By Kazuki Ichida /Global Voices/ – Despite the best efforts of the Japanese government and other supporters to boost excitement for this summer’s Tokyo Olympics, with less than two months to go, most Japanese people want to cancel the Games, according to public opinion polls and a torrent of comments on social media.
Rising infections in Japan with no end in sight have influenced public opinion against holding the Olympic Games. By late May 2021, more than 700,000 people in Japan had tested positive for COVID-19, with significant outbreaks in the Tokyo and Osaka regions during a “fourth wave” of rising infections this spring.
In a poll conducted by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun in April 2021, when a rising wave of infections triggered a state of emergency in Japan, 69 percent of respondents indicated they wanted to either cancel or once again postpone the Tokyo Olympics, which commence on July 24.
A month later, in May, a different poll conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper indicated that 63 percent of respondents wanted to cancel or postpone the Olympics. A TV Asahi poll conducted at the same time indicated that 80 percent of Japanese people want to postpone or cancel the Olympics.
As Japanese politicians have vowed to press on with the Games, the public has perceived little progress being made with vaccinations. There have also been recent reports that scarce supplies of vaccines have been diverted from the elderly to Olympic athletes, while a senior medical advisor has expressed serious concerns about holding the Games as planned.
Discussion about whether or not to hold the Olympic Games this summer has raged on social media as well. Using Twitter’s public API, Global Voices analyzed more than 2.5 million Japanese-language tweets that included the terms “オリンピック” or “五輪” (common Japanese terms for the Olympics) between May 9 and May 16, 2021. We wanted to find out what ordinary Japanese thought about plans to continue with hosting the Olympics.
We observed that Twitter opinions reflected the sentiment revealed in public opinion polls, but the social media comments revealed more nuances than could be reported from public opinion research.
Of the more than 2.5 million tweets between May 9 and May 16 containing the words “オリンピック” or “五輪”, about 79.25 percent were retweets. This high number of retweets indicates Twitter users were familiar with, and highly interested in, the Olympic conversation.
We also discovered that just 1,924 of the most retweeted tweets accounted for 50 percent of all tweets covering the Olympics. So, we decided to focus on this relatively small number of popular tweets.
We categorized the 1,924 most retweeted tweets into tweets that supported hosting the Olympics, tweets that opposed hosting the Olympics, and “other tweets.” Eighty-four percent of tweets opposed the Olympics, and were retweeted more than 1 million times in total.
Using Twitter’s public API, Global Voices analyzed more than 2.5 million Japanese-language tweets, and then examined the 1,924 most-retweeted tweets, which accounted for more than 50 percent of the tweets in our dataset. We categorized these retweeted tweets into tweets that supported hosting the Olympics, tweets that opposed hosting the Olympics, and “other tweets.” Eighty-four percent of tweets opposed the Olympics, and were retweeted more than 1 million times in total.
In our dataset, there were only 15 highly popular tweets in support of the Olympics. These 15 tweets were retweeted 6,529 times, and focused mostly on the positive aspects of the Games, including discussions about popular Olympic athletes.
Still, the volume of tweets in support of the Olympics represented less than 1 percent of our dataset. Very few people were talking about the bright side of Olympics on Twitter, indicating negative attitudes in Japan towards the Games.
As well, based on data provide by Twitter’s API, people from a variety of occupational backgrounds tweeted about the Olympics. People working in cultural industries tweeted the most:
Global Voices analyzed more than 2.5 million Japanese-language tweets, and then examined the 1,924 most-retweeted tweets, which accounted for more than 50 percent of the tweets in our dataset. People from a variety of occupational backgrounds tweeted about the Olympics.
Another insight from our dataset was that the most retweeted tweets linked the Olympics with COVID-19 and related topics. Among the related topics, many tweets in opposition to the Olympics include criticism of the Japanese government’s response to the pandemic.
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