• Yuya Shibuya Project Research Associate, The Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, the University of Tokyo

• Kenneth Mori MCELWAIN Professor, Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo

Social media is everywhere. Their ubiquity and pervasiveness in today’s society have awakened interest across research fields. My project approaches social media-related phenomena in Japan through an interdisciplinary lens. In particular, we examine how economic, political, and social situations in the real world relate to and impact people’s communication in the digital world and vice versa. In this talk, I look at this dynamic relationship through various cases, including COVID-19 and the 2020 Olympics. Specifically, I will discuss communication strategies, economic incentives, people’s narratives and discourses, and policy implications in the current information age.

Yuya Shibuya is a research associate at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, at The University of Tokyo. She received her Ph.D. in Socio-information and Communication Studies from The University of Tokyo in 2019.