Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2014
Poster Presentation
A Closer Look at Japan’s Media
Amy Fogarty
Faculty Mentor: Yong Tang
Journalism
Japan is one of the most media-saturated societies in the world. Japan has come a
long way to be where it is today with the press and media. Within my research I am
going to give a brief history of Japan’s press and media from the 1900’s to what it is
today to get a better understanding of how and why it is run the way it is. I use press
freedom rankings from Freedom House as well as Reporters without Borders rankings.
Those rankings differ from one another which seems odd, so I further explored why the
ranking has dropped for the reporters in Japan and found the 2011 Tsunami and
Earthquake has effected what is kept private and what is made available to the public.
Another interesting finding in Japan is that the print readership is the highest in the
world. I explore this idea and then also compare it to the United State’s print mediawhich is declining rapidly.