[Feature: How to Understand Populism] Media Politics and Populism: The Structure of Image Politics Supported by Technological Change

2020/02/05

In recent years, various discussions have developed regarding populism, such as political alienation and distrust, and the emphasis on "top-down" conflicts based on economic disparity as opposed to ideological "left-right" conflicts (Taniguchi and Mizushima eds. 2018, Mizushima 2016). Interest in populism has resurged, partly because issues surrounding division and conflict have surfaced worldwide, starting with the 2016 US presidential election and Brexit. While several ideological and practical proposals have been made to restore the political norms lost during this period in order to resolve these issues or make existing forms of governance function again, no consensus has yet been reached (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). The definition of populism itself is diverse, and as seen in arguments that actively emphasize its positive aspects, evaluations vary widely, making the space here somewhat insufficient for a rigorous discussion.

However, at the very least, while the essential contradiction of liberal democracy—the "conflict between liberalism and democracy"—still clearly exists, it can be said that the semi-forced/semi-voluntary redrawing of various axes of conflict is related to recent populism and the high level of interest in it. Based on this background, this article focuses on the relationship between media and politics. What, then, does the redrawing of conflict axes in media and politics look like?

What I will briefly describe below is the view that changes in the technology and influence of new (online) media and old (online) media, in conjunction with other changes, are affecting the dynamics of facts and images in politics, creating a situation where images and their nature are being prioritized in politics, almost inevitably.

For the time being, let us look at technological trends and the influence of media, taking up the shift away from text in internet communication as a technological change, and the decrease in recipients and decline in trust as changes in influence. These changes signify the loss of two classic and important clues related to politics and the public sphere—which can be called the common foundation of society: the "opportunity for persuasion" and a "common source of information."

For a long time, the center of internet communication was text. This was true not only for its predecessor, PC communications, but also for character-based communication on pagers and mobile phones, where text-based communication was mainstream. This can be attributed to technical constraints such as line speed, capacity, processing power, and methods of digitization and compression. As a result, text remained the center of communication on the internet for a long time. "Rich content" such as still images, videos, music, audio, location information, and games—that is, non-text content—was merely a subordinate existence.

However, as is well known, the situation has changed significantly in recent years due to dramatic improvements in line speed, capacity, and processing power. Think of the spread of Instagram, TikTok, and voice input. What is occurring there is, so to speak, a reversal phenomenon. Non-text content has become the center of communication. As for text, it is utilized in forms like hashtags, and perhaps because it is time-consuming to input, it is moving toward a subordinate status.

As if in response, the presence of non-text content is growing even on SNS platforms that were extensions of the traditional internet, such as Twitter and Facebook. The same is true for gaining engagement and impressions on SNS. The center of internet access has also shifted from PC to mobile. With the improved performance of mobile devices and networks, non-text content can now be handled comfortably there as well.

Non-text content is dynamic and intuitive, but by its nature, it is not suited for persuasion and tends to trigger knee-jerk reactions. Furthermore, content is being actively edited through filters and editing tools. As edited information rather than raw information becomes the mainstream of communication, the internet is increasingly moving from a space for discussion using text to a space of images covered in non-text content.

I would also like to look at the influence of mass media. While I cannot engage in a detailed discussion here due to space constraints, the decline in the presence of mass media such as newspapers, radio, and magazines—setting aside television for a moment—shows no signs of stopping. This is likely something many people feel firsthand. The decline in newspaper circulation has progressed rapidly since the mid-2000s, and empirically speaking, newspapers are no longer able to show their presence as mass media for generations under 40. The reality is that they are steadily ceasing to be the "media one should look through" regardless of past pros and cons, and the same applies to magazines and radio.

It should be added that these changes are not necessarily caused by changes in content. On the contrary, regarding Japanese newspaper companies, some have histories spanning nearly 100 years, possessing accumulated reporting know-how, networks, and resources. The stability of their quality and continuous supply is something that, viewed comprehensively, individual online media outlets still cannot match even if they banded together. Following several scandals and the recent trend toward emphasizing compliance, the quality of content has actually improved. Despite this, as the communication environment and means change, mass media (excluding television) continue to see their circulation, viewership, and former brand power and influence eroded. Naturally, it is difficult to imagine that media which do not reach recipients would be trusted.

It is now self-evident that with the decline of mass media influence, society is losing a common source of information. For example, those who sought to talk about politics in the era before the internet likely looked through morning and evening newspapers, watched morning and evening news programs, and commented on politics while reading "Sekai" if they were on the left, or "Chuo Koron" if they were on the right. Without even citing the discussions of famous coffee houses, the prerequisite for the public sphere should have been sharing the same information (sources) to some extent and exchanging arguments using shared language and concepts, regardless of whether one agreed or disagreed.

What is the current situation? The media people watch and the information they receive have become diverse. Even if SNS is an important occasion for information contact, the articles people see have become considerably different for each individual due to reasons such as personalization, algorithms, and contact time slots.

The self-evidence of concepts and words for discussion is also wavering. For example, "conservatism" is popular in Japan today. Both the ruling and opposition parties claim to be the "true conservatives." The theme is not "conservative or progressive," but "which is the true conservative." It has also been pointed out that the political parties associated with the concepts of "conservative" and "progressive" have reversed. Even when discussing using the terms "conservative" and "progressive," the cost required for discussion and persuasion is certainly increasing because the underlying concepts vary depending on the generation and the speaker.

In the first place, there are probably not many people who refer to the statements or posts of "raw politicians" when making political choices and vote based on objective facts or arguments. Most voters likely make political choices based on the images of politicians or parties they see for a split second in between popular media content—as one of many news items handled by a news program, as one of the "Yahoo! Topics," as one of the tweets on a timeline, or as one of the major news items sent via push notification. Since entering the 2000s, politics has actively adopted modern marketing techniques. Since internet-based election campaigning was permitted, each political party has been actively seeking new information armaments through information gathering and analysis, and tactical improvements based on data (Nishida 2015, 2018).

Challenges also remain in political education, which in practice hardly deals with real-world politics and its background. Many voters cannot explain the history or achievements of the LDP, and of course, they cannot explain those of the Communist Party either; in fact, partly due to the influence of long-term administrations, it is difficult for them to even recall the names of the last five prime ministers. When the voting age was lowered from 20 to 18, the importance of Japanese-style citizenship education was discussed, but no significant change in the situation has been seen. With the exception of the period immediately after the system change, it seems to have recently converged to a level almost identical to that of people in their 20s, where low voter turnout continues. If people lack political knowledge, information sources are diversified, and the standard of communication becomes image-centered, they have no choice but to vote based on images.

For better or worse, political choices based on reason are becoming increasingly difficult, and as images have become the center of current communication, their presence in politics is also growing. The use of images has become effective and indispensable for politics and modern mobilization. I call this situation and structure—where images are prioritized over knowledge or logic, politics is driven by them, and political decisions proceed somewhat vaguely without the substance of politics (policy) being well understood—"Image Politics" (Figure 1) (Nishida 2018).

As society changes, including media and norms, images are newly extracted as political issues, politics adapted to the situation transmits new political images, and society reacts again in a circular pattern. The "image" here depends strongly on subjectivity and is accelerated by the aforementioned changes in communication means. It is said that politics moves through emotion and reason, but politics may over-adapt to transmissions biased toward the emotion of images. Indeed, when recalling the simple but contentless catchphrase used in the 2018 LDP presidential election, "My resolve will not waver in the slightest," that anxiety becomes even harder to dispel.

How are populism and images related? In image politics, rational clues and commonalities for mass mobilization decrease, and persuasion costs increase. To gain mass empathy other than through persuasion, images are utilized as triggers for primitive, knee-jerk reactions. Today, what can form a majority are images and messages that can induce knee-jerk reactions, and what is occurring regarding modern populism is a competition for knee-jerk reactions related to politics and a race to gain a favorable impression that leads to mobilization.

I mentioned that in the competition for knee-jerk reactions, persuasion that expects reason or knowledge becomes high-cost. Even if one camp attempts persuasion, if another camp develops a campaign that induces knee-jerk reactions from that side, ultimately every camp will have no choice but to compete for knee-jerk reactions.

Overcoming knee-jerk reactions in politics is an old yet new problem that modern society has faced since the dawn of modernity, taking into account the atomization and massification of society. We are being questioned on the strategies and methods to confront universal problems whose difficulty has increased, pushed by new information technology. For example, technology that encourages deliberation might be necessary, but is "deliberation" pushed by technology that encourages deliberation worthy of being called deliberation? The scope of the problem knows no bounds.

Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt, 2018, HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE. (Japanese translation by Taido Hamano, Shinchosha)

"What is Populism?" (Jiro Mizushima, 2016, Chuo Koron Shinsha)

"Media and the LDP" (Ryosuke Nishida, 2016, Kadokawa Shoten)

"Politics Armed with Information" (Ryosuke Nishida, 2018, KADOKAWA)

"The Essence of Populism: Can 'Political Alienation' Be Overcome?" (Edited by Masaki Taniguchi and Jiro Mizushima, 2018, Chuo Koron Shinsha)