotes

Today s session is the Empirical Session.

Japanese, the initial character J was removed

this session, we will discuss from the viewpoint

positively from the name of the new society.

of how socio-information is used or which func-

Because of the globalization of economy andtions of socio-information are performed or

society, the meaning of national border has

should be performed in the real world.

been almost lost.

speaker will talk about what is socio-

Especially, phenomenon of

In

Each

Ac-

information, which functions/roles of socio-

cording to this tendency, the target of the new

information are performed or should be per-information has a borderless tendency.

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

formed and socio-informatics in the future, ac-such a widely spread opinion to the test andcording to each expertise, then we will discussshow if it is accurate.

with a commentator and audiences.

ing reliable can really be said about the rele-

Again, obviously, noth-vance of common opinions without a scientific

The first lecture is entitled as the changes
observed in information behavior or media in-proof or a survey research.

formation behavior over the past two years byseismology, for example, it is commonly be-

Prof. Hashimoto.

lieved that catfish romp about to predict anProf. Hashimoto, please

In correlation withstart your lecture.

earthquake.

Hashimoto: My lecture will mainly deal with theic or empirical observations of facts.

To verify such a common belief,

there are no other ways but to conduct scientifchanges observed in information behavior or

Thirdly, socio-informatics or survey research-

media information behavior over the past two

es also seek to provide answers to interroga-

years.

tions and queries of the public.

First of all, the role or the importance of

The issue ofsocio-informatics, especially that of survey re-

the internet addiction, for instance, might leadsearches as scientific endeavors, is undoubtedly

people to interrogations such as why would ato contribute to the understanding of the social

person abandon his/her family or work in ordercondition or the social fact.

to devote himself/herself to the internet?.
Data are needed in order to explain the mecha-

Simply and concretely speaking, the averageuse of social media, a topic I have personallynism behind such behavior.

been investigating, can be conceived as a social

lation with seismology, the public might ask

fact, for example.

The public generally refer tothemselves, why are earthquakes so frequentthe percentage of so and so, but even surveys

in Japan? To give a proper answer to interro-

released by carrier companies are hardly reli-gations of the like, an accurate analysis is re-able.

quired.

To be relevant, such surveys require a

counting method with a precise given target
population.

Back to the corre-

The fourth reason lies in the fact that humani-

To give another example bor-ties and especially social science-related fields

rowed from natural sciences, i.e. seismology, it

have necessary connections with administra-is commonly thought that earthquakes are fre-tion and governmental policies.

quent in Japan, but in order to have a clear

spects, suggestions and insights from socio-

sense of how often quakes of magnitude  plus

informatics or survey researches are valuable tooccur yearly in Japan, a thorough and minutepolicymakers.

observation is needed.

personally conducted revealed, for example,

In some re-

The results of a survey I have

Secondly, socio-informatics or survey re-that people who make use of the internet enjoy

searches seek to put to the test the so-calleda higher feeling of happiness than those who docommon beliefs. For instance, it is widelynot.

spread or thought that the youth have lost inter-can explain this result, but even interview sur-est in reading newspapers or watching TV.

veys tend to confirm that when a person starts

The role of socio-informatics will be to subject

using the internet she/he feels happier.



Several reasons such as annual income

I haveJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. not conducted a survey on the issue, but en-

double stratified random sampling method

couraging the use of the internet might help

which consisted of leaving a questionnaire to

curb the suicide percentage.

I have no solid

the respondents in order to be recollected aftergrounds to confirm that, but in order to provide

a period of time. Concretely, the surveys tooksuggestions and insights for sound governmen-

the shape of time-budget survey and simple

tal policies, scientific and positive researches

questionnaire forms.

have a vital role to play in this respect.

It isToday, I will also compare the nationwide

sometime discussed in seismology, that a highsurveys conducted until the year .

enough sea wall can always crumble.

sults of the first semester of the ongoing survey

As it has

The re-been seen in Matsushima Bay, rather thanof the year  have also been considered.

building a sea wall, it would be safer to con-should be mentioned that partly due to budget

struct a number of artificial islands within the

restrictions, with ,& valid respondents, thebay, which could contribute to hold down

target population of the survey of the year tsunami heights.

consisted of males and females between & andThus, such an expert-It

recommendation to build artificial islands can years of age.

be given to policymakers. I have no clue,

vey was based on the Survey on Japanese in-however, if in reality there are experts who give

formation behavior.

such advice to the administration or not.

In the cases where pre-vious surveys were compared with that of the

There are many other roles of socio-

year , the age of the target population was

informatics or survey researches that can be invoked.

The methodology of the sur-matched to that between & and  .

At least in correlation with the four

To consider but the diary-style records, as ex-

aforementioned roles, I am convinced that so-pected, results of the surveys have shown a de-cial survey researches have to adopt observa-

crease in TV watching time.

tion and experiment as practiced in natural sci-

years, TV watching time has been steadily de-ences.

creasing, especially among teenagers, persons

Over the past R

Now, I am going to expand on two or three

in their twenties and thirties. The decrease

recent surveys which analyze social facts.

has been markedly significant the past two

First of all, my presentation will be based on theyears.

results of surveys I have been conducting forserved so far, but the past two years recorded ayears on the Japanese information behavior.

sharper slump in TV watching time.

Of course, the decrease has been ob-

In fact, I have been carrying on surveys on the

Besides, the rating of the behavior of the act-

Japanese information behavior every five years

ing population was also a matter of interest.

since The surveys were conducted during  days and&.

The most recent survey was con-ducted in June .

Each of the surveys re-corded about ,& valid respondents.

intended to measure the rating of respondents

Nation-who switched on their TV sets once one ofwide males and females between  and 

those days.

years of age were the target population of the

centage of action (the frequency of the action ofsurveys.

turning on one s TV set) did not decrease.

The methodology adopted was theEven among the youth, the perPre-

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

sumably, the acting frequency of respondents

devoted more time to the internet, be it via PCs

did not decrease between  and , nei-or in general, while the former superseded inther.

Consequently, even younger people didtheir usage of the internet via mobile phones.

turn on their TV sets once a day in the morning,Over the past  years, however, teenagers have

perhaps.

It has, though, been observed that

topped their counterparts in the time they de-

the acting frequency has sharply decreased

voted to internet not only via mobile phones,

among teenagers and the twenties over the past

but also via PCs, be it at home or elsewhere.

two years.

Such a remarkable decrease in the

The time devoted to watching TV has de-acting frequency among the youth is unprece-creased while the time allotted to the usage ofdented in the past R years of survey.

internet did not increase, neither.

This tru-

ly indicates that younger people are not switch-

are young people busy with?

ing on their TV sets anymore.

clear-cut answers to this question.

Then, what

There are no
Based onThe common opinion about this phenomenon

our surveys, an evaluation of trends among thetends to be as follows: the fact that younger

youth in their twenties indicated, however, thatpeople surf the internet results in the decrease

they divide their time into doing several littleof their TV watching time.

chores.

rate.

This is partly accu-

As it can be proved concerning the use

A relative increase has been ob-

served, for instance, in the youth busy withof the internet, our research team delivers far

watching a recorded TV program video or play-

more accurate data than the Living Time Bud-ing offline games with their mobile phones.

get Survey of Japanese people conducted by

Listening to the radio or playing with radio-

NHK, since we include a broader sample ofcontrolled model toys are also among activities

items in our surveys.

that increasingly occupy the youth.

Looking into the internet

Needless

use time, the results indicated that over the past

to say, such activities are far from exhaustively

two years the use of the internet via PCs by

explaining the decrease in TV watching time

teenagers has increased.

among the youth.

However, if the gen-The bottom line is that theeral use of the internet, including mobile phone

information behavior of the youth has under-

usage, is taken into account, the total amount ofgone an increasing fragmentation resulting in

the internet use time has shown a slight de-its decrease.

crease.

Consequently, that the TV watching

Furthermore, the common opinion holds ittime decreased among teenagers does not nec-that the internet is devouring TV.

essarily indicate that it is because of theywords, media cannibalism, i.e. a phenomenonswitched that time to the usage of the internet.

of media erosion is profusely noised about, but

When it comes to the youth in their twenties,plausible media cannibalism is a far cry fromthe general usage of the internet, including mobile phones, has decreased.

In otheroccurring.

The internet us-

In order to demonstrate this assertion, we uti-

age time has reached the point of saturation.

lize the so-called time lag matching analysis

A comparison between teenagers and the youth

method.

in their twenties indicates that in  the lattering just TV watching time and internet using

There seems to be no point compar-

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. For

We have divided respondents into four cate-instance, younger people frequently make use

gories depending on the length of time spent atof the internet.

home.

time since people s status might interfere.

It also depends on the annual

The results revealed that depending on

Thus, it is irrel-

the length of time spent at home, respondents

evant to just consider the correlation between

equitably apportioned their time to TV watch-

the aforementioned two times since a host of

ing or internet usage.

factors might interfere.

ger period of time at home both watched TV

income of a given individual.

Our time budget sur-veys are conducted during  days.

Those who spent a lon-

and used their PCs.

We pickout only respondents who have made use of the

When the difference of age was closely takeninternet via PCs during one of the two days.

into account, the average time of watching TV

We, then, compare the times these respon-decreased proportionally to the decrease indents watched TV on the day they used the in-age.

ternet and the day they did not use the internet.

younger people watch TV has gradually de-

By analyzing a statistically identical population,

creased. Since the year , our question-

factors related to status interference mentioned

naire has inquired about the way respondents

supra (demographic factors) can be thoroughly

had information related to their hobbies and to

excluded.

entertainment.

The result indicates that TV watch-Moreover, since  & the average time

Among the six choices given to

ing time is longer on the day of the internet use

them, namely, TV, the radio, newspapers, mag-

via a PC and is shorter on the day the internet

azines, books, and the internet, the internet has

is not used.

since gradually and neatly come to the top of

The case referred to concerns on-ly teenagers and the youth in their twenties, but

the list.

the same results have been observed concern-of the list so far, has finally been displaced bying men and women in their thirties and forties.

the internet in .

The surveys conducted in & and in  havethe proportion of the internet use has overtaken

both consistently pointed to the same results.

the proportion of other choices.

TV, which occupied the top position
It is a clear indication that
By the year

This can be explained by what I refer to as, figures showed that TV was no match tothe theory of rational assignment of free timethe internet when it comes to the young

at home (the theory of rational apportionment

people s source of information related to enter-of domestic free time).

tainment.

It means that media

Of course, TV has maintained its su-

cannibalism might occur if one considers only

periority over the internet when it comes to thethe way each individual apportions his/her time

content, but young people are satisfied enoughto different activities, but taking the averagewith the information they have about entertain-

population into account, it can be asserted thatment via internet.

at home Japanese people divide their time into

more feel like watching TV.

a range of information behavior.

Young people do not any-

For the past

We incidentally tried to compare between

 years, Japanese people of all ages have en- and  what young people were con-joyed an unchanged average of  percent ofcretely doing while surfing the internet.

free time at home.

past  years, teenagers tend increasingly to



The

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

watch moving images using PCs.  percent ofwriting and sending e-mails via PCs or mobile

the time when teenagers use the internet via

phones has shortened, the time for using social

PCs is devoted to watching moving images.

media has increased.

In relation with apparatus use, the usage of

In a survey we asked the following detailed

smartphones by young people in their twenties

questions: give us the names of your friends (uphas already reached &R.R percent.

I think thatto  names) with whom you regularly share re-from now on smartphones will be used to ac-cent information about your life; when are you

complish a big deal of activities that require thein touch with them?

internet.

have with them?

In such case, the internet usage timein general is also likely to increase.
dia.

How old are they?

males or females?

Let us now switch our analysis to social me-

What relationship do you
Are they

These are annoying ques-

tions, but as you know, Japanese people are

Our survey on the average usage of social

sincere.

An average of five persons respond-

media revealed that  among  young people ined.

their twenties and  percent of men and wom-of people using e-mails was high, but the aver-en in their forties are already using social me-

age number of people using the social media

dia.

LINE was rather high.

Social media have already become a so-cial commodity.

According to this survey, the percentage

We also asked about

the relationship and the particular social media

How to explain the change that has been witnessed over the past two years?

engine used to keep in touch with those per-To put it sim-sons.

The analysis revealed that with oldply, it is partly because Japanese people tend tofriends communication was made via Face-have the same tastes and use social media be-book.

cause everybody uses them.

with whom, one was still in touch.

One feels urged

Old friends meant friends of the past
It meant a

to use them because friends and people aroundfriendship in the present perfect tense whereas

use social media.

the friendship referred to via Twitter is in the

My students responded thatthey felt urged to use social media because they
constituted the class contact network.

present progressive tense.
Again, let us now turn to another topic.

House-

We

wives responded that because their most picky

analyzed the relationship between the degree

friends who they had made friends withof happiness about one s life and the use of so-through their children started using social me-

cial media.

dia and they were somehow forced to follow

happiness by using social media? The results

suit to avoid being nitpicked.

have indicated that among teenagers, people

tioned reasons are true.

The aforemen-

Especially, after

In short, does a person attain

who used social media were unhappier.

This

March , social media have been constantly

does not mean, of course, that the use of socialreferred to by traditional media and it is possi-

media will automatically lead to happiness or

ble that many people found it good to start us-

unhappiness.

ing them.

Also, for young people social media,

multivariable explanation by putting into playwith their numerous mail functions, constituteelements such as household annual income andan alternative to e-mails and while the time forother demographic factors, the results have re-However, even when giving aJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. vealed that people who make use of social me-somewhat urged or under the pressure of doing

dia entertain a lower degree of happiness about

so.

their lives.

mind people of their past.

Above all, platforms such as Facebook reA while ago I said

It s quite difficult for me to explain such athe present perfect tense, but it goes as far

state of affairs, but the survey we carried out inback to one s acquaintances from elementary revealed that if one was disorganized, aschool years.

strong obsessive feeling of being topped by oth-old friends while the motivation for starting theers assailed young people, leading them to en-use of social media might have been the quest

tertain a high public self-consciousness of being

for change, the drive to show a different oneself

too much concerned over what other people

through rebuilding new relationship with new

were thinking about them. Such a state offriends.

mind can be related to the use of social media.

in such an environment.

The results of a survey conjointly conducted

You end up reconnecting with

It becomes difficult to change oneself

hindered by SNS.

One s carrier ends up

I personally think that SNSwith a major SNS company indicated & percent

turns out to be a burdening media because itof the people who are strongly addicted to SNS

creates a state of mutual surveillance where its

experience a strain in their social interactions

actors end up monitoring each other.

via the internet.

They use social media not be-cause they are having fun, but because they

Hiromatsu: Thank you very much, Prof. Hashi-come to a point where they are under the pres-moto.

sure of using them.

formation behavior was very interesting.

Your presentation about Japanese in-

Hashimoto published a new book.

A group interview with housewives indicatedProf.

Other thanthat the truth is that they do not really want to

his research, Survey on Time Use and Leisureutilize social media.

Witnesses such as, peo-

Activities is carried out by Statistics Bureau,

ple will be on your back, if you give up, be-

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communica-

cause a picky person insists that you continue,

tions.

it is hard to give up, people tell you that you

size information behavior, the comparison of

do not react enough to posts were numerous.

the two survey researches may be interesting.

Since Japanese people easily side with other

Furthermore, a survey of how the nation s peo-

Although this survey does not empha-

people s opinions, in a group of high school stu-

ple use their time is carried out by NHK.

dents or housewives, if a queen-like personcomparing these surveys, as Prof. Hashimoto sswitches from mixi to Facebook, the group fol-lecture seems to involve a very important prob-

lows suit and swiftly switches SNS platforms.

lem institution, I also think highly of his lecture.

In an environment where people feel obliged toThen，although I m sorry to preserve only

adopt the same states, if you don t regularly

short time, the second lecture is entitled as thecheck to fit in, you are going to be the target ofopen data application examples obtained fromcriticisms by others.

Therefore, it is not be-

the lessons of the Great East Japan Earthquake

cause people have fun utilizing social media

by Mr. Murakami of Mitsubishi Research Insti-

that they use them, but it is because they are

tute.

&

By

Mr. Murakami, please start your lecture.

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

Murakami: As I have variety of data, I will ex-

apparent.

For example, the state and local

plain the important data only.

governments have shelter information, but shel-Firstly, I will introduce the open data applica-

ter information concerning what relief supply totion examples obtained from the lessons of thewhich shelter was open only in PDF format,

Great East Japan Earthquake.

This is an exam-some shelters addresses were missing, or someple of visualization of automobile traffic perfor-

shelter institutions had abbreviated names on-

mance.

ly.

By marking on a map the traffic per-formance information which companies such as

Therefore, we had to put all the informa-tion in order from the start.

As for radiation

Pioneer, Honda, and Toyota held and the infor-

information, it took time to gather it because

mation of suspension of car traffic which ad-

there were many departments of many adminis-

ministrative organs held, we could know which

trative organs such as the Ministry of Educa-roads were open.

This is information we gottion, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology,

under the peculiar circumstances of the Greatthe Ministry of the Environment, and the local

East Earthquake, which is normally kept secret

governments, which released it in many situa-

owing to the matter of privacy.

tions.

With this infor-

We had also to correct the application

mation, we were able to judge the routes to de-software we had made to visualize radiation in-liver relief supplies, and to know the places

formation, each time the data had been moved

where relief supplies had not been delivered

about.
We heard that a company which operated

yet.
Power companies

portal sites asked the government to offer data

including Tokyo Electric Power Company re-as the company was providing information inleased information concerning electricity de-their sites, but the government turned down

mand and supply.

This was to prevent great

their request, saying that the administrative of-At first, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

fice could not offer data to a specific company,

gave the demand and supply data in PDF for-and that the data should be applied for throughmat and graph image format, which were very

an industry group.

difficult to use.

Then volunteers and compa-

result but it was clear that there had not beennies like Yahoo computerized the data and in-enough discussion about which information

troduced them in their own websites, or madeshould be offered in what ways in case of emer-

application software for smartphones and dis-gency.

There is one more thing.

blackout.

Now I will talk about the efforts of open data

tributed it for free, which led to produce various
services.

The data were given as aoverseas.

Although power companies finally

As for open data, the efforts of thepresented data in CSV format, we observed theopen government since the Obama administra-

phenomenon that various services came to exist

tion have been widely introduced in Japan.

very rapidly which data holding companies orthe EU, the order concerning the reuse of data

administrative organs could not offer, by mak-owned by public institutions was given to theing data open in a secondary available form.

whole EU in .

On the other hand, many problems became

Since then, each country

has been constantly making efforts.

InThe openJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. data movement now is progressing with Britain

lished by the collaboration of industry, govern-and France leading the EU.

ment, and academia.

They think that they will be able to have eco-

The characteristic of  the e-Government

nomic growth by effectively making use of theOpen Data Strategy is that its significance andinformation which the administrative organs

aim are economic active growth.

bury.

It has been calculated that the economic

significantly stresses the economic growth, on

effect would be one hundred and forty billions

the contrary to the open government before

Euros at the maximum, a few trillions in Japa-

that which stressed democracy.

nese yen.

In short, it

Based on thispoint, the third policy says that the strategy can

As for the United States of America, just afterbe applied to by both profit making and non-the Obama administration was born in  ,profit organizations.

The President s Memorandum on Transparen-egy can be used freely to start a new business,cy and Open Government was published.

whether it is a profit making or nonprofit.

In

this memorandum, there were three principles:This

is the key point of this strategy.

transparency of government; participationof the people; and cooperation.

In other words, this strat-

Has a business using open data been alreadyborn, then?

In MayThis is the most important point.

, The President s Memorandum - Building

I am afraid that we have only few examples ofa st Century Digital Government was pub-this kind.

lished.

This memorandum is different from

Climate Cooperation is a venture businessthat in  on the point that open data is morewhich was started by a person who used toemphasized.

Before this, it was OK if people

work for Google.

could read it.

However, the memorandum as-

surance purchased only on the internet.

It deals with agricultural inIn theserts that data must be open in the form that

United States, information of soil and weather

computers can automatically collect and aggre-

are released by quite small unit.

gate.

 Climate Cooperation  developed unique

By using this,In Japan, The e-Government Open Dataknowhow to calculate the risks of disaster oc-

Strategy was determined on the basis of The

currence, with which it made an insurance ser-

Basic Action Plan for the Promotion of e-vice for large-scale farmers.

Government in  by the IT Strategy Head-data such as the place and size of your farming

quarter of the Government of Japan in July

field, your harvest last year, your main crops,

, based on  The Basic Policy on e-

your schedule for this year on the website, you

Government Promotion in . Based on

will have the answer about your premium.

this, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Com-you pay the premium by credit card, your insur-

munications is progressing the basic enterpriseance will have become effective.

for information circulation, and the Ministry of

are damaged by disasters like tornados, you will

Economy, Trade and Industry is progressing IT

be indemnified.

integrating forums.

ness transaction of the company is three thou-The Open Data Circula-tion Promotion Consortium was newly estab-sand billions.

R

If you put yourIf

If your crops

The recent volume of busi-

In one year, it has rapidly be-Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

smartphones.

come ten times more.

HIROMATSU et al.

With smartphones, it has be-

Other than that, there is an example of a Ca-come possible not only to input information,nadian company Gold Coop, which mines

but also to circulate pictures we took, to collectgold.

and share various data by using smartphones as

At one time, it was exposed to bankrupt-

cy, so it made its company information such as

sensors.

borings and geological surveys open to the pub-cloud service.

lic.

It offered prizes for people who can see

data has become drastically cheap, which has

where to mine by examining data it has given.

made it possible to challenge various businesses

Then, it had many suggestions for which it gaveby trial and error method.

prizes.

Consequently, it mined & tons of

The last point is the spread of the
The cost of keeping and dealing

On the other hand, it is necessary to solve

gold, with which it gained a few tens of trillions

problems.

yen.

information is not open to the public.

The business which would have been

The first problem is that necessary
In Ja-

bankrupt if its information was kept secret haspan, we have a problem of not having definite

had business grows by making its information

rules about making information open to theopen and gathering wisdoms of the world.

public.

Once we have the rules, we will havea style according to them.

Finally, I will mention the environmental

It might take time,changes and problems which promote open da-

but we need to make the rules with a consensus

ta.

of the people.

According to the materials of Cisco Systems,

The second problem is about licenses.

We

the amount of data on the web is drastically in-have to think about copyright and licenses tocreasing, and it is presumed to keep increasing

promote open data, and we have to spreadin the future.

them widely as standards.

Up to now, it has been OK that

The third problem

people look at the web and make use of it.

is about format of data and methods to offer

However, we will have to use machines to col-them.

lect, calculate, and analyze the information

which are easy to get and can be read by ma-

which is rapidly increasing.

chines.

This is what ishappening now.

We have to make methods to offer data

The last problem is about how to combine

I have four more points.

The first point isand use data.

the spread of the internet.

The cost of infor-and data B of , we will have to put them

If we have data A of Heisei 

mation circulation has become explosively

in order by ourselves.

cheap.

systems that machines can collect, calculate da-

The second point is the spread of so-cial media.

We have to establish

As Professor Hashimoto men-ta and give us conclusions by standardizing, fortioned in his lecture, social media provide indi-

example, disorganized unites and disorganizedviduals with opportunities to give their personal

borders of the R prefectures of Japan.

information.

Existing mass media give us one

The Open Data Circulation Promotion Con-way information circulation, but social media

sortium, which I have introduced earlier, ishave produced multi-directional information

aiming at making movements of open data

circulation.

among the people, while urging the government

The third point is the spread ofĵJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. If you have an interest in thecellent setting within which a basic coping

movements, you will be welcome to participate.

method could be developed to solve this prob-

toward them.

I end my lecture now.

lem.

Thank you for yourToday, I would like to focus on this posi-tive aspect and present some of my researchattention.

findings.

In particular, I will focus on the ano-

Hiromatsu: Thank you very much, Mr. Muraka-

nymity guaranteeing technique, which is an ar-

mi.

ea I have researched quite heavily.

Mr. Murakami talked about the current

This area

status of open data and the requirements of itsof research is potentially useful to the rest of thedevelopment in Japan.

Recently, not only theworld, and I think that it would be appropriate

phrase open data but also a phrase big data, al-

to discuss several topics within this field as

though I don t know the actual relation between

themes for this symposium Social Information

them, is used frequently, and it is thought that

Study and the World. Before I begin, however,

the essence of open data is similar to that of big

I must clarify that I use the term anonymity

data.

not to express closed, one-on-one communica-

Thank you very much for your interest-

ing lecture.

tion, but to express an open style, such as ananonymous BBS (Bulletin Board System).

Now, I introduce Prof. Iwai of Gunma University as the third speaker.

Many DSS design models that can guarantee

Please start your lec-

anonymity have been developed.

ture.

I do notmean to propose the replacement of existing
Iwai: It is my greatest pleasure to be here today

conventional committees in charge of decision-

with you all.

making through the online Group Decision Sup-My name is Iwai, and I am from

Gunma University. I conduct researches on

port System (or GDSS).

the decision support system, otherwise known

up the GDSS beneath the present committee

as DSS.

with the right to submit agendas to the commit-

Since the great earthquake in , decision-

Rather, I hope to settee, with the aim to achieve overall fortification

making among the Japanese people has re-of the decision-making system.

ceived much attention and wide criticism.

the virtual space is set up to allow all who are

Specifically, their tendency not to make quick

concerned with these issues to participate.

decisions or to make improper ones has been

addition, if any particular result is found to be

criticized as detrimental in the cases thatconcerned with a certain proportion of all vot-

decision-making is entirely necessary. Someers in the system, it would be submitted to thehave linked this tendency to the Japanese cul-conventional decision-making committee.

ture, which discourages people against criticiz-

research has focused on this type of system.

ing anything, even in the cases that critical dis-

The GDSS in
In

MyThis approach itself could produce several

cussion is obviously required.

problems associated with the DSS designs.

However, I would like to take a different ap-

Here, I will address the problem of the conver-

proach to this issue, and point out that Japan,

gence process within decision-making, and dis-with this unique problem, may serve as an ex-

cuss how guaranteeing anonymity relates toSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

this. Anonymity is widely acknowledged to

introduced a framework in which the move-lead to chaos, so coming to the conclusion inment towards convergence is enhanced by thethis setting can be harmful.

motives of users who wish to have their plans

may not always be true.

However, thisaccepted.

I would like to explain

In other words, simply proposing aby using data I obtained in the joint researches

particular plan by one user tends not to result ina few years ago.

many votes, but if the plan is merged with other

The most successful, supporting frameworks

plans, the expectation is that the combined

for anonymous communication in GDSS haveplans can obtain more votes.

been designed for the divergence phase in thethis framework would help the users find ways

decision-making process.

to converge their plans.

A good example ofthis is electronic brain storming.

We hoped thatIn the con-

We did find that this framework allowed forvergence phase that follows, however, very few

some convergence, though the data were some-framework designs for supporting anonymous

what outdated now.

communication have been presented.

mented and conducted with regard to book se-

WhileThis system was imple-

the assumption seems to be that anonymity may

lection at a library.

remove some tools of persuasion, thereby may

share the details with you, I want you to share

increase the difficulty of discussion of coordina-some results of this process.

tion, perhaps a system can be designed for theaction occurred among users, but as some plansconvergence process as well, if a careful design

were improved by some users, relationships be-is employed.

tween the plans began to emerge.

With this intent, my colleague

While I don t have time to
At first, no inter-

Finally,

and I conducted an experiment using our new

Plan C was selected, with a total of  votes.

GDSS.

We chose the following book selection

This final plan included some private book wish

example which involved hundreds of university

lists that could not be openly appealed by writ-

students in a typical problem requiring resolu-

ing a request form at the library desk.

tion.

concluded that the anonymity in this system al-

A lecturer at a university is obliged to recom-

Thus, I

lowed certain unspoken needs to be identified

mend new reference books to the university li-

among participants.

I m interested to examinebrary for students in his or her department.

another version of this GDSS, in which multiple

He or she asks students to use a GDSS to makecomputer agent programs, rather than humana recommendation list as a reference before thebeings, interact.

The

Next, in the research field of anonymity, thenumber of recommended books as well as ac-

definition of anonymity itself is one topic of in-ceptable categories for the books is limited.

terest, and represents the second topic in my

Each participant in the system uses a uniquepresentation.

and unchangeable handle-name to communi-

I would like to explain my approach to measur-

cate with others, which guarantees anonymity.

ing the degree of anonymity briefly.

lecturer gives the final list to the library.

The main issue here is how interactions
among users generate a convergent effect.

With the remaining time I have,

In general, anonymous voting tends to beWe

identified as private voting.



Thus, it may seem

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. strange to think about measuring the degree ofvoters voted positively.

anonymity.

voted negatively, B positively, C negatively, D

However, I d like to take a look at

Specifically, Voter A

a few examples I presented roughly  years

positively, and E negatively.

ago, back in .

drug, each one would be forced to reveal their

In one example, individuals

By using truth

A, B, and C conducted a secret ballot for S ver-votes one at a time.

sus N, and everyone voted for S.

If the results

mation value obtained by their confessions?

had been revealed and analyzed, it would be

When A revealed a negative vote, the informa-

obvious to all voters and outside observers thattion value of the confession would be −log /&,everyone voted for S, which completely elimi-

because the proportion of negative votes among

nated any anonymity.

the total was /&.

However, please con-sider the case that C voted for N.

What would be the infor-

When B revealed a positive

If the results

vote, the information value now would be −log

were revealed and analyzed to show that two

/, because the proportion of positive votes

voted for S and one voted for N, then it would

among the remaining  votes was /.

be obvious to C that A and B both voted for S.

these obtained values were added, we would

With these examples, we may argue that the

get a sum of log .

When

Notably, the result value

concept of anonymity in voting behavior should

would not reflect the order in which the votes

be formalized as a concept involving a continu-

were revealed, and thus the order did not reallyous object which is scalable by level, rather

matter.

than an all-or-nothing concept.

We may also

tually unnecessary, as the calculation only re-argue that the anonymity level for outside ob-quired the number of positive and negative

servers and that for inside members who partic-

votes.

ipated in the voting should be defined different-

In fact, the revealing process was ac-

I have omitted some of the details, but myly.

calculation method can measure the degree ofHow can the degree of anonymity be measured?

anonymity which cannot be calculated by sim-

To answer this question, I proposed aple entropy-based calculations.

A very similar

measurement technique to evaluate anonymity

research study on anonymity was recently pub-level in voting by adding informational values

lished abroad and attracted much attention.

for all voters expected declarations regarding

This research concerned privacy in computerthe content of their votes.

networks and focused on issues such as who

In this technique,the informational value of each vote is evaluat-

sends an email to whom.

ed as −log (generation probability), which fol-theory is nearly identical to what I just present-lows the concept of self-information based oned.

Shannon s information theory.

One importantlation method with regard to the computer net-

aspect of this technique is that it inherits addi-

work researches, and feel that my methodtion, which is a characteristic of Shannon s the-shows some potential to open up a new field ofory.

socio-informatics.

To explain this, let s examine anonymity

However, the basic

I am confident in the validity of my calcu-

It could be used effectively

from the viewpoint of an outside observer in a

in researches in this field and towards the de-small voting scenario.

velopment of application systems.

Two of the five totalSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

effective use of information technologies in so-

In conclusion, topics concerning groupdecision-making and anonymity show us theirciety.

great possibilities.

integrated arts and sciences.

I am excited about the op-

My talk is based on the performances of

portunity for Japan to utilize this timely situa-

I will describe an approach to the theory oftion to design world-level systems for this end.

social information systems, a few current trends

Thank you for your time.

in international conferences in social media, amodel of a risk information disclosure game, a

Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

As I havefield model of our research findings in enter-

heard his lecture before, I m happy to hear his

prise social networking sites (SNSs), and a pro-study s progress.

posal of a strategic upward spiral in social infor-

Well, the last speaker, Prof. Ohta of the Uni-

matics.

versity of Electro-Communications, please start

In my approach to social informatics, social

your lecture.

information is characterized as information thatappears in the process of human activities in so-

Ohta: I am going to talk about the strategic up-

ciety.

Society consists of connections or dis-ward spiral of social informatics. Because thisconnections among people.

is the first symposium of the Society of Socio-

are observed in the complicated connections,

Informatics, my talk concentrates on a generalwhich we have to understand fully.

Human relations

methodological framework in social informat-

Social informatics is an integrated discipline

ics, in contrast with the previous talk on rigor-

of arts and sciences that closely integrates theous formulation.

humanities, social sciences, computer science,

I hope this talk will acts as abridge between the symposium of positive study

and science and engineering.

Currently, social

today and that of theoretical study tomorrow.

media is the field s main focus.

My affiliation is the Graduate Department ofSocial information systems are systems that

Social Intelligence and Informatics in the Grad-promote the distribution of social informationuate School of Information Systems.

to improve quality of life.

uate school was established 

The grad-

They support the and aims to in-

distribution of information in society and indi-tegrate arts and sciences in education and re-vidual life, in politics and public administration,

searches of information systems.

and in economics and management.

Against thisacademic background, I actively look into theTable Recently,these systems have also supported knowledge

Characterization of Social Informatics

Problems

Contents

Characteristics

Phenomena

Digital Society

Reality / Virtuality

How to Approach

Complex System / Organizing

Emergence / Boundary

How to UnderstandSimulation / Gaming

Rules / Mechanism of Interaction

Benefits

Institutional Design / Systems Design

Cyber Commons(Ohta, )Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. distribution in these areas.

businesses to invest in the rehabilitation ofProminent topics

include how social media can help to reinvent

communities by the Web.

In its  White Pa-

regional communities and what a knowledge

per on Information and Communications in Ja-

distribution network system should be like.

pan, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Com-

Table  characterizes social informatics withmunications discussed the revitalization ofrespect to the problems to be handled, thebonds in regional communities by using ICT.

methodological contents, and their characteris-

In June , IEEE Spectrum, a communication

tics in the approach (Ohta, Thejournal of IEEE, featured The Era of the Web

problems in social informatics include what

Starts Now, which contrasted Facebook, a so-kind of phenomena are to be studied, how they

cial network, with Google, a search engine.

, ).

are to be understood, what kind of methods are

As for international academic meetings, atto be employed to explore them, and that whatthe &th Hawaii International Conference onkind of benefits they provide for society.

System Science (HICSS&) on January -R, ,As for the methodology, simulation and gaming are the major alternatives.

in Maui, we coordinated lectures such as Minitrack: Social Media in Social Informatics and

The simulation

model describes the mechanisms of interactions

held a forum.

At the th World Congress onon the basis of the connections among theSocial Simulation (WCSS) on September -

agents or people as components in the model.

R, , in Taipei, we held a workshop on social

The mechanisms or logics, which bring about

media and simulation.

certain phenomena, can be operationally un-vanced research results and discussed the cur-derstood by the observation of simulation.

rent topics.

By understanding the mechanisms or logics,

We presented ad-

A major problem in social informatics is thethe design of institutions and systems can berisk information disclosure.

supported, including the designs of social sys-

troduce our game theoretic model of risk infor-

tems and information systems.

mation disclosure.

An informationcommons such as Wikipedia is a beneficial example of an implemented entity.

I will therefore in-Since the risk information disclosure is an in-

Meanwhile,

teractive process among individuals, groups,social media electronically accumulate the ex-

and institutions, the interactions among themchanges of information and knowledge amongmust be modeled.

participants, which results in so-called big data.

model the risk information disclosure as inter-

Social media exhibited their usefulness after

actions between a government agency and the

We use game theory to

the Great East Japan Earthquake in the form of

public.

the person finder system and accessible roadterested in the risk information disclosure.

map, which were developed using the informa-

That is, the risk information disclosure modeltion contributed by and to the social media.

Inmust include the concept of satisficing in deci-

May , Nikkei Computer, a semimonthly

sion making in accordance with the aspiration

magazine, looked at the social power of social

level of the public.

media and introduced a case that called formodel are omitted in this talk.



The public, however, is not always in-

The other premises in theSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

We formulate a pay-off matrix for a risk infor-summarized as above.

HIROMATSU et al.

Note that we can ob-

mation disclosure game between a government

serve a dilemma of choices between the gov-

agency and the public.

ernment agency and the public in the region of

For the public, thepay-off matrix consists of the costs of risk infor-

the information searching game in Figure .

mation searches, the probability of damages,

this region, Nash solution is the informationand the surprise cost.

As for the government

search by the public and the non-disclosure ofagency, the pay-off matrix consists of therisk information by the government agency.

amount of damages, the administrative cost in

However, the Pareto solution is the non-Incase the of the risk information searches by the

information search by the public and the disclo-

public, the amount of damages assumed by thesure of risk information by the government

government agency, and the probability ofagency. Therefore, the government agency

damages based on the cumulative prospect the-and the public have to develop a certain policyory.

to overcome the dilemma.

Figure  illustrates solutions of the risk information disclosure game.

The next topic I will talk about is a field mod-

The solutions consist

el of our research results and the modeling con-of the four kinds of games: the voluntary disclo-cerning the structure and process that bringsure game, the assurance game, the information

about the performances of enterprise SNSs as

searching game, and the compulsory disclosure

examples of using social media. The structure

game.

and process of performance in enterprise SNS
are illustrated in Figure .

Our risk information disclosure game can be

Figure  Spaces of Risk Information Disclosure Game (Umehara & Ohta, , )

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. The prompt decision making in an enterpriseproblems are not necessarily new ones for the

SNS is observed at two of the six stages (the in-decision makers, but the connection between

sight stage and the selection stage) in thethe solutions and the problems results in thedecision-makings process due to the informa-problem being promptly solved by the informa-tion brought by the SNS to the decision makers.

tion provided by the SNS.

At the insight stage, the SNS offers the alterna-

In this kind of problem solving, the various

tives for the participants and the decision mak-participants can offer this kind of information,ers.

who are members of other departments or

The information provided by the SNS iseffective information that has not been foundmembers who are not business associates of theby the decision makers themselves, although it

decision maker before the communication by

may not necessarily be true.

the SNS.

They communicate by submitting in-

At the selection stage, the SNS offers the can-formation easily in the SNS and share the field

didates of solutions for the participants and theof choice opportunities brought by the SNS.

decision makers.

The model illustrated in Figure  consists of the

The decision makers thenconnect the solutions with the problems.

Figure 

problem-solving process model based on theThe

Field Model of Enterprise SNS Effectiveness (Kato, Ogawa, Suwa, and Ohta, )&

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

decision-making process model by Simon anda proper process to develop a modeling and a

Matsuda and of the problem-solving structural

policy in social informatics.

model based on the garbage can model by

real world, case studies and research surveys

March and Olsen.

are employed on the one hand, such as thoseTo understand the

The enterprise SNS creates a friendly fieldpresented by Prof. Hashimoto, and the formula-that makes the participants consider helping

tion of the game theoretic model and the searcheach other: Let s try to consult here. The field

for the solutions in the model are employed onmodel can be developed as an upward spiral tothe other hand, as is the development of a fieldarrange the recurrent feedbacks into a friendlier

model of effectiveness in enterprise SNSs,

field.

which is a less operational model.

The final topic of my talk is an upward spiralstrategy in social informatics.

These mod-els are illustrated in Figures  and .

An upward spi-In the upward spiral process, a certain inter-ral process between the real world and theruption between the real world and the model

model world is a key process with respect to theworld exists.

upward spiral process in the risk information

come before the upward spiral is progressed.

disclosure and enterprise SNSs.

Figure 

A modeling or theorizing process takes placeshows a scheme of interactive relations be-from the real world to the model world, and atween the real world and the model world.

validation process of a model or theory or the

The interruption has to be over-recommendation process of a policy takes place

Though you may consider the upward spiralfrom the model world to the real world.

process to appear to be a mere verbal play, it is

Figure  Real World and Model World (Suwa & Ohta, )In theJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. model world, the network analysis and the casemodel world.

analysis are fashionable in the validation pro-parameters, and a weighting function of proba-

cess in social informatics. Successful works inbility based on the cumulative prospect theory.

the upward spiral process can lead to the devel-

As a result, as illustrated in Figure , four types

opment of an academic discipline.

of game space are derived.

I will give a

The model includes variables,

Among them, thefew examples of upward spiral processes based

information search game is found, which brings

on our researches.

about a kind of social dilemma between the

The first example is the process of the risk in-choices of the government agency and the pub-formation disclosure game. In the example

lic, and which results in a proposal of an intro-

shown in Figure , the problem is the risk infor-

duction of the guardian agent for the solution ofmation disclosure.

a social dilemma.

Even though the problem

had been studied before the Great East JapanTo validate the model, a reported traffic acci-

Earthquake, the unwillingness of risk informa-dent was used in which a car maker had not dis-tion disclosure by the government agency wasclosed the relevant risk information. In thefrequently reported.

The choices by the gov-

case analysis, the B/S and the P/L of the car

ernment agency and by the public in the realmaker and the related information were gath-world are formulated in a form of a payoff ma-ered and analyzed, the space of dilemma in thetrix, and this is developed into a model in thegame was confirmed, and the results were pub-Figure  Diagram of Upward Spiral Process in Risk Information Disclosure Game

R

Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

lished in our IEEE paper, Umehara and Ohta

for the decision makers in the problem solving,(). The model is extended to the model ofand that prompt decision making is possible us-

a problem in information security, and the ex-ing the information provided by the SNS.

tension shows the applicability of the upward

These hypotheses are turned into the researchspiral process.

surveys, and structural interviews are used to

The second example is the process of the
field model of enterprise SNSs.

obtain responses from the members in the en-

In the example

terprise SNS.

In the structural interview, com-shown in Figure &, the prior theories and mod-plementary questions are asked to the respon-els are referred to: the theory and model of thedents with respect to the responses in the ques-decision-making process in problem solving,tionnaire, which are difficult for researchers towhich was proposed by Simon & Matsuda, andunderstand.

the theory and model of organizational struc-

The survey results are analyzed with respect

ture in problem solving, which was proposed byto the performance of SNS in the process ofMarch & Olsen.

These theories and models

problem solving and in the structure of problem

and a literature survey are employed to develop

solving in the enterprise and are used to devel-

the hypotheses of the research survey.

The ex-

op the effectiveness model of enterprise SNSs.

amples of hypotheses are that the information

The field model of enterprise SNS effectivenessby a member of another department is effective

has to be verified further in such a manner inFigure  Diagram of Upward Spiral Process in Field Model of Enterprise SNSĵJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. The framework is a change or a design of thethe upward spiral, and the policy recommenda-

social information process in the modern age.

tions also have to be sought.

First, changes of human behavior are diverse in

I am afraid my talk may just remain at theframework level, but I will suggest three points.

the changing information process.

First, social informatics can mediate betweenof them is changes of information behavior, andmany disciplines, i.e. it is an inter-disciplinary

furthermore one group of them is changes indiscipline, and confront complex phenomena inmedia usage behavior.

society.

Second, social informatics should em-

low companies or citizens to use the largeploy research hypotheses and modeling toamount of public data which the government

share knowledge of issues and research results.

has? To give an answer to this question is the

Finally, to develop social informatics, I propose

design itself of social information process of G

the upward spiral strategy based on the cyclic

to C.

process between the real world and the model

process of social decision-making leads to re-world.

building of the social system.

Thank you for your kind attention.

One group

Second, how do we al-

Third, a design of the social information
Fourth, it is nec-

essary to design a smooth social information
circulation to improve quality of life.

It is in-

Hiromatsu: Prof. Ohta, thank you very much.

cluded in thinking about the use of the informa-

Although this session is the empirical session, ittion technology from a general viewpoint.

is very important how knowledge obtained frommentioned just now, we might be able to under-

the proof can be generalized and abstracted.

stand all the reports in a unified way from theToday, Prof. Ohta proposed a spiral up strategy

same point of view.

As

I would like to ask each speaker a couple ofas a concrete solution.
Well, although the planned time was exceed-questions in turn.

ed, let s take a ten-minute break.

To begin with, I have some questions to Pro-

(after a ten-minute break, comments by a com-

fessor Murakami.

mentator)quake triggered the project, which was to de-

The Great East Japan Earth-sign how to allow companies or citizens to use
Hiromatsu: Now, Prof. Tomiyama of Gunma

large amount of public data, in the non-

University, please give us your comments.

business situation. However, it is expectedthat the business use of public data spreads

Tomiyama: Each of the four reports presented

gradually because it produces new chances of

now was rich enough in content.

business.

It was very

interesting for me to listen to and study.

My

What is the difference between the

non-business use and the business use?

Howcomment on these reports consists of two parts.

do you reflect the difference into a system of

One is about a common framework that may be

use rules?

able to understand all the reports in a unified

should take full advantage of the public data.

way from the same point of view.

So, I would like to ask you about these points.

The other isa couple of questions to each speaker.

I think that society and companies

Next, I have a question to Professor Hashimo-Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

to.

by carrying reality on the back and in turn enter

I understood that there had been a change
Its impact isthe real world by carrying the model, and weSpecifically, there was aare going to get closer to the truth by repeatingin the PC access to the Internet.
worrisome for me.

HIROMATSU et al.

talk that access time to the internet through PC

this spiral to the upper direction.

increased considerably.

empirical researches are questioned about theirBecause our time isThen, thelimited, if more time is assigned to a certain ac-

relations with the theories.

tivity, less time is assigned to other activity.

Inpirical researches continuously and accumulate

this case, what was the activity in which the as-

their results because they are required for thesigned time decreased?

development of Social Informatics.

It may be or not be

We carry out em-

Is just thissome kind of activity (for example, TV viewing)strategy enough in order to promote this proj-

in the category called information behavior.

ect?

Or it may be some activity that straddles several

that I want to get a hint from you who have thecategories.

accumulation of many interesting studies forThis is my concern, so I would likemany years.

to ask you about this.

I thinkPlease let me ask you about thesepoints.

Furthermore, I have a question to Professor
Iwai.

Are no other devices necessary?

I think that it is an important theme how
Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

to support the process of group discussion on

He gave us

the internet by people with different opinions

general comments and questions to each speak-and how to converge them into only one opin-

er.

ion.

swer in a short time, please respond.

The reason is as follows.

In a town or an

If any speaker has an objection or an an-organization in the real society, there are manydifferent people.

They must discuss how het-

Murakami: Thank you for your question.

erogeneous people make society and how theybuild a consensus.

The question is whether there are differences

How can a large number ofin the usage rules, and whether there should be

people participate in a discussion process car-differences in them between business use andried out on the internet?

other uses of public data.

The current social

media can only support the community formation that gathers similar people in property.

ing these points.

whether they have commercial use or not.
In addition, there is a problem what to do andnew development of current social media likehow to respond to damages caused by wrong

So, I would like to ask you about thispoint.

data, and to the reliability guarantee.

Finally, I have some questions to Professor
Ohta.

For example, about licensesof Creative Commons, data holders can decideIthink that your research project may lead to a
this.

We are still examin-case of business, or in the case of volunteer ser-The  upward spiral strategy  is themodel that is very familiar with me.

In thevices, the usage rules are different.

The rea-

They alldepend on the situations of each case.

Con-

son is because Ohta s upward spiral strategy re-sumer Contract Act also has been involved.

sembles my research strategy.

think that it is necessary to consider each con-

It is the strate-

gy with which we enter the world of the model

crete example, which leads to accumulation.

&I

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

mentioned new media usage has not really orThen, Prof.

significantly increased.

Hashimoto, please respond.

Thus, their usage

alone does not exhaustively explain the deHashimoto: Well, your question is related to thecrease in the time devoted to watching TV.

influence of the changes that are taking place inthink that, with the appearance of various types

information behavior.

To answer your ques-of media, the time in the information behavior

tion I will rely on survey results concerning mu-

of people has been fragmented, scattered, andtual changes in the management of time in daily

divided between those media.

life.

I

In my case, it depends on the place where

It can also be said that, the cost or the ex-

I can be, but since the past few years the time I

penses for access to information have become

spend home has not changed.

less and less.

However, theFixed charge systems are widely

time spent home by young people is more andavailable and it is possible to have access to en-

more decreasing.

tertainment with less money.

It is a fact that the time

Consequently,

young people watch TV and the percentage of

our surveys have indicated, for instance, that

TV watchers among young people have drasti-

the volume of money used for internet shopping

cally lessened. When it comes to the internet,

has not really swollen, and comparatively to thethe total amount of time has not necessarily in-general consumer trends, internet shopping

creased.

businesses are not particularly boosting.

It is not really the usage per se thathas not risen.

Con-

It is rather the fact that due toversely, it can be asserted that structural chang-

the amelioration of machine s performance, thees taking place in the information behavior of

response time of machines has speeded up,

people at home are encouraging consumers towhich means that more than before, machines

restrain from engaging in expenditures.

today can efficiently process and absorb a larg-

are no conclusive results concerning the corre-er quantity of information within a short period

lation with sectors beyond the confines of infor-of time.

mation behavior in surveys referred to in our

It used to take a long time to send e-

mails, but nowadays processing e-mails does

There

presentation.

not take time.
Now to the question concerning how the un-

Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

Then Prof.

Iwai, please respond.

utilized time at home caused by not watching
TV is spent, as has been shown on a previous
slide, people allot that time to the use of various

Iwai: As Prof. Tomiyama has noted, the devel-other media.

The time for watching videos

opment of the internet and social media seems

which recorded TV programs has increased, forto encourage people to meet others who are

instance.

similar to themselves, and I agree with this to a

Besides, the time for playing offline

mobile phone games, the use of radio-

certain degree.

controlled gadgets, and the time for watching

counter people we d rather avoid, but must doDVDs and blue rays are all increasing little byso in order to solve problems and come tolittle.

agreements.

The time devoted to each of the above-&In real life, we sometimes en-

Encouragement and support ofSocio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

this unpleasant aspect of meeting may require

the question, What is university like? One isanother type of technological development.

that it consists of faculties, which consist of de-This is greatly intriguing to me, and I am work-

partments.

ing to develop a decision support system in

ple useful to society, or that it promotes re-which people can avoid various negative effects

searches in society.

caused by interpersonal relationships and sim-

ond answer is significant to my idea.

The other is that it produces peoThe viewpoint in the sec-

ply concentrate on finding a better outcome.

When academics solve social problems, they

The DSS model I presented today is one prod-

need something like the plug-in type interface

uct of this research, and I expect that the next

to be developed.

question is how this system can be applied to at-

the academic or model world and in the realtract attention among many people.

world must be developed.

In my model, one representative can support

That is, the plug-in both in
To illustrate myidea, I have proposed a framework level de-another representative, thereby generating ascription of the upward spiral process.

tree structure of support among the representa-

The factor analysis and the principal compo-

Theoretically, this is similar to the stylenent analysis in the multivariate statistical anal-of large-scale decision-making in the real world,

ysis are good examples to explain the basic ne-

and I hope that the target digital system works

cessity of my idea by contrasting them within practice as well.

each other.

tives.

I m not sure how much in-

The factor analysis postulates theterest will exist for systems in which many peo-

structural equation model (SEM) before the data

ple participate in the electronic decision-

analysis. The results of analysis verify themaking process, which is another potentially in-model. On the other hand, the principal com-

evitable issue.

ponent analysis seeks the formula of data in an

More time and thought are re-quired to deal with this point.

efficient method by minimizing the variances ofdata.

Hiromatsu: Then, Prof. Ohta, please.

I usually prefer the principal component

analysis to the factor analysis as an academic
method due to its objectivity.

However, I have

Ohta: Although I cannot strikingly answer thecome to a conviction that we have to discussquestions from Prof. Tomiyama, I can give an

the method including the background of data

additional explanation concerning my idea withand the purpose of analysis in the application.

respect to the upward spiral strategy in social

The application of SEM or the covariance struc-informatics.

ture analysis, as described in my previous work,
is a trend in data analysis, and it is a reminder

Recently, a popular topic is how academics
can manage social problems.

I have no inten-of the significance of model world.

tion to discuss this in detail, but I want to explain systems theory briefly.

I look forward to the suggestions for the up-

The systems the-ward spiral strategy in social informatics fromory discusses the importance of a meta-system
for a system to understand the system.

Prof. Tomiyama and all of you.

For ex-ample, there may be two probable answers to

Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

&Prof. Tomi-

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. yama, do you have any further questions withthe results into the practitioners meeting, I

respect to answer of reporters? You don t.

think there is the need for making rules in gen-Now, although the planned time was exceeded,eral use for utility companies and governments.

everyone in the floor, are there any questions?

You need to proceed to check and challenge in-If your question is one for the specific reporter

troducing a model of the making rules of openor the commentator, please indicate the subject

data to Japan, using Creative Commons and li-

in advance.

censes in EU as its base to certain degree.

Before starting your remark,please inform us of your name and affiliation.
Any question?
Tanaka: Excuse me.

I am Hideyuki Tanaka of

the University of Tokyo.
question to Dr. Murakami.

Are there

any other questions from the floor?

No morequestions?

Thank you verymuch for today s valuable lectures.

Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

Then, I have a question.

I have a

The question in-volves my general impression and it is for the

As Prof. Tomiyama

four reporters and the commentator.

suggested, I m very interested in making rules.

Today, we have very valuable lectures from

In your lecture, as the government and the con-the four reporters.

sortium were referred to, what do you think istus, the purpose of this session is not an exhaus-

the core of the making rules?

As I wrote the first prospec-

Especially, astive argument about Socio-Informatics or thethe national government must consider thewhole research field of Socio-Informatics but in-whole country, making rules may be difficult.

dividual arguments through concrete examples

For example, environment administration andafter presenting the expertise, and there were

pollution administration started by local gov-

very interesting lectures, questions and an-ernments in some cases.

swers.

However, as I m notsure whether the making rules should be started

The session was successful. However, I

by a local government, I want to ask your opin-

want to ask everybody about an opinion withion.

respect to the generality or the exhaustiveness.
At is may be related to making rules of open da-

Murakami: Thank you for your question.

Forta, in my impression, regrettably, the reliability

the government, the e-Government Open Dataof the researchers or scholars seemed to be de-Strategy was formulated in July , on whichcreased by the main reason of the Great East Ja-

the electronic government open data officials

pan Earthquake.

meeting is to be launched.

This will be theoriented to mainly experts in some specificcore of the making rules of promoting open da-

fields, for example, atomic energy or seismolo-ta.

gy, it seems that all of the researchers must faceIn the meeting, experts and representatives

Although the phenomenon is

the heavy problems.

of various ministries will gather and discuss on

In this meaning, as the target of this academic

the rules to seeking for an agreement.
By examining the rules in Open Data Promo-society is socio-information or simply informa-tion Consortium, as well as inputting part oftion, fortunately, there are no big issues includ-&Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

ing private information.

HIROMATSU et al.

poses and frown on surveys.

However, when we

In the past, whentackle the field of Socio-Informatics, I think it

you stated clearly that it is for research purpos-

consequently becomes a fundamental issue toes, we are from the University of Tokyo,

improve the reliability of researchers for obtain-

people were readily willing to respond because

ing a variety of valuable information or useful

you are from the University of Tokyo, but to-

information.

day people do not easily respond.

I want to ask you your opinion about thispoint.

Indirectly

Japanese people are, in fact, saying What are

Please answer this question.

you up to, you scholars? How are you handling the information you gather? Are you re-Ohta: The problem is a critical and difficult

ally going to deliver? Will the society change

problem for us.

For my talk, a topic of risk

thanks to you researches? I think these ques-communication in society is the relevant prob-

tions translate the vague suspicion that ordinarylem.

Japanese people address to scholars today.

The interaction process between an ex-

pert and a nonprofessional can be a key process
to challenge the problem.

Increasing the op-

Murakami: I will comment from the point of

portunities of interactions among sincere peo-view of open data.

ple leads to the improved situation.

Earthquake, power companies and the govern-

After the Great East Japan

ment announced data on radiation.

On theHashimoto: You referred to the credibility ofother hand, experts and doctors wrote the opin-

scholarship.

ion and analysis on blog or Twitter.

To put it in a bit more specific

We canway, I think that research survey has become

say that the underlying data have become ex-very difficult.

With the enforcement of theposed in this situation, which I think is much

Personal Information Protection Law, it has be-better than the government announcing only

come hard to consult the Residential Basic

the results unilaterally.

Book (Basic Resident Register).

searchers and many experts must analyze those

The random

And I think that re-data thoroughly from various points of view.

sampling of data has also become difficult andIn the International University GLOCOM, I

the public has increasingly become so privacyconscious that people are concerned about

have made efforts and data journalism.

why me?, what are you going to do with thisjournalists write articles on the basis of data, re-information? All year around, I am recently

searchers will need to give their opinions accu-

busy doing survey researches.

rately on the basis of data.

Even if I per-When

The public some-sonally don t visit households to drop and picktimes find it difficult to read data accurately, inquestionnaires, I hear from persons in charge of

which case researchers can be helpful to them.

the fieldwork that they are asked questions such

Some of the foreign media have started toas, What are you going to do with the re-make their data open to readers.

sults?, What purpose will it serve? More andreaders make analysis of open data, which are

more people are concerned if the question-

added to the digital news as comments.

naires are going to be utilized for scholarly pur-in the future, this style will spread rapidly.

&Various
I think

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. Iwai: While I have not often found it difficult to

cal surveys are strongly recommended.

find ways to earn people s trust in my experi-

ever, if they are used overly, they may exclude

ence, I do feel that this process is often painful-people with inadequate access to information.

ly tedious, and that we spend a significant

Once again, from the viewpoint of your exper-

amount of time trying to explain and prove our-tise, please give us a short opinion about how toselves trustworthy.

handle information illiterates in the near future.

Many official documents

How-must be submitted and the descriptions thereinmust include materials that indicate reasonable

Ohta: Information literacy has been discussed

grounds for our claims.

since we established our Graduate School of In-

While we all recognize

the importance of this, we often feel tired of thisformation Systems.

process, as it occurs time and time again.

I

mobile is so popular and its infrastructure ar-feel that we often waste time pursuing that pro-ranged in such a way that the reasons for popu-

cess, when we could be spending it on truly cre-larity can be explored with respect to informa-

ative group meetings and creative personaltion literacy.

Currently, the android

Information security is an important current

work.

challenge in social informatics.

In this meet-

Very pre-ing, some presentations will discuss this prob-

Now, we have established a new society, theter communication system among peers in the

Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

lem and suggest that the development of a twit-

cious remarks are obtained.
Society of Socio-Informatics, SSI.

topic helps a peer improve his/her information

At the startpoint, the society should try to improve the reli-security.

ability of researchers or scholars, and each re-

As in the case of the risk information disclo-searcher should consider the issues about eth-sure problem, in order to improve security, an

ics or other related things and should publish

intermediary person or system, like the guard-

the result of the consideration socially.

ian agent, has to be brought in to solve theI think

this will help the development of our society.

problem.

While we are the front runners or pioneers in
the field of Socio-Informatics in the sense to de-

Hashimoto: As I mentioned a while ago, the sur-velop Socio-Informatics, there is another point,

veys we conduct are basic random sampling re-which is a problem of handling information illit-

searches.

erates, which are people with inadequate ac-

is the ordinary people and the healthy people.

cess to information.

The fact that we don t deal with foreigners, theI feel that this point may

It means that our target population

disabled, people who are unable to use the in-

be a big issue also.
Previously, there was a topic of survey in aternet, i.e. the information have-nots, consti-

lecture of Prof. Hashimoto, and I also partici-

tutes a problem since including these very peo-

pate in surveys by the national government.

ple in the survey targeted population is mean-

Recently, because of the difficulty of gathering

ingful.

enumerators or the cost problem, online statisti-

Many examples can be taken, but it is impor-&&Socio-Informatics and the World: Toward New Sharing and Creation（Empirical Session）

HIROMATSU et al.

tant to think about the aforementioned informa-

Iwai: As mentioned now, some technologicaltion have-nots, the minority in a broader sense,

developments have the potential to cope within case of disasters, for instance.

the problem.

How should

I agree on the view.

Today, I

we transmit the social information to such peo-

have discussed various topics of anonymity.

ple?

Now I would like to emphasize that, in some

What can be done to provide this catego-ry of people with social information?

I think

points of view, a technology to support ano-that examining such issues constitutes the rai-nymity may also be a way to help weak people,

son d être of socio-informatics or survey re-or that people with inadequate access to infor-

search.

It is, however, hard to incorporate

mation can be helped by a specially designed

these questions in our survey researches when

supporting system in some day.

we take into account the cost they would neces-

technological development approaches deserve

sitate.

to be considered, I guess.

And this is one of my deep concerns fornow.

Actually,

Of course, they are

not the only approaches and we should also examine other ways at the same time, though.

Murakami: The most difficult question came outat the end.

Hiromatsu: Prof. Tomiyama, please give us youropinion.

I am also conducting researches on thebarrier-free and universal design, but if you
look at the situation after the Great East Japan

Tomiyama: It is very difficult for us to send ur-

Earthquake, information gaps have arisen clear-gent information to the information have-notsly.

directly.

In order to solve this problem, we also re-

To solve this problem, it is necessary

quire attention and imagination of the side thatfor us to make a network including both the in-gives the information, but people who can con-formation haves and the information have-nots.

nect between the information gaps are needed

In the network, the people with urgent informa-

more and more.

For example, if you can trans-

tion tell it to the information have-nots exactly.

late information in Japanese into Italian and

In order that this information sharing among

tweet it, or put it up at the shelters, you willthem works well, many persons included in thehave made a great contribution, which technol-

network need to be familiar and friendly withogy could not possibly cover.

each other in non-emergency situations.

On the other hand, many disabilities are very
Hiromatsu: Thank you very much.

pleased with the advent of cell phones andsmartphones in case of possible physical dan-Now, by summarizing the previous discus-ger, a smart phone acts as the last life line.

Ision, our first role may be to pioneer the newthink there are a lot of parts that can be re-field such that researchers including us obvi-

solved by advances in technology, but that it

ously find new facts, new models and new theo-might be fairly difficult to balance the support

ries.

through technical assistance and the people

saying, it may be an important issue to educate

who use it.

good science writers especially in the field of&On the other hand, as is in a common

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. No., pp.&-. (In Japanese)technology or good explainers to make people
Although

Qiantori, A., A. B. Sutiono, H. Hariyanto, H. Su-

it may be not study but education, I want to ask

wa, and T. Ohta (): Altitude Platform atmembers of universities or other higher educa-

the Early Stages of a Natural Disaster in In-

tion institutes to consider this issue.

donesia, ȹȺȻȼȽȾȿɀ
Ⱥɂɀ̔Ɇ̖ɓɒȾȿɀ
ɞʮɏɄɆɪɏ, DOI

understand advanced technologies.

Well, the planned time has reached.

Finally,.R/s -- - .

please give reporters and the commentator
handclaps.

Suwa, H. and T. Ohta (): Social Media in

Thank you very much.

Evolution of Organization and Community,ȹȺȻȼȽȾȿɀ
ȺɂɀɽɅɆɀȹȾɊȾȽɆɏɆɀ
ɞȺɒɓɆɄʮɀ
ɂȺȼɀɎȼɄɓɂɓɒɓȾȿɀ

ReferencesɥȽɄɆȿȿɓʦɆȽɒɆ, Vol.&, No., pp.ĵ-ĵ . (InKato, N., Y. Ogawa, H. Suwa, and T. Ohta

Japanese)( ): Effectiveness of Introducing Social

Umehara, E. and T. Ohta ( ): Using Game

Networking Sites into Enterprises, ȹȺȻȼȽȾȿɀ

Theory to Investigate Risk Information Dis-

Ⱥɂɀ
ɄɅɆɀ
ȹȾɊȾȽɀ
ɎɏɏȺɒɓȾɄɓȺȽɀ
ɂȺȼɀɞȺɒɓȾȿɀ
ɥȽɂȺȼɪȾ-closure by Government Agencies and Satis-

Ʉɓɒɏ, Vol., No., pp. -. (In Japanese)fying the Public: The Role of the Guardian

Ohta, T. (Agent, ɥ···ɀ
ɽȼȾȽɏȾɒɄɓȺȽɏɀ
ȺȽɀɞʮɏɄɆɪɏ΢ɀ̔ȾȽ΢ɀ): A Cyber Commons: An Explo-

ration of Social Information Systems in aȾȽ̖ɀέʮίɆȼȽɆɄɓɒɏθʝȾȼɄɀ
ɎοɀɞʮɏɄɆɪɏɀ
ȾȽ̖ɀύȻɪ-

Digital Society, ɽɆɒɅȽɓɒȾȿɀ
ʇɆɊȺȼɄɀ
ȺɂɀɥȽɂȺȼɪȾɄɓȺȽɀ
ʝȼȺɒɆɏɏɓȽʦɀ
ɞȺɒɓɆɄʮɀ
ȺɂɀȹȾɊȾȽ, Vol.

ȾȽɏ, Vol. , No., pp.-.

,Umehara E. and T. Ohta (): Game of Risk

No. , pp. R-. (In Japanese)

Communications: The case of a JapaneseOhta, T. (): Auto-Genesis Paradigm andCarmaker, ɥ···ɀ
ɽȼȾȽɏȾɒɄɓȺȽɏɀ
ȺȽɀɞʮɏɄɆɪɏ΢ɀ

Social Informatics, ȹȺȻȼȽȾȿɀ
ȺɂɀɄɅɆɀȹȾɊȾȽɀ̔ȾȽ΢ɀȾȽ̖ɀέʮίɆȼȽɆɄɓɒɏθʝȾȼɄɀ
ɎοɀɞʮɏɄɆɪɏɀ
ȾȽ̖ɀɎɏɏȺɒɓȾɄɓȺȽɀ
ɂȺȼɀɞȺɒɓȾȿɀ
ɥȽɂȺȼɪȾɄɓɒɏ, Vol.ĵ,ύȻɪȾȽɏ, Vol., No., pp.&-.

&R

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. 

Development of Public Relations Concepts,
Theories and the Media Technology
Keywords:
Public relations, media, Internet, theory, history

Tomoki KUNIEDA, Sophia University

Abstract
Increasing number of public and private organizations around the world is utilizing online
services to communicate with people in order to construct and maintain positive relationships.

While the use of media and communication technologies to manage relationships hasa century-old history, its connection to or influence on todays practice has not been discussed adequately.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical relationship of

public relations, mass media and communication technologies to place todays organizationpublic communication in historical context.

Development of Public Relations Concepts, Theories and the Media Technology

KUNIEDAmutually beneficial relationships between orga-

. Introduction

nizations and their publics  (PRSA, ).
Such mutually beneficial relationships can be

-. Socio-informatics and PR
The development and diffusion of online

pursued with the in-depth understanding of notcommunication services such as social network

only the relevant publics but also todays com-

services (SNS) has drastically changed the way

plex media environment.

private and public organizations communicate

linked to persuasive communication including

with people.

Growing number of organiza-

propaganda, it is often defined in normative

tions are utilizing Facebook, Twitter and many

terms in order to distinguish between other eth-other online services to communicate directly

ically questionable practices.

and construct positive relationships with theSince PR is closely

In fact, throughout history, organizations

public.

have attempted to persuade the public or con-Studies in socio-informatics have looked into

trol publics image toward the organization for

the use of communication technology by orga-

different purposes.

nizations and individuals but there are few his-organizations to public can be found in the re-torical discussions.

cords of early civilizations in the form of imag-

Modern PR has been practh

ticed since the early  century and has gone

Strategic messages fromes, texts, monuments, etc.

through major changes since, from early em-

The spread of newspapers, radio, TV andphasis on propagandistic persuasion to a more

eventually the Internet all influenced how orga-

recent emphasis on ethical communication

nizations communicate with the public.

(Cutlip & Center, ). Today, increasing

ously political, social, economic and cultural

number of PR studies focus on how different or-

factors played major roles in influencing the

ganizations communicate with the public via

way PR has been practiced but the diversifica-

the Internet, how organizations plan their com-tion of media and spread of the Internet has

munication with the public in order to begreatly empowered people around the world in

more efficient.

terms of how they gather information, commu-

Obvi-

While the two fields of study have come clos-

nicate and get organized, decreasing the rela-er, the historical context of PR development has

tive influence of public and private organiza-

not received much attention.

tions in controlling the flow of information.

The purpose ofthis paper is to examine the historical relation-

This paper will examine the history of PR in

ship among PR, mass media and communica-

relation to mass media and communication

tion technologies in order to place today  stechnologies, including the conceptual and the-organization-public communication in histori-

oretical changes that are taking place.

cal context.

der to look at PR history from a long-term per-In or-

spective, in this paper, PR is not defined in normative terms but instead as management of

-. Background
One of the most recent definitions of PR is astrategic communication or relationship, which

strategic communication process that builds

does not always aim to build mutually benefi-Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. vide only favorable information to promote andcial relationship (Hutton, ).

protect their businesses.

Such lack of account-ability and disclosure led to criticisms especial-. PR History, Media and Communication

ly in case of disasters caused by inadequate se-

Technology

curity measures.
The idea of actively providing information to-. Origin of modern PR and mass media
One of the oldest examples of PR is a gazettethe press is often attributed to Ivy L. Lee (/99-

called Acta Diurna issued by the Roman Repub- >), known for issuing the first press release to

lic more than , years ago.

The Roman Em-

the journalists.

Lee claimed that providing

peror intended to gain popular support by pro- prompt and accurate information  to theviding messages and information to the citizens

press, even in case of crisis, results in construct-directly. Similar examples existed in one form

ing positive relationships.

or another in many places throughout history

information disclosure gradually became popu-

but the profession of PR only emerged in thelar among companies, creating a new relation-

thPress releases andship between them and the newspapers

century, in the age of mass society and(Hiebert, ).

mass communication.

The first person to use public relations coun-

Earliest form of PR business is said to havethemerged during the  century as press agentssel as a word to describe the emerging profes-in the U.S., when newspapers were growing tosion was Edward L. Bernays (/-).

become the first mass media.

The political orserving in the Committee on Public Information

economic impact of the press gradually became(CPI) during the World War I, Bernays applied

clear, giving rise to press agents, who special-his wartime experience for business, placing fo-

ized in exposing clients to the media for freecus on crowd psychology and psychoanalysis

publicity.

for effective persuasion.

One of the most famous press

After

He emphasized theagents was Phineas T. Barnum (/-/),importance of understanding the publicknown for his ability to attract newspapers andthrough science and communication, claiming

peoples attention for circus events, often by ex-that even propaganda could be used to promote

aggerating the facts.

social causes (Bernays,  ).

Barnum was successful

despite occasional criticism from the media on

Both Lee and Bernays led the development of

his exaggerations.

early PR industry, placing importance in affect-

The growth of newspaper business enabled

ing the management decisions of the clients byorganizations to seek political and economic

providing publics point of view.

opportunities in larger scales.

However, one

gathering information from the newspapers andof the ways newspapers gained popular support

conducting series of interviews, public opinion

was by criticizing the powerful organizations.

poll system became popular in the s and s

Muckrackers, or early investigative reporters

to enable organizations to gain feedbacks.

actively pursued companies for their problems.

Opinion polls provided information on what

Most companies at the time preferred to pro-people want and will accept, therefore provid-

Other than

Development of Public Relations Concepts, Theories and the Media Technology

KUNIEDA

Contrary toconsidered their job as an activity to influence

the common belief that newspapers and emerg-

the all-powerful media―through both day-to-

ing radio were highly influential, Bernays be-

day media relations activities and planned pub-lieved that the public would only listen to what

lic information campaigns (Grunig et al., :it wants.

).

ing clues for effective persuasion.

Such research-based approach was

Growing influence of newspapers and ra-

slow to spread as cost of data collection anddio (and soon the television) made media rela-analysis remained high until later in the centu-

tions ever more critical in cases of promotion,ry.

crisis, etc.

Media relations, or the practice ofDuring the World War II, many countries

managing positive relationship with the media

were involved in propaganda, most famously

and providing information to be delivered to

the Nazi Germanys Ministry of Public Enlight-

broader public, still remain as the critical aspectenment.

of PR practice.

Countries struggled to not only pro-vide messages to confuse the enemy but also to

By the s, diversification of mass media

convince their own people to actively support

and the increased understanding of their effects

the all-out war.

Normative definitions of PR

gave rise to the idea that PR, as a process, hadoften attempt to differentiate between propa-

to be managed and that interactive communica-

ganda and PR but the wartime efforts undoubt-tion is also necessary for efficiency (Cutlip et al,edly contributed to various postwar communi-).

cation industries, including the PR.

specific media to reach targeted audience andAfter the war, as the U.S. emerged as a super-

Messages had to be delivered throughfeedbacks were necessary to monitor effective-

power, it began introducing the idea and prac-ness of communication.

tice of PR to other countries as a part of democ-

practice made it clearer that mass communica-

ratization process.

For countries like Germany

tion effects are more cognitive than attitudinal

and Japan, it was considered necessary for gov-

or behavioral, strategic management of expo-

ernment agencies and businesses to set itself

sure and monitoring gained importance (Mc-apart from propaganda and not only provide

Quail, ).

Also, as research andtrue and important information to the public

Civil rights movements in the s also

but also to listen and reflect upon the feedback

prompted two-way communication, along withfrom the public.

growing interest in marketing.

This U.S. influence is often

In the U.S. as insaid to have marked the beginning of PR prac-many other places around the world, organiza-

tice, as one that is different from propaganda, intions began to actively or reactively listen to thethe two countries.

voices of the public.

Although the idea of two-

Consumer and environ-way democratic communication was intro-

mental movements created the need for PR de-duced to both countries, it was not easily under-

partment to perform crisis management func-

stood and the actual practice took time totions as part of corporate social responsibility.

spread.

Also, competitive business environment forced

Due to the success of propaganda during

companies to differentiate their products or dis-the World War I and II, many PR practitioners

cover new consumer demand by listening toJournal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. 

way symmetrical model, on the other hand, in-their voices.
What Lee and Bernays proposed in the earlyvolves closer dialogue between both parties andththeir willingness to change in order to discover

century slowly became realized with not

and reach a mutually beneficial goal.

only the changes in political and social environment but also the spread of new, less expensive

The authors estimated that the latter model,

technologies and research techniques used forwhich seems more ethical and preferable, con-greater understanding of the relevant public.

sisted roughly ％ of practice in the U.S.

The s was the time when todays normativearound the time of publication.

Taking in thedefinition of PR began to be practiced in differ-publics point of view into management deci-ent parts of the society but such a two-way com-

sions has been mentioned by not only Lee andmunication remained relatively limited com-

Bernays but also by other historical figures.

pared to other functions such as media rela-

However, according to the authors practitio-

tions.

ners only now are beginning to practice themodel (>).

-. PR research

The other two models are one-directional.

The academic study of PR slowly began to ap-

Press agentry model (provides primarily benefi-

pear in the 9s, when such change in thecial, convenient information) and public infor-

mindset was taking place.

In fact, the first aca-mation model (provides true information

demic journal of the field, 

-

whether convenient or not) are more popular in, was published in 9 and developed

actual practice.

identifiable theory in only about last 

efficient to provide information in the form ofyears …… developing into a theoretically based

advertisement or press release.

area of applied communication (Botan & Tay-ing opinion poll or market research in order tolor, >: >).

One of the focuses of PR re-construct effective, persuasive communication

search was to clarify what types of communica-

strategy could be costly but less demandingtion strategies or campaigns were effective overthan having management or strategic decision

another, where the efficiency of two-way com-adjusted frequently (Cancel et al., 9).

munication was examined critically.

It is often simpler and moreAlso, conduct-

However, today, the idea of two-way asym-

In their book ¬°°
 pub-

metrical and symmetrical models have become

lished in />, James E. Grunig and Todd T.

quite common, thanks to the Internet and vari-

Hunt introduced four models to describe differ-ous online social network services that con-ent types of tasks performed by PR practitio-

nects users and organizations with much lessners.

Two of the models dealt with two-way

cost, allowing organizations to gain feedbacks

communication, one being asymmetrical andeasily from growing number of users to reflect

another being symmetrical. Two-way asym-

upon products, communication plans, goals,

metrical model represented practice involving

etc.

research-based communication where the pri-communication networks such as postal andmary goal is to influence specific target.

telephone networks have greatly enhanced

Two-



Previously, the development of otherDevelopment of Public Relations Concepts, Theories and the Media Technology

KUNIEDAsuch trends, gradually strengthening the infor-

In contrast to the organization-centric view ofmation communication environment that sup-the public in úûćĉĎē, John

ports two-directional PR models.

Dewey defined public as a group of people that

Still, not all relevant publics use the Internet

are affected by certain action or idea, with eachand organizations might be using social net-issue or problem creating its own public (9).

working sites for marketing purposes, or to offer

Unlike Walter Lippmann and other thought

web presence, but not to actually engage peo-leaders of the time, Dewey conceptualized pub-ple ásociallyâ (Kent, : >).

lic as having will of their own, who can act ac-

Availability ofadvanced communication infrastructure itself

cordingly to deal with common issues.

does not guarantee that organizations will be in-

When mass media were thought to have

volved in active, two-way communication.

strong, direct effects on people, organization-

While the new communication environment

centric view of the public had substantial au-

is changing the PR conditions for organizations,thority.

major changes are occurring in the publics sidepeoples hands delivering news and exchanging

too.

text, sound or video messages, Deweys pub-

Today, with the Internet at the tip oflic appear, develop and dissolve dynamically. Changing Concepts

like never before.

Being flooded with informa-tion, a group of people with common interest-. Public

for certain product or an organization can be

Until now, this paper has used the word

formed instantaneously and remain long or dis-public without defining it.

In fact, the word

solve soon, depending on how the issue ishas been widely used in many different ways.

solved or dealt with.

In public relations, the concept of public has

On the other hand, PR scholars Botan and So-

been generally used in concrete and abstractto (/) defined public as ongoing process ofways.

Concrete use of the word refers to spe-

agreement upon an interpretation, and that dur-cific stakeholders, where practitioners planing this process a public may well develop an

communication strategy in accordance to theinterpretation that is more sophisticated, in-nature of individual stakeholders in the form ofsightful, and socially linked than the under-

investor relations, employee relations, commu-

standing with which the practitioner/client

nity relations, media relations, etc.

started ().

Messages

The concept seems more perti-

are crafted and sent to specific targets for spe-

nent today than when it was proposed in thecific purposes.

late s, now that countless Web . services

Abstract use of the word often refers to soci-are available for people to share and develop

ety in general and to the socially responsible as-

their views and interpretations on just aboutpect of the practice.

any issue imaginable.

The word public isTheories of active audi-

sometimes preferred to stakeholders to stressence and cultural studies have indicatedthe very public nature of the profession (PR-peoples active interpretation of issues andSA, ).

events but its influence has become greater>Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. 

. Theoretical developmentwith the advent of Internet to the extent that organizations communication strategies are now

-. Major shift in approach

expected to take such dynamism of publics
Although instances of pub-According to Botan and Taylor (>), thelic becoming active on certain issues may still

most striking trend in public relations over the

be limited, the instances of people forming

past  years……is its transition from a func-

common interest and acting on it, in one way ortional perspective to a cocreational one ().

another are increasing.

Functional perspective considers publics and-. Relationships

ganizational goals, focusing on techniques andOne of the definitions for relationships inproduction of strategic messages. Here, ad-public relations is the state which exists be-vertising, marketing and media relations holdtween an organization and its key publics, inprimary importance.

into consideration.

communication as tools or means to achieve or-

which the actions of either can impact the eco-Cocreational approach, on the other hand,

nomic, social, cultural or political well being ofsees publics as cocreators of meaning andthe other (Ledingham & Bruning, /: ).

communication as what makes it possible toPractitioners have traditionally focused on theagree to shared meanings, interpretations andkey publics in order to promote organizational

goals ().

interest or protect it from crisis.

dicates a shift from the emphasis on one-way

Shift to cocreational approach in-persuasion to a more dialogical communica-

However, Valentini, Kruckeberg and Starck() claims that such organization-centriction.

Grunigs two-way symmetrical model,

view of the relationship and the public is nolater developed into a normative excellence

longer viable in the age where relationshiptheory, became a major cocreational theory

cannot be managed by organizations, but canthat led to many subsequent researches.

only be cultivated in such a way that publics

cellence theory () was developed as a result

perceive relationship with organizations to beof international study involving a survey of 9relevant for their own purposes (/9), that in-organizations.

Ex-The study showed that thecreasing emphasis must be placed on the dyna-

value of public relations comes from the rela-mism of publics and relationships in order fortionship that organizations develop and main-organizations in st century to succeed.

Ittain with publics……communicators havemay be far fetching to claim that organizations

greater value when they bring information into

have lost total control over the flow of informa-

the organization than when they disseminatetion about themselves, yet it accurately de-

information out of the organization…… com-

scribes how people began talking about organi-municators can develop relationships more ef-zations publicly and anonymously in different

fectively when they communicate with publics

parts of the Internet, making it difficult for orga-

symmetrically rather than asymmetrically 

nizations to control the flow of information.

(Grunig et al., : ).



Development of Public Relations Concepts, Theories and the Media Technology

KUNIEDA

theorys equation of excellence and ethics re--. Overcoming the excellence theory
Despite its apparent virtues, excellence theo-

flects the evolutionism and progressivism thatry has been challenged from different perspec-

were popular in the latter part of the nineteenth

tives including postmodernism, cultural theory

century (9).

One

Contingency theory, on the other hand, rela-such criticism points out that it fails to capture

tivize the importance of symmetrical communi-

the complexity and multiplicity of the public re-cation that provided norm to the profession thatlations environment (Cancel et al., 9:has been attempting to differentiate itself withand international studies (Gower, ).

).

The theory assumes that through certain dia-

propaganda, or unethical mode of communica-

logue, organizations and publics can reach cer-tion since the s.

tain agreement, which in reality is not always

listening and accommodating to the public does

true.

The two sides will most likely have dif-

not always bring efficient or ethical result, thatferent understanding on the subject or even

there are many factors that can drastically alter

conflicting interest and mutually beneficial goal

the course of relationship.

between two groups may be harmful to a third

tingency theory is a postmodern theory of pub-

party.

lic relations practice.

The theory indicates thatIn that sense, con-

One of the theories succeeding the excellence

An English philosopher Alan Kirby proposed

theory is contingency theory of accommoda-digimodernism () as a theory succeedingtion, which attempts to specify the multitude ofpostmodernism since the mid s.

factors (as many as /9) that can affect the stanceacterized by the active, online participation ofof organization in a given relationship at a given

individuals in social interactions and social con-time, thereby more accurately analyzing thestruction of reality.

conditions necessary for strategic planning ofsociety, cultural products can only exist with

communication.

Unlike what the excellence

the involvement of individuals. Information

theory implies, strategic communication may

and images of products or organizations involvenot always be a áwin-winâ situation; neithersome level of public involvement as they pro-must it be a situation where one party wins andvide comments online or utilize contents pro-the other loses.

vided by the organization to create another.

It is a dynamic process of dia-

It is char-

Typically, in a digimodern

Valentini, Kruckeberg and Starck () states

logue and negotiation (Pang et al., : /).

that digimodern environment requires public
- . Modernism, postmodernism and beyond

relations to shift the focus even more to the

One way to describe the relationship between

 community,  or a situation and occasion

the excellence theory and the contingency the-where organizations can communicate withory is modernism and postmodernism.

even resenting publics through the develop-Al-though both were derived from extensive re-ment of trust.

search, the former is a normative theory withis becoming complex than ever, one conclusion

strong democratic implications.

However, as

is to get involved in the cocreational process

Brown () critically interprets it, symmetryeven more, by communicating with dynamic

If controlling ones image today

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol., No. Sep. 

Brown, R. E. () Myth of symmetry: Public

publics to keep track of changing conditions.
This is a major challenge for todays organiza-

relations as cultural styles, 


tions around the world.

,  ( ), pp. -.
Cancel, A. E., Cameron, G. T., Sallot, L. M. &Mitrook, M. A. (9) It Depends: A Contin-

. Discussion

gency theory of Accommodation in Public
Relations, ǶĎǿ

-This paper briefly examined the historical relationship of PR, mass media and communica-Ďû,  (), pp. - .

tion technology, describing how the theoretical

Cutlip, S. M., Center, A. H. & Broom, G. M.

ideals of two-way communication in PR has be-() ɱǿǿ

ʌû ɱć,come realistic while actual practice has faced

Pearson Prentice Hall.

increasingly complex media communication environment.

Dewey, J. (9) úûćĉĎē,

Despite the importance and value

Swallow Press.

of two-way communication and active dialogue

Gower, K. K. () Public Relations Research

between different publics in the age of Internet,

at the Crossroads, ǶĎǿ
-tendency of organization to focus on one-way
Ďû, / (), pp.99-.

communication still remains strong.

Grunig, J. E., & Hunt, T. (/>) ¬°°

Considering the fact that earliest practitioners, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

have claimed the importance of two-way com-

Grunig, J. E. () ɱ̋

-munication a century ago implies that techno-ćưēē
¬°ē,

logical limitations werent the only reasons be-

Routledge.
Grunig, J. E., Grunig, L. A., & Dozier, D. M.

hind the focus on one-directional organizationFurther research into() The Excellence theory, In Botan, C.

country or industry-specific history is necessary

H. & Hazelton, V. eds., 
Ďû-to provide greater insight into todays commu-ĎƲĉĉ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp.-

nication practice.

.

public communication.

Hiebert, R. E. () ưĎĎûĎć΂û
ReferencesĎƲ
ǿ
ĉƲ
Ε
ć
û
ćǆē
ǿ
ǆ-

Bernays, E. L. ( ) ưĎƲƹ°

ǅǆ-

Ď, Ames: Iowa State University

, Boni and Liveright.

Press.

Botan, C. H. & Soto, F. (/) A semiotic ap-

Hutton, J. G. () The definition, dimen-

proach to the internal functioning of publics:

sions, and domain of public relations, Implications for strategic communication

, (), pp.->.

and public relations,   

Kent, M. L. () Directions in Social Media, > (), pp.->>.

for Professionals and Scholars, in Heath, R.

Botan, C. H & Taylor, M. (>) Public Rela-

L. eds. úûϰϱϲɱϵćϼ
ǿ
-

tions: State of the Field, ǶĎǿưēē-

, Sage Publications, pp.> -.

, > (>), pp.>-.

Kirby, A. () Л°ēćĎē΂ 
ϵ 


9

Development of Public Relations Concepts, Theories and the Media Technology

KUNIEDAû°ćē
ûǆēćĎć

sights From the Contingency Theory of Stra-Ďǿ°ĎĎĎ, Continuum Publish-

tegic Conflict Management, in Heath, R. L.

ing Corporation.

eds., úûϰϱϲɱϵćϼ
ǿ
, Sage Publications, pp.9- >.

Ledingham, J. A. & Bruning, S. D. (/) Relationship management and public relations:

PRSA ()  What is Public Relations?

Dimensions of an organization-public rela-

PRSAs Widely Accepted Definition, http://

tionship, 

, > (),www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/PublicRelations-pp.-.

Defined, retrieved on  //.

McQuail, D. () ¬ҥ
¬ưēē Valentini, C., Kruckeberg, D. & Starck, K. ()úûĎƲӇûɱć, Sage Publications.

Public relations and community: A persistent covenant, 

, /Pang, A., Jin, Y. & Cameron, G. T. () Strategic Management of Communication: In-(), pp./9 -/9.

/Editors Notes
This volume of JSI (Journal of Socio-Informatics) is the second volume that is published bya new academic society, the Society of Socio-Informatics (SSI). Since SSI is organized in orderto promote and dispatch the studies of Socio-Informatics, JSI is open to any researchers andstudents who study Socio-Informatics.
In this volume, one refereed research notes are selected from three submitted articles. Currently, new submissions of your manuscripts for the next volume are being invited. Pleasejoin the field of Socio-Informatics.
(Editor in Sub-Chief: Seiichiro SAKURAI)

Editorial Board of
the Journal of Socio-Informatics
Editor in Chief
Yoshiaki HASHIMOTO
Editor in Sub-Chief
Kaoru ENDO
Yorio KITAMURA
Seiichiro SAKURAI

Editorial Board Members
Hisaki GOTO
Reiko GOTOH
Akira HATTORI
Hirofumi IMADA
Kenichi ITOAtsushi IWAI
Takahiro KAWAMATA
Sangmi KIM
Naokoto KOGO
Ron KORENAGA
Toshio KUROSU
Tetsuo NODA
Mitsuhiko OHKUNIIsamu OKADA
Yasunori OKADA
Hideyuki TANAKA
Kayoko YAMAMOTO
Hiroshi YOSHIDA
Jun YOSHIDA

Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol.6, No.1
Sep. 30, 2013
Published
The Society of Socio-Informatics (SSI)
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