2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Symbolic Politics and the Ascendance of Rhetoric: An inquiry into Political Symbols, their Usage and Role in Japan
| Project/Area Number |
19K01462
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| Research Institution | Doshisha University |
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Principal Investigator |
FELDMAN Ofer 同志社大学, 政策学部, 教授 (50208906)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Political Communication / Political interviews / discourse analysis / Political Rhetoric / Symbolic interaction / Political symbols |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This study examines the forms and functions of the symbols used in the public sphere in Japan within the broad framework of political behavior and communication. For this purpose, data was collected during 2019-2020 from political interview programs aired on four television channels. Interviews from these programs were selected, recorded, and transcribed. Based on a methodology utilized by the chief researcher in previous research, criteria for identifying questions and responses were determined. Two coding sheets were devised for analyzing the structure and verbal content of the interviews, the interviewees' responses manner and style, and the key topics at the core of the interview. In 2020 data from the two coding sheets were gathered and the initial level of analyze took place.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
There are two reasons for this delay. One is related to the coding process of the collected data. The training of two coders took longer time than anticipated. It took also longer time to achieved a high level of agreement between the coders (checking reliability by the Cohen's kappa coefficient) as they were coding similar data. The other reason is related to the fact that many international conference, including International Society of Political Psychology, and International Political Science Association canceled their annual meetings. This prevented me from discussing the study's data and initial results in the academic societies, and to received feedback on the significant of this study. Analysis of the data is still going on now, with the hope to attend international meetings soon.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In the following research, efforts will be allocated to identify and construct a model on the nature, characteristics, role, and usage of political symbols in Japan. To construct this model, focus will be on the nature of the symbols interviewees used during interviews, and who they cite when presenting replies to questions. This will follow by the symbols sources use (issues or non-issues), and the attributes of the respondents (e.g., position in government, political affiliation). The ensuing research will further analyze the relationship between the questions' level of threat to face and interviewees' tendency to reply to questions. All these with the intention to compare the case of Japan with the situation in other countries on the functions of symbols in the conduct of politics.
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| Causes of Carryover |
This is mostly because I wasn't able to continue with the analysis and summarize the results in academic papers and to attend international meeting in order to present this study results and significance.
(使用計画)
In the next fiscal year, as in this fiscal year, I plan to use personnel expenses for such goals as coding the interviews, and inserting the data into the computer. In addition, expenses will be used for data analysis, statistical analysis software (IBM SPSS Statistics), and for editing/rewriting papers before presenting them in international associations and in international journals and books. For that matter part of the expenses will be used to participation in international scientific meetings and for collaboration in research with Europeans and American colleagues.
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