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Coronavirus in Japan: smartphones and keeping self-informed

By Laura Haapio-Kirk, on 17 April 2020

“I am ashamed of our government” messaged Inoue san*, a 65 year old woman from Osaka. She is retired and has been staying at home as much as possible during the coronavirus outbreak. “In Japan, regretfully it seems that people don’t think it’s so serious. I can’t believe it!” For the past month my friends in Japan have been telling me that they are concerned by the slow response to the coronavirus from the Japanese government. 

For many people I got to know, it is customary to go to the clinic or even hospital as soon as you suspect you may have the flu. According to my doctor contacts in Kyoto, hospitals are starting to become overwhelmed by the numbers of people seeking help and advice. As the story of Sato san shows, illustrated above, even the official corona virus hotline recommends for people to go to hospital. There is a feeling that unless drastic measures are taken, such as a lockdown, the number of infections will soon explode and hospitals will not be able to cope.

While here in the U.K. the numbers of cases and fatalities rose dramatically during March and early April, in Japan the number of confirmed cases remained low and is only just reported to be rising. While some of my contacts believe that the government’s response has therefore been appropriate, in general trust in the government’s crisis response is low among the 60 or so individuals I got to know well during my fieldwork. This negativity is primarily due to their concern over how the government handled the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Japanese media is largely state-controlled and many people question the transparency of reporting. During the coronavirus pandemic people are turning to their smartphones to seek out the latest information about the virus, such as through the messaging app LINE which collates news from various sources. 

 

The smartphone is not only a key source of news, but it is also where people can express their frustration with the government’s response. What many people want is for employers to be forced to close businesses, and for there to be financial aid given to workers. For example on 16 April there was an organised Twitter protest targeting government policy, with the hashtag #休業補償と一律給付で命を守って, meaning ‘save lives with leave compensation and uniform benefits”. While Japan’s working poor continue with their daily commutes to work, the government have promised to send face masks to every household. This gesture has been widely regarded as out of touch with reality, and has prompted ridicule online, such as the memes below and the trending hashtag #Abenomask which plays on Prime Minister Abe’s eponymous ‘Abenomics’ economic policies.

On 16 April the government issued a nation-wide state of emergency, giving them greater power to request the closure of businesses. The Japanese constitution makes it difficult for the government to issue the sort of lockdowns that we have seen in Europe, so they have relied on issuing requests for people to work from home if possible and avoid mass gatherings. Yet these guidelines have not been binding by law, meaning that many employers have largely been carrying on as normal, while individuals feel increasingly conflicted.


See Laura’s Instagram for more illustrated ethnography.

*Names have been changed for anonymity in this blog post.

Affective venting on Whatsapp

By Georgiana Murariu, on 9 April 2020

By Pauline Garvey

A St Patrick’s Day ‘like no other’ during the Coronavirus pandemic, source reuters.com (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ireland/deserted-st-patricks-day-streets-highlight-irish-hospitality-woes-idUSKBN21431F)

On Thursday the 12th March, the Irish government announced that schools, colleges and other public buildings in the Republic of Ireland were to close in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Outdoor meetings or activities of up to 500 people were cancelled, and indoor meetings of 100 people or more were banned. These measures were followed by the closure of pubs on the 15th March, the grounding of airlines and the closure of cafes and restaurants amid the anticipation of an extensive lockdown of all public gatherings in an effort to slow the onward spread of the disease.

In his address to the nation on the 9pm news bulletin on 17th March, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar commented that this year’s St Patrick’s Day was ‘like no other’, where parades in towns and cities were cancelled, pubs were shut and celebrations confined to people’s homes. In an effort to introduce a degree of normalcy, the national broadcaster (RTE) showed short video clips of children parading in their back gardens waving flags, while other householders put ‘Happy St Patrick’s Day’ signs in kitchen windows for passing pedestrians. Social celebrations on this national holiday moved from the public arena of towns and cities to the private sphere of homes and gardens.

These are unsettling times and not surprisingly, in a situation where social distancing is enforced, online media has become the main site where people actually communicate. Whatsapp groups among family members, friends, work colleagues, school and sports’ groups were invigorated and the announcement of government measures sparked a flood of messages between people as they shared information, asked each other if the information they had received is correct or discussed plans for the care of relatives. Jokes, memes, gifs, news articles, videos and advice from purported medical professionals was (and still is) swapped, shared and commented upon. Often the same content circulated from one WhatsApp group to another, although very little of it was new. Arguably, most of the Covid-19 content that is passed between groups is composed of jokes, uplifting images, stories and funny videos.

Anthropologists have argued that here we can see one role of the media more generally. The activities of our daily lives maintain a sense of reliability and continuity, and these activities are managed through predictable order and taken-for-granted routines. According to the media scholar Roger Silverstone for example, the integration of television news bulletins provides a level of predictable routine that informs the audience of sources of anxiety while simultaneously offering reassurance that these dangers will be successfully combated.[1]

WhatsApp is different in several interesting ways, however. Unlike news bulletins that ‘address the nation’, WhatsApp messaging provides a feeling of direct participation.[2] Instead of posting or announcing or informing, on WhatsApp, people are speaking directly to known others, who often respond immediately, providing a sense of an ongoing conversation. These types of exchanges allow for more intimate and individualised communication.[3]  In Ireland, health officials have adopted this mode of direct communication to speak to people directly and the Minister for Health (Simon Harris) circulated a WhatsApp message to urge people to stay indoors and maintain social distancing on 22nd March. Also, the WhatsApp groups that sprang into activity during the lockdown often consist of jokes, thumbs-up and emojis. Indeed, very little about the interaction seems to be about acquiring news and most of it is far more about sharing the emotional burden of what is going on. The sheer number, variety and frequency of WhatsApp messages in various groups seems to suggest, then, that it is the practice of being in touch that is more important than the actual content of these messages. One 70-year-old woman told me that she forwarded short videos that were ‘rubbish’ and even mildly offensive but circulated them to her groups anyhow because her niece had sent them to her.  People laugh or forward frightening statistics regarding how many will contract the disease while also wishing others well and commenting on the exceptional circumstances we are living in. WhatsApp in other words allows a kind of affective venting that is difficult to express elsewhere.

 

[1] Silverstone, Roger 1994 Television and Everyday Life New York and London: Routledge.

[2] For a comparable argument regarding Twitter see Rosa, J. 2015 Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States, American Ethnologist Volume 00 Number 0, pp. 4-16.

[3] The World Health Organisation has launched a dedicated messaging service in Arabic, English, French and Spanish with WhatsApp partners to inform the public about the virus. In order to activate the app, you have to text ‘hi’ to the relevant number. See https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-health-alert-brings-covid-19-facts-to-billions-via-whatsapp, accessed 8/4/20