About 90% of accounts that retweeted pro-Russian, anti-Ukraine messages, such as “the Ukraine government is neo-Nazi,” on the Japanese version of Twitter were found to have earlier retweeted posts opposing the COVID-19 vaccine, a data analysis conducted by Toriumi Fujio, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s graduate school, has found. The results indicate that there is strong correlation between….Read more

Change in people’s reactions to the Olympics before and after the opening of the Games is becoming evident. A recent analysis of messages posted to Twitter shows that there are more favorable than unfavorable responses after the Games opened on July 23, despite the fact that negative messages, such as criticism of the spate of scandals and concern about a….Read more

How is “online public opinion” born on social media and whose influence is greatest? Nikkei analyzed about 4.7 million Twitter posts on the July 2020 Tokyo gubernatorial election to examine the situation. The results were unexpected, showing that tweets of “experts” such as physicians and scholars were conspicuous on social media.   The analysis was jointly conducted with Tokyo University….Read more

Seventy percent of the 259 candidates for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election on July 2 are using Twitter to announce campaign speech schedules and provide detailed policies, a tally by the Mainichi Shimbun found. The ban on Internet-based election campaigning was lifted before the Upper House election in July 2013. The upcoming election is the first metropolitan assembly election since….Read more

Several thousand comments have been posted on social media in response to President Trump’s remarks about Japan’s auto trade, with an overwhelming number of Twitter and other social media users apparently disapproving of his view by saying it is reminiscent of the 1980s, when Japan logged a huge trade surplus with the U.S. Many of them argue that there is currently no problem with domestic legal regulations….Read more

Defense Minister Inada’s homage at Yasukuni Shrine has elicited only a moderate reaction on social media in Japan, as the number of tweets has not exceeded two thousands. The most popular message  (retweeted almost 1,000 times) was posted by LDP Upper House lawmaker Masahiha Sato, who said: “I think Japan should become a country in which the prime minister can….Read more

Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Pearl Harbor and his speech at Kilo Pier have met with mixed reactions from the Japanese public on social media. According to Yahoo Real Time Search, 23% of the comments posted on Twitter and Facebook from 6 a.m. today about Abe’s visit or the speech were negative, while only 2% were positive. Some of the negative….Read more