2021.9.22

     In today's class, we learned about how public opinion is constructed.

     Firstly, public opinion is a spectrum between conservative and liberal. I am more of a liberal person that demands political change but getting something new isn't always the best. In that case, conservative people can work as a stopper. Choosing which idea is better to adjust to current society and balancing between these two ideas is significant. I would like to get more knowledge on right-wing and left-wing. I was unconsciously avoiding these words because words that shows strong political view isn't considered positively in Japan.

     Secondly, Mr.Paterson let us discuss how public opinion is constructed. We often see this data on news, but the result changes a lot according to the way of asking. People tend to be liberal when asked about specific policies, but conservative when asked about ambiguous topic. I believe media can easily manipulate people’s opinion by doing this and it was used in Tokyo Olympics data too. In the last part of the class, Mr.Paterson talked about how media tells about personal information of the politician instead of their political views in U.S. We can see this tendency in Japan too. The picture below introduces politicians with their funny, silly, or cringe episode. For example, Masaaki Taira talked about how he supports popular woman idol “Kojiharu” in Japan which is obviously inappropriate.