[Special Feature: Society Changed by Smartphones] Shotaro Tsuda: How News Flows in the Smartphone Era

2022/04/05

On April 1, 2019, I was working in a coffee shop. While drafting a document on my laptop, I occasionally checked my Twitter timeline on my smartphone. The time for the announcement of the era name following Heisei was approaching.

I could have accessed a live online stream to learn the new era name in real-time. However, doing so while working in a coffee shop felt somewhat awkward.

Consequently, Twitter became the place where information was fast and could be checked while doing other things. As expected, when the new era name was announced at 11:41 AM, the word "Reiwa" instantly flooded my timeline.

After confirming the new era name, I returned to work without any particular emotion. A short while later, a middle-aged man entered the shop. While ordering, he said to the female clerk, "Apparently the next one is Reiwa." When the clerk responded, "The next what?", the customer replied, "The new era name." When the clerk said, "Oh, is that so?" with an obviously uninterested attitude, the customer looked somewhat dissatisfied. He was likely expecting a different reaction.

On this day, many people learned of the new era name via television. Not to mention NHK, even TV Tokyo—known for not following suit with other stations even during major incidents—broadcast the announcement live. The total household viewership rating in the Kanto region reached 49.5% at 11:44 AM, immediately after the announcement.*1

However, during the same 11:00 AM hour, Twitter users reached as many as 6 million,*2 and there must have been many users like myself who learned of the new era name via Twitter. When people learn information with such prominent news value as a new era name, it is common to want to tell others, and some, like the clerk at the coffee shop where I was, likely learned of it through word of mouth.

Recent research has confirmed that the reward centers in the human brain are activated when sharing special information with others.*3 In short, there is pleasure associated with conveying information that the other person likely doesn't know but would be surprised or happy to hear. While this brain characteristic allows information and knowledge to be shared rapidly in society, it also likely results in an endless stream of people providing unsolicited and unnecessary information.

As is clear from the examples mentioned above, the way news is transmitted is changing significantly due to the spread of the internet, and particularly mobile media represented by smartphones. Especially for the younger generation, news consumption has become an act performed on smartphones during "gap time," such as commuting on a train, rather than just at home.*4 Because of this, individual news stories are rarely read thoroughly; in the case of news consumption via smartphone, it is said that information is often processed in less than two minutes. In other words, the fixed "media time" of reading a newspaper or watching a news program in real-time at set times in the morning or evening is rapidly collapsing.

When there is a concerning event—such as the announcement of the new era name mentioned above, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the time of writing (early March)—many people try to access the latest information as quickly as possible without following traditional "media time."

On the other hand, for information that is not as concerning, people tend to either encounter it during traditional "media time" or read it if it happens to flow into their timeline during "gap time." However, in the latter case, it is important to note that the information flowing in is not necessarily the latest. Rather, one could say that this is precisely where the characteristic of news distribution on the internet lies.

Though it is a somewhat old example, according to a study investigating how and when people learned the news of the death of Kim Jong-il, then General Secretary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, in December 2011, many people learned of it via television immediately after the first report, whereas the number of people who learned of it via the internet increased as time passed.*5 This is because even if one misses a breaking news report on TV, information can be found later on the internet.

Due to this cumulative nature of information on the internet, there are cases where "news" announced quite a long time ago attracts a lot of traffic.*6 On the other hand, this brings the risk that many users may retweet or share information without realizing it is old, resulting in it functioning like fake news.

However, on the other hand, current events can give new value to old information, and "news" with content that does not easily age can be discovered and spread. In my personal experience, when I tweet a summary of the contents of a book published decades ago (clearly stating the source, of course), it is not uncommon for it to be retweeted quite a lot.

Regarding information distribution on the internet, its breaking news quality tends to attract attention, but the point that the future of news lies in the new distribution process brought about by this cumulative nature*7 is worth considering.

However, news distribution via the internet seems to be driving existing media toward an emphasis on breaking news instead. In the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even at the time of writing this article, the words [Breaking News] are constantly seen on the Asahi Shimbun website.

One reason behind this obsession with breaking news is thought to be that it greatly affects the number of accesses.*8 On the internet, a slight delay in sending information manifests as a large difference in page views. Furthermore, small screens like those on smartphones are not suited for viewing long texts, so short breaking news reports are easier to read than articles that delve into the background.

In addition, if an article is selected for the top screen of a portal site like Yahoo!, users can be guided to the company's own site through it, resulting in even more page views. (However, younger people often encounter news via LINE News or social media rather than Yahoo!, and the contact routes may change in the future.*9)

If creating articles quickly and getting them onto portal sites becomes the goal in this way, the quality of news reporting will naturally decline. In fact, many have already pointed out the danger that an emphasis on breaking news lowers the quality of reporting.

Furthermore, as the process from news creation to consumption is shortened—in other words, as the news cycle becomes shorter—might people become more "fickle" regarding specific topics? Below, I would like to examine this possibility from a slightly different angle.

Many years have already passed since concerns were expressed that the diversity of information channels on the internet might promote social polarization. Concepts describing internet mechanisms that only expose users to information matching their interests and make dialogue with others who have different opinions difficult—such as echo chambers, cyber cascades, and filter bubbles—have become quite familiar.

However, empirical research on people's information behavior does not necessarily support the claim that information distribution on the internet brings about political division. Rather, it is said that users who encounter news on the internet tend to be exposed to more diverse information than those who obtain information from traditional media.*10 A major factor for this is thought to be the low cost of information on the internet.

For example, in the case of newspapers, if you want to read a different newspaper than usual, you normally need to go out and buy it. But on the internet, you can quickly find media and commentators with different positions and encounter their views and opinions. Therefore, if we look only at the dimension of news contact, we can even expect the internet to work toward suppressing political polarization.

So, is there no problem with news distribution centered on the internet? What more recent research has come to view as a problem is not political division between right and left, but rather the "division" between those who actively seek information about politics, society, and the economy, and those who do not.*11 In other words, even if they use smartphones in the same way, the former actively tries to obtain such information, while the latter's screen shows games, videos, and entertainment information. To put it another way, the medium of the smartphone may end up playing a role in further widening pre-existing gaps.

In fact, it is often pointed out that there is a divergence between news emphasized by mass media and news that is easily retweeted or shared on the internet. While existing media decide what content to report and its priority by considering social importance to some extent, "news" that is easily shared on the internet is generally highly entertainment-oriented. In the case of social media where you decide who to follow yourself, it is not at all surprising if a timeline is created where heavy topics are completely excluded.

Nonetheless, even on such timelines, when major events occur—such as the arson murder at Kyoto Animation or the Russian invasion of Ukraine—news can come over the "wall." In that sense, the strength of social interest in a specific piece of news might be measurable by how far it crossed the "wall."

But even so, the power of the "walls" cannot be underestimated. These are merely cases where news "happened" to flow into the timeline, and it does not lead to news contact in a form that tracks the causes or consequences.*12 Even for major events, people may only be interested for a short while before it quickly gets lost among other information.

However, it would likely be a mistake to say this only applies to the younger generation with low political interest. As mentioned earlier, it seems that we are becoming "fickle" overall.

Regarding the invasion of Ukraine mentioned several times in this article, since the first report in early November 2021 that Russia was massing troops near the border with that country, the amount of newspaper coverage (total number of related articles in the Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri) increased, reaching its first peak in early February (Figure 1). Coverage continued thereafter, and the amount of reporting increased dramatically after the invasion began on February 24, but it decreased considerably by March 6.

On the other hand, looking at the trend in the number of Japanese tweets related to Ukraine, the number of tweets was generally at a level of 5,000 to 7,000 until around February 10, and it could by no means be said that interest was high. After February 10, there were many days with 20,000 to 30,000 tweets, and here we finally see a rise in user interest. Then, on February 24 and 25, the number of related tweets reached approximately 290,000 each.

However, the number of tweets decreased thereafter, reaching approximately 130,000 as of March 7. It remains at a high level, and it is possible that it will pick up again depending on the future situation. However, despite the fact that fighting is still ongoing, the possibility that Twitter users are already "starting to get bored" with the invasion of Ukraine cannot be denied.

That said, it also feels wrong to blame people's lack of perseverance. In addition to what is sent from traditional mass media, the vast amount of information on the internet washes away old information one after another. Perhaps because of this, it frequently happens that events from just a short while ago feel like very old events (of course, that might be due to my own aging). This is true even for events that shake the world, such as the spread of the new coronavirus.

If society as a whole is becoming fickle, and if that is why we are becoming unable to maintain a long-term perspective, it is not the fault of young people, nor is it a problem with social media, and certainly not caused by smartphones. Rather, it is likely a kind of survival tactic for a situation where a vast amount of information is overflowing.

*1 VRDigest Editorial Department (2019) "From Heisei to Reiwa: TV Viewing Trends Seen from the 'Era Change'" [Accessed March 1, 2022]

*2 Kozo Hikage (2019) "Streaming the Announcement of the New Era Name: Reiwa, the Dawn of the Smartphone Video Era," Nikkei MJ [Accessed March 1, 2022]