blog series 2 Media

The importance of the media for every day life in modern, industrialised societies is reflected in an ever increasing number of publications on the media, media ownership and media control.The media are undergoing rapid changes in Japan and elsewhere in the industrialised world, particularly with regard to the increase in multi media technologies and the introduction of digital services. The importance of the media for every day life in modern, industrialised societies is reflected in an ever-increasing number of publications on the media, media ownership and media control. In addition, the media's roles for political and social change, their function as promoter of commercialism, their importance for information and entertainment and the media's use of language are some of the topics that have been and continue to be widely discussed. Japanese readers have a choice of approximately 120 daily newspapers with a total of 50 million copies of set papers. Over the last decade, television has clearly come to surpass newspapers as Japan's main information and entertainment medium. For a long time, newspapers were regarded as the most influential information medium in Japan, although audience attitudes towards television changed with the emergence of commercial news broadcasting in the mid-1980s. Newspapers have lost their predominance as the most useful medium for news, information and commentary to television. For many years, Japan lagged behind in Internet access and Internet-related technology development compared to the US. Between January 1977 and March 1999, there were 12 times as many Internet related patents in the US than in Japan. In addition, the many recent changes to the Japanese media environment, including increased access to Internet, satellite and cable services, as well as the broadcast services, warrant continuing observation and analysis with regard to their impact on the interactive relationship between the media and their audiences.