2022.Nov.22

REPORTS

The 5th BAIRAL Research Meeting for 2022 Report on “From the Visibility of Work to the Invisibility of Identity: Regarding the Transformation of Journalistic Activity in Japan in the Digital Age”

On September 7, 2022, the 5th meeting for 2022 of the study group “BAIRAL” hosted by research assistants of the B’AI Global Forum was held in a hybrid format. We invited Associate Professor César Castellvifrom the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations (LCAO) at Paris Cité University. He talked about the transformation of journalistic activity in Japan in the digital age, focusing on the case of “anonymous journalist” accounts that have increased on Twitter in recent years.

Mr. Castellvi, who studies Japanese journalism from the perspective of sociology of professions and occupations, has long been interested in the “visibility of individual journalists in Japan,” and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the process and background of how individual journalists, who once had a less significant presence, became visible, as well as the impact of this phenomenon on journalism as a whole. According to him, the presence of journalists in Japan began to become visible through “byline articles” in daily newspapers, which have become common since the late 1990s. Since the 2000s, as digital version of traditional media and online-based news media have flourished, individual journalists have become even more appeared in public through journalist pages on the websites and journalists’ social media accounts (with real names). Mr. Castellvi attributes this phenomenon largely to media companies’ strategies to regain trust in the media by making individual journalists visible and to increase readership by creating fans of the journalists. He also pointed out that, as a result, while companies no longer keep the evaluation of their employees to themselves, there are many challenges to the visibility of journalists on the Internet, such as the problem that company policies and individual journalists’ opinions do not always coincide and that journalists can easily become targets of attacks.

As above, Mr. Castellvi’s research has focused primarily on the visibility of journalists, but in recent years, a case that runs counter to this trend has emerged, which he has begun investigating as a new subject of study. The case is the so-called “anonymous journalists,” i.e. anonymous Twitter accounts whose owners identify themselves as journalists. What are the implications of the existence of such accounts that post messages without revealing their names or company names while claiming to belong to a professional activity of a public nature? Under this question, he has been investigating the anonymous journalist accounts by means of online observation and semi-structured interviews, and shared some of what he has learned so far in this research meeting.

The survey results show that the overall number of anonymous journalist accounts is very difficult to ascertain but has clearly increased since 2020, and about half of the owners of them indicate the type of media they are affiliated with on the profile page, which indicates that most of the accounts belong to journalists working for newspapers, not broadcast stations. With regard to the motivations for creating anonymous accounts, similar results were obtained from both the mentions on the profile page and the interviews: While a lot of anonymous journalists cited interacting with people in the same field as a main purpose of the account, many also mentioned concerns about the future of the media industry and their own careers. Moreover, some of them expressed anxiety about attacks when they post messages with their real names. Mr. Castellvi explained that this implies that there could be some connection between the increase in anonymous journalist accounts and the problem of “individual journalists easily becoming targets of attacks,” which was pointed out as a challenge to the visibility of journalists on the Internet.

In the discussion that followed his presentation, many questions and opinions came from participants who are currently working for media companies. One participant said that one of the key points in considering the reasons for creating anonymous accounts is how much freely journalists can express their opinions on the internet with their real name, and the current situation is largely influenced by the policies of the company to which one belongs because some companies encourage the use of social networking accounts with real names, while others actually restrict it. Mr. Castellvi agreed that the situation certainly differs from company to company and also from country to country, and added that it is important to establish clear guidelines because if company policies are vague, individual journalists can easily be held responsible when problems occur. On the other hand, in response to a question about why there are more newspaper journalists than TV journalists in the owners of anonymous accounts, he said that one possible and fundamental reason might be that the total number of journalists in the newspaper industry is larger than that in the TV industry, and added that, if “concerns about the future of the media industry” is one motivation for creating anonymous accounts, it would make sense that newspaper journalists are more motivated to have anonymous accounts than TV journalists. Furthermore, there was a question from the perspective of the relationship between anonymity and gender on the internet such as whether there are any gender differences in the attributes of the owners of anonymous accounts. Mr. Castellvi stated his thoughts that although specific findings are not yet available because many accounts do not indicate gender, considering that concerns about attacks have been cited as one of the motivations for anonymous accounts, and that various studies have shown that female journalists are more likely to be the target of attacks on the internet than male journalists, it is quite possible that there is a correlation between anonymous journalist accounts and gender.

As Mr. Castellvi pointed out, the increase in anonymous journalist accounts certainly does not seem to conform to the basic principles of journalism as a public-oriented activity. However, it is also true that anonymous accounts are functioning as a place where journalists can communicate and interact with people while protecting themselves from the constraints of the organization and the fear of violence, as evidenced by the motivations expressed by the anonymous journalists. What is certain is that this seemingly paradoxical phenomenon directly reflects the current state of the media industry, which has drastically changed since the advent of digitalization. It seems necessary to further consider the implications of anonymous journalist accounts from the perspective of transformation of journalistic norms in the digital age.