Welcome to Kihon Enshu: Behind the News for the fall 2014 semester at Meiji University!

In this post, I'll share with you information about who you (the students participating in this course) are. On Tuesday, 23 September 2014, each student in the class filled out a questionnaire about their news-reading habits and what they think is important to learn in this class. Let's see what the results for the class are!

How often do we consume "news" and from what sources?

 The results of our first in-class survey show that most of us (ten out of 16) consume internet and television news everyday. Some of you cited Twitter as an important news source for you. Some other important news sources that you mentioned by name were:

NHK
The Washington Post
Nikkei (日本経済新聞)
SNS
CNN
The New York Times

In terms of important current events, you brought up several hot topics, including the Japanese economy, student demonstrations in Hong Kong, Dengue Fever, Okinawa, and TPP. Topics that more than one of you mentioned were:

1. Nuclear Power: Two of you wrote that you'd like to better understand nuclear issues in Japan and abroad.

2. Ebola Outbreak: Two of you mentioned the spread of disease in West Africa, which you'd like to understand in context.

3. Current Independence Movements: Two of you specifically cited the recent referendum on Scottish independence as a topic of interest. One of you linked this to other movements underway, for example in Spain.

4. ISIS: Four of you wrote that you'd like to better understand the political situation in Iraq and Syria.

5. Japan's Relationships with Other Countries: Seven of you want to better understand the relationship between Japan and other countries. Five of you specified that the tense situation between Japan and China is of interest to you. Other foreign relations issues you mentioned involved Russia, Korea, the United States, the EU, and ASEAN.




Most of you are interested in this course because you'd like to improve your English and better understand different points of view not only in Japan, but throughout the world.

So, based on your answers to my survey, here are some questions for us to think about:

1. What can we know about our biases and influences when it comes to news consumption?

2. How can we evaluate our news sources?

3. What are the historical questions we can ask about the various current events we think are important?

4. How can we better inform our opinions of these current events?