Posts Linked to Defense, Constitution Soar Just before Voting

Tokyo, Feb. 10 (Jiji Press)–The number of social media posts referring to national security and constitution revisions rocketed toward the end of the official campaign period for Sunday’s election for the House of Representatives, Jiji Press analysis has shown. Online discussions on such issues grew energized as the public saw a higher possibility of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi putting into practice her diplomatic and security policy measures following media reports forecasting a landslide victory of the ruling coalition led by her Liberal Democratic Party. Jiji Press collected and analyzed 17.83 million posts on social media X between Jan. 27 and Saturday by using social media analysis tool Brandwatch. Of them, posts including keywords such as consumption tax, politics and money, the Constitution and national security were picked. Early in the election campaign, tweets related to political funds and consumption tax ranked high. But posts linked to the constitution and national security, which includes defense capabilities and the government’s three security-related documents, soared to exceed those on political funds and the consumption tax, after media reports at the end of January said that the LDP and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, were leading the race. On Feb. 2, Takaichi mentioned for the first time in a stump speech that she would also like to amend the Constitution. Tweets supporting her remark, such as “Let’s revise the Constitution and make (Japan) an ordinary country,” spread by the following day. The number of posts on a Constitution revision rocketed from some 16,000 on Jan. 27, the first day of the campaign period, to about 182,000 on Saturday, the final day. The number of tweets linked to national security rose nearly five times to about 132,000. On Thursday, a post by a female writer that she would go to the polls “to stop war” apparently evoked sympathy among people worried about the nation’s perceived shift to the right, affecting the tweet growth. “I can’t understand” why a constitutional amendment is criticized as the rightwing tilt, Takaichi said in a radio program Sunday. “I’d like to prepare systems to protect our country on our own.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]