Sociology of News Reporting I
TeachersSAKAMOTO, HiroshiStaffInfo
Elective, CreditsElective  2 credit [Department of Sociology]
 Syllabus NumberSOC-227

Course Description

In news reporting, information is communicated by the media. In Japan, the word “information” is no longer limited to military or secret information but is rather taken to mean “information in the broadest sense of the word,” and the concept of the “information industry” is considered in opposition to the “energy industry,” which has been a synonym for industry up to this point. This can be seen as it was published as the aim of Tadao Umesao’s “Information Industry Theory: The Dawn of the Coming Era of the Ectoderm Industry” in the January 1963 issue of Hoso Asahi (Broadcasting Asahi). This was reprinted in the March 1963 issue of Chuo Koron.
 The activities of Tadao Umesao (1920–2010 ) are large in scale, and his writings are diverse. In this class, we will first read “The Information Industry Theory,” then learn about Umesao’s life history, finally reading the other essays in The Civilization of Information, the paperback book in which “The Information Industry Theory” is included. From the above activities, we will try to understand Umesao’s conception of the society in his time from the viewpoint of “the age of the information industry.”