Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Oxford University Press  

Do the policy preferences expressed through political participation represent the citizens as a whole? Previous studies argue that there is no ideological bias in voting participation in Japan. However, previous studies have only analyzed Japan up to 2010, and it is unclear whether ideological bias was consistently absent in voting participation in the 2010s. In the 2010s, ideological issues, such as the maintenance of nuclear power plants or the acceptance of collective self-defense, emerged in Japan, and the two major political parties, the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan, became increasingly polarized. Considering these changes, the influence of ideology on political participation may be growing. Therefore, this paper examines the relationship between people’s ideological positions and political participation using voter surveys conducted between 2001 and 2017. I find that since 2012, the more ideologically extreme Japanese voters are, the more they participate in voting. Furthermore, the same is true for other forms of participation. In general, the voices of ideologically moderate Japanese are becoming less represented by political parties and politicians.

File： supplementary_materials.pdf

DOI： 10.1093/ssjj/jyab045

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

Although measuring the ideal points of news media is essential for testing political communication theories based on spatial theory, prior methods of estimating ideal points of media outlets have various shortcomings, including high cost in terms of time and human resources and low applicability to different countries. We propose that unsupervised machine learning techniques for text data, specifically the combination of a text scaling method and latent topic modeling, can be applied to estimate ideal points of media outlets. We applied our proposed methods to editorial texts of ten national and regional newspapers in Japan, where prior approaches are not applicable because newspapers have never officially endorsed particular parties or candidates, and because high-quality training data for supervised learning are not available. Our two studies, one of which analyzed editorials on a single typically ideological topic while the other investigated all editorials published by the target papers in one year, confirmed the popular view of Japanese newspapers’ ideological slant, which validates the effectiveness of our proposed approach. We also illustrate that our methods allow scholars to investigate which issues are closely related to the respective ideological positions of media outlets. Furthermore, we use the estimated ideal points of newspapers to show that Japanese people partially tend to read ideologically like-minded newspapers and follow such newspapers’ Twitter accounts even though their slant is not explicit.

DOI： 10.1177/1940161220935058

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Taylor & Francis  

How do the predictable COVID-19-related medical and economic crises affect public opinion? To answer this question, we analyze a nationwide random sampling survey (n = 2053 respondents) coinciding with the period from the beginning of the outbreak of COVID-19 to its peak. This scale and timing enable us to trace a shift in public opinion. We find that the levels of public support for big government had increased before the spread of COVID-19. Furthermore, the results show that with the sudden growth of patients, people predicted a future economic crisis and thus demanded the government to implement economic stimulus measures to reduce damage. Our findings imply that public opinion is formed earlier than crises actually materialize.

DOI： 10.1080/17457289.2021.1924731

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Chikumashobo  

This article examines the process of Japanese voters’ consideration of foreign or national security policies as important issues in elections, with a focus on their information environment. In recent years, the number of voters who place importance on foreign or national security policy in elections has been increasing. However, there has been little research on why voters focus on foreign affairs unrelated to daily life. Furthermore, while agenda-setting theory indicates that the salient issues in elections are affected by the total amount of coverage about each issue, this hypothesis is not necessarily supported in Japan. However, provided that people recognize foreign affairs through secondhand news, it is plausible to assume that media coverage does affect the salience of foreign policy.
Therefore, this article attempts to analyze partisan coverage bias by measuring the coverage ratio between the ruling and opposition parties. This study elucidates the following: When more coverage is accorded to the ruling party, people acknowledge major parties’ positions about diplomatic or security policies on a broader scale, which confirms the tendency to emphasize diplomatic and security issues in elections.

DOI： 10.7218/nenpouseijigaku.71.2_256

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Bokutakusha  

In every election, numerous surveys have asked Japanese voters the “important issue” question. However, since each survey worded its questions differently, they are unlikely to share a uniform understanding of important issues. In this article, I present a survey experiment designed to compare the results obtained by three differently worded questions. I find that respondents do not express strong opinions when generally asked about personal or national important issues. However, when I asked clearly or directly about important issue for voting, those who reported foreign policy as an important issue hold strong opinion on diplomatic issues. Additionally, respondents who considered economic or welfare policy to be important did not have a strong opinion, even when asked about important electoral issues. These results indicate that the meaning of important issues changes depending on the type of issue and how questions about them are worded.

File： JJES_選挙における重視争点の意味_Online_Appendix.pdf

DOI： 10.14854/jaes.36.2_168

CiNii Books

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Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

Venue：オンライン   Country：Japan  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：Kansai University   Country：Japan  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Ryukoku University   Country：Japan  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：The Kanazawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry   Country：Japan  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

Venue：Online  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Online  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Poster presentation  

Venue：Online  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：オンライン  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Online  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：オンライン  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：University of Tokyo  

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Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Washington Hilton   Country：United States  

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Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Tohoku University  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：University of Tokyo  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：Kobe University  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：University of Tokyo  

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Language：English   Presentation type：Poster presentation  

Venue：Kobe University  

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Language：Japanese  

Venue：神戸大学  

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