Sophia Magazine vol.5 / SUMMER 2017

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journalism of Japan, Sophia University has a history of fos-tering outstanding journalists. The university has also fos-tered a wide range of media-savvy people who understand how to use diverse media and information in an advanced information society.“The education and research at Sophia University in media and journalism are carried out in active collaboration with people abroad, and we also have many overseas stu-dents. For example, joint international research on public perceptions in Japan and China was carried out with Fudan University in Shanghai, China. An international symposium was also held in January 2017. Public perceptions in Japan and China tend to be politically biased, but with our univer-sities’ international joint research, we succeeded in drawing valuable conclusions after analyzing and comparing public perceptions purely from an academic point of view,” explains Professor Oto. Also, there are apparently plans to invite journalists from the U.S. in 2017 to hold a symposium on freedom of speech, and a forum in which researchers and TV producers from Japan, Korea, and China will participate.“As I mentioned earlier, for society to provide the support to the media that it needs, it is absolutely necessary to gain the approval of citizens and voters. And it is essential for us to appreciate that actively involved journalists strengthen our democratic society. We have a huge responsibility in overseeing media and journalism education in Japan,” con-cludes Professor Oto with conviction.Japan. Given this situation and the fact that digital media is generally free, it is extremely difficult for news-papers to survive this competition.”Some European countries have poli-cies to ensure the diversity of media by providing public support to news-paper companies facing economic hardship. Such systematic support of newspapers was proposed by the Obama administration in the U.S., but since that nation puts higher priority on political independence of the press, the news industry in the U.S., including its major news-paper companies, rejected this idea of government subsidization of the press. So, the news organizations are struggling to survive the economic hardship. Meanwhile, Japanese newspaper companies still have a lit-tle more time, thanks to the unique positioning of newspapers in Japan’s society and efficient home delivery system. But as in the U.S., Japanese companies face an urgent need to find countermeasures to address economic challenges.Professor Oto notes that “In Japan, consideration has re-cently been given to the establishment of a specific system to provide NHK programs directly online. In any case, a system has to be specifically designed according to people’s different views on media, politics and what can be considered public.”Thanks to his father’s work at a newspaper company, Pro-fessor Oto became interested in the media as a social system, and obtained his PhD in the Doctoral Program in Journal-ism at Sophia University. After working at the Research In-stitute of The Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association, he took a job teaching in the Department of Journalism at Sophia University.The professor says that, “Our department and the Insti-tute of Journalism and Communication Studies at The Uni-versity of Tokyo are Japan’s oldest research and education institutes in journalism. To this tradition we recently added general media courses in digital journalism and digital ar-chiving to substantially upgrade our curriculum in contem-porary media and journalism.”In the media industry of Japan, there is a strong belief that journalists are developed through on-the-job experience, and there are few journalism schools of the kind found in Europe and the U.S. However, as a center of education in Playing a Central Role in Education andResearch in Journalism of Japan17Research