Thoughts on Confronting the Issues of Today and the Media
I’d like to briefly summarize our findings from our survey that we conducted a couple of months ago on how people feel towards the media sources we have today, and just social issues in general, discuss our takings from it.
(The results will be the latest available, they might have slightly changed since I wrote this).
I will leave a link to it below, please feel free to answer it if you haven’t yet already!
https://goo.gl/forms/xpf2rXMNujq1NRjf1
First and foremost, I’d like to thank everyone who took part!
We have had hundreds of responses from the following 33 countries and regions: Japan, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Singapore, Australia, the Philippines, France, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, UK, India, Italy, Finland, Czech Republic, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Costa Rica, Serbia, Nepal, Hong Kong, Romania, Algeria and Trinidad and Tobago.
We are blown away by how many responses we got, many times more than what we had ever expected, and the sheer variety of backgrounds everyone came from reminded us once again just how internationalized the world has become.
Now, I’d just like to quickly summarize the results below.
A large majority, 79.9%, answered Yes when asked if they often read the news. On the other hand, only 54.8% answered Yes when asked if they were satisfied their current news outlets. In particular, 89.4% of people residing in Japan answered No to this question. Furthermore, 90.9% of people did not think that media outlets today are neutral and unbiased. We think this is a large problem that traditional media outlets are going to face more in the coming months in this current political climate.
Next, we asked a couple of questions on whether they have places and opportunities to openly discuss and debate social, political and other issues. The responses were split quite evenly in regards to this question. But, only 10% of people in Japan felt this way. As with the previous question, we feel that Japan is still trailing the world by far in these terms. Furthermore, around 84.9% of people feel that they want a place to openly discuss issues that concern them. We believe that there is a strong demand that needs to be met here and we need to be more opportunities and places that are open to free debate.
Finally, we asked a couple of questions regarding writing articles.
58.9% of people responded that they wanted to write an article, and 56.2% of people said they wanted to participate in a platform posting articles regarding a wide variety of issues. Through Generation Z, we want to provide this platform. In order to truly stimulate and allow free debate, we will not censor the content of any articles posted, although exceptions, such as hateful speech, will apply. We hope that we can help solve some of the problems that the media of today faces, and allow more fruitful discussion regarding the issues our society faces. Please also read our introductory article as well! This is a link to that article https://medium.com/generationz/generation-z-915335ed21f0
Furthermore, we would like to further stimulate the international exchange of ideas and opinions of this generation. Thanks to the technology we have today, this has become easier than ever before. This was also reflected in our survey, with 95.9% of people wanting opportunities to find out what people in other countries think about various issues. Through this platform, although this is not the most direct approach, we think that this will be an opportunity to be able to do so. Also, in the near future, we would like to provide more opportunities to fulfill this goal in other forms. For now, we will focus on writing articles in Japanese or English, but we would like to broaden our horizons to other languages in the near future.
We created Generation Z as a media outlet to publish new and original ideas freely, and allow more fruitful debate on the issues of today. We would like this to be a truly free form of media, and we would love to welcome anyone to post their opinions on any topic that intrigues them. Anyone who wants to join our small band of members in any way, from writing articles or helping run the platform to discussing issues is welcome!
Please feel free to contact us on generation.z.igen@gmail.com or Messenger, and like our Facebook page!
