huh
really interesting. go and read the full article.
http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2403
Youth, Intimacy, and Blood: Media and Nationalism in Contemporary Japan
"Put simply, we are witnessing a shift from an age of Nielsen ratings to an age of Google relevance. In the world of Google, value is measured not by “how many view,” but by “who is linked to whom.” We see this shift in the explosion of uses of the digital technology that have not, contrary to some initial predictions, replaced mass media, but which continue to evolve in often unpredictable ways as part of emerging communities of communication.
The Internet era is still in its infancy, yet even so we are witnessing the rapid growth of alternative communication channels, including in Japan, blogs, BBS sites such as 2 Channel, social networking online spaces such as Mixi, and the viral video site YouTube, used widely in both Japan and the US. With these, and with peer-to-peer software that enables unauthorized file sharing of media including music albums and anime programs (often translated by fans), it is increasingly important that the value of media should not be associated solely to the number of people a particular message reaches, but perhaps more importantly, in terms of the sense of social connection which media messages generate. The idea of social intimacy is meant as a shorthand to acknowledge that the attitudes of close friends are likely to carry much greater weight than a newspaper article, essay, or editorial. Now that media companies themselves aim to mimic the social networks of friends, might this alter the relationship between media and nationalism? "