Africa and the news on Yahoo Japan

Photo by Jason Wong under a CC Licence

This post aims to cast light on the state of the mass media in Japan. As in many other wealthy countries, news consumption in Japan is increasingly moving to the internet. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the sources of news are changing, or becoming more global. The bulk of the news that people access online is coming from news aggregators, and their sources are the traditional newspaper and television companies. In any case, looking at the content of such news aggregators is a good way to see the type of news that people are being fed.

Below are some of the results of a recently completed study of all (20,233) news stories provided by Yahoo! Japan (in Japanese) for the year 2010. As can be expected, the news was dominated by ‘national’ news stories. International news stories made up just 10 percent of the total (and many of those were about issues related to Japan or Japanese people in the world, rather than the world per se). Entertainment stories (celebrity news and gossip) made up 15 percent of the news and sports news made up 22 percent – 37 percent of the news was of the ‘soft’ variety.

As seen in the traditional media, the African continent was thoroughly marginalized on the Yahoo! Japan news website. Of the 10 percent of the total number of articles devoted to international news, just 2.4 percent (or 49 articles) were focused on Africa. Let’s see how this compared to some other important objects of media interest:

While this is hardly an exhaustive search, it is clear that the leading figures in many sports were each able to garner far more coverage than all of Africa’s countries combined (even the women’s curling team didn’t do badly in terms of coverage). The same can be said for other celebrities embroiled in a scandal of some sort. Part of the coverage of the Kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa was because of his wedding to a famous newscaster, but the bulk of it came after he was injured in a fight while out drinking. Coverage of Manabu Oshio centred on his trial for his failure to help a woman who died of an overdose of ecstasy in 2009 (they were taking the drug together). Coverage of Erika Sawajiri was largely related to the question of whether or not she was going to get a divorce, and on her possible return to acting/singing. The rapid rise of globalization notwithstanding, infotainment at the national level is going strong.

Of all the stories devoted to Africa, 28 percent were related to the 2010 FIFA World Cup (soccer) hosted by South Africa. These were stories in the international news section, not the sports section, and were articles not about the action on the field, but about the state of crime in South Africa (particularly foreign victims), the vuvuzela (plastic horn used by supporters at games) and other related stories. Only three articles about South Africa were not related to the World Cup.

If we exclude South Africa’s World Cup related stories, the most covered African country was Sudan, with six stories in total – about developments in Darfur and a man who was fined for wearing make-up. Post-election violence and the rarity of two candidates claiming the title of president put Cote d’Ivoire at second with five stories, while Nigeria and Libya were at third place with four stories each.

It is interesting to note that (with the exception of South Africa and its World Cup news) no African country could attract as much coverage on Yahoo! Japan as could US celebrity Paris Hilton (nine articles), or Paul the Octopus in Germany, the aquarium attraction that appeared to correctly predict the winner of several World Cup matches (eight articles).

As in most countries, media coverage of the world in Japan is in a sad and sorry state, and Africa is perhaps the greatest victim.

(This article was originally posted on the Stealth Conflicts Forum website – contributions of your own material there are most welcome)