We are delighted to support UCD Japan Fair 2021 this year and invite you to an online webinar ‘Digital disruption, political pressure and new opportunities: the future of mass media and its impact on Japan’.

This lecture will explore what international experience tells us about how mass media has evolved amid this contest between opportunities and threats, how the Japanese media experience compares, and what this might mean for the future.

Date: Thursday, 7th October 2021
Time: 1 PM
Registration is required: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/digital-disruption-political-pressure-and-new-opportunities-tickets-179171335287?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

There may never have been a better time to be in the media, whether as a journalist or a publisher. Barriers to entry into the industry have fallen, costs of distribution have plummeted, new markets and new audiences are reachable, and access to information is easier than ever before. Yet this state of affairs has come through a technological and business hurricane which has destroyed many old business models even while creating new ones, it has brought new competition for attention from social media which also challenge perceptions of fact and falsehood, and it has made the mass media a target for political pressure and even assault even as the digital revolution has made some traditional media businesses weaker. These trends are worldwide in nature, but are happening in different ways and different speeds in different markets.

Some prominent Japanese media groups have exploited the new opportunities by expanding their international English-language versions at lower cost and, most notably in Nikkei’s case, by acquiring the global English language brand the Financial Times and developing joint products with it for the Asian market. Others, however, are feeling a long, slow squeeze from declining circulations and advertising revenues, while facing new competition from digital-only start-ups and struggling to convert their own output for the digital age. Into this mix has come politics, just like in Europe and America, with nationalist politicians and governments seeking to influence and manipulate media while it is in this weaker state.

Guest Speaker: Bill Emmott, Former Editor in Chief of The Economist & Chair of the Japan Society of the UK

Bill Emmott is a writer best known for his time as editor in chief of The Economist in 1993-2006 but also for his many books on Japan, which began with the bestselling “The Sun Also Sets: Why Japan will not be Number One” (1989). He is now chair of the Japan Society of the UK, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and of Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub for Arts & Humanities, and is co-director of the Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy. In 2017-18 he was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and is an Ushioda Fellow of Tokyo College at the University of Tokyo. He is also a member of the University of Tokyo’s Global Advisory Board. Bill was presenter and co-author of a documentary film about Italy, “Girlfriend in a Coma” (2013) and executive producer of “The Great European Disaster Movie” (2015), both shown on the BBC, among other broadcasters. He is the author of 14 books on Japan, Asia, the 20th century and Italy, the latest of which was “Japan’s Far More Female Future: Increasing Gender Equality and Reducing Workplace Insecurity Will Make Japan Stronger” (OUP, 2020). In 2016 Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, for services to UK-Japan relations.

For more information and to register: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/digital-disruption-political-pressure-and-new-opportunities-tickets-179171335287?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

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This event is jointly organised by UCD Centre for Japanese Studies & PSU Centre for Japanese Studies and supported by Ireland Japan Association, Experience Japan and UCD Japanese Society.