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Immediately after Shinzo Abe was assassinated by a gunman on July 8, a rumor quickly spread on Japanese social media. It falsely claimed that the suspect was a Zainichi Korean. The term generally applies to descendants of Korean people who emigrated to Japan between 1910 and 1945a period when Japan occupied Korea. They are the most targeted minority in Japan and suffer from virulent online abuse.

Last summer, online hate turned into real life violence. A 22-year-old man allegedly set fire to and destroyed seven buildings in Utorothe ethnic Korean district of Uji, a city of some 185,000 on Japans main island Honshu. Although there were no casualties, the attack horrified Zainichi Koreans across the country.

On August 30, he was sentenced to four years in prison.

The suspect said that the purpose of the attack was to make Koreans afraid to live in Japan. According to media reports, he was radicalized by reading anti-Korean comments that had been posted by readers of Yahoo! News Japan and one of his motives was to earn notoriety among those users.

Yahoo! News Japan reportedly has just 70 content moderators to police an estimated 10.5 million comments each month. It is the most popular news site in the country, and articles about the Utoro incident attracted a torrent of hateful comments and disinformation about Zainichi Koreans.

Read More: Reddit Failing to Control Hate Speech In Its Global Forums

In a written statement to TIME, the platform said it uses AI and [moderators] to properly eliminate some malicious users and posts and that it has cooperated with government agencies to do so. But many of those posts remain on the site today.

Around the world, and on every continent, major tech platforms have attempted to strike a balance between allowing people to speak freely while protecting others from users who post hateful content. To do so, theyve implemented content moderation practices that are often inadequate or particularly hard on moderatorseven despite warnings from users and employees who moderate content. Japan is no exception.

But in Japan, unlike the U.S. and other countries, online problems may fester out of sight. Japans digital culture receives little attention from the international media and researchers beyond high-profile pop culture phenomena like anime and video games. Matt Alt, a Tokyo-based writer, says this is in part because deciphering Japanese online discourse requires a high degree of Japanese literacy. Within the country, what happens online tends to stay online, says Alt: There is sort of a barrier between online happenings and mass media in Japan. More so than the West.

The aftermath of damage remains on the arson site in Utoro Zainichi Korean settlement in Uji, eight months after the arson attack, on April 30, 2022 in Kyoto. A 22-year-old Japanese man is under arrest in connection with the incident.

Jinhee LeeNurPhoto/Getty Images

Japanese far-right netizens called netto-uyoku flock to Yahoo! News Japan and other platforms like Twitter and Japanese Wikipedia that allow anonymity. They use the sites to spread historical revisionism and stoke xenophobic views of Korea and China.

Twitter has over 45 million Japanese users, making Japan its second largest market. It has a policy that prohibits statements of exclusion based on race or ethnicity, according to a Twitter spokesperson, who specifically added that statements of exclusion or violence towards the Zainichi Koreans will be subject to enforcement.

But Zainichi Koreans are frequent targets of abuse on the site, where they are derided as cockroaches, cancer, illegal immigrants, and chon (a highly derogatory term), while being told to go back to your country. The last attack is particularly painful, given that the ancestors of many Zainichi Koreans were forcibly sent as laborers to Japan during the colonial era. One Zainichi Korean described it to TIME as the murder of the soul.

Meanwhile, with one billion monthly page views, Japanese Wikipedia is the most visited edition of Wikipedia after English. It has played a crucial role in whitewashing war crimes committed by Imperial Japan in China and Korea. The Zainichi Korean page contains many misleading claims and reinforces a stereotype of Zainichi Koreans as criminals. One of Wikipedias volunteer editors said in an email to TIME that Japanese Wikipedia has been hijacked by netto-uyoku.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, dismisses the claim. It said in a statement to TIME that it had investigated historical revisionism on Japanese Wikipedia and found some presence of right-wing users who have possibly attempted to control the content on certain pages but the abuse didnt seem frequent or sufficient enough to enforce a ban. The foundation subsequently added that its volunteers have included more relevant, verified historical context in [disputed] articles, although much disinformation remains.

Read More: Facebook Accused of Whitewashing a Human Rights Report on India

Daisuke Tsuji, an associate professor at Osaka University, who has collected data on netto-uyoku for over a decade, says Only about 2% of internet users in Japan are netto-uyoku. But their viewpoints are over-represented on the internet, partly because they are among the few Japanese willing to talk about politics, he says. Unlike in the U.S. or U.K., Japanese dont really talk about politics in daily conversation. Even on the Internet, its a small segment of the population that engages in political discussions.

Furthermore, the Japanese tendency to avoid conflict is also reflected on social media. In an analysis of Twitter in Japan, researchers found that plenty of progressives were on the site, but they werent discussing the same topics as netto-uyoku. Since liberals arent actively engaged in creating counter narratives, the viewpoints of netto-uyoku are rarely challenged.

Such cultural factors, plus the normalizing of hate on the Internet, have enabled netto-uyoku to create the impression that their views are more mainstream than they actually are. Their words have the potential to harm hundreds of thousands. There are at least 300,000 people in Japan who are categorized as special permanent residents, almost all of whom are Zainichi Koreansand many thousands more may consider themselves part of this group because of their heritage.

Whats happening to Zainichi Koreans isnt unique, of course. Minority communities are targeted online all over the world, as a reflection of what happens offline, says Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez, who studies digital media at Queensland University of Technology. But most major social media platforms struggle to understand how hate is articulated in non-U.S. contexts, she says.

The problem is exacerbated in countries without a proper legal framework to protect minorities. Activists in Japan have been pushing for anti-discrimination laws. Japan passed the Hate Speech Act in 2016, but activists say it didnt go far enough because it prescribes no penalties. They also say that the lack of explicit government condemnation emboldens those perpetrating ethnic hate.

Anti-racist groups (L) try to block Japanese nationalists from marching on the street during a rally demanding an end to hate speech in Kawasaki, Japan, on July 16, 2017. Scuffles erupted when right-wing activists marched with their slogans, flags, and racist speech, forcing police to intervene.

Richard Atrero de GuzmanNurPhoto/Getty Images

Frustrated by the lack of official action, some Zainichi Koreans, and Japanese people with Zainichi heritage, are mounting legal fights to stop the cycle of discrimination, even though lawsuits in Japan are uncommon.

In 2014, Osaka-born Zainichi writer Sinhae Lee, sued Zaitokukai, a far-right hate group known for staging anti-Korean rallies, for harassment both online and offline. Lee estimated that she was receiving about 5,000 racially and sexually abusive tweets per day, but after she filed the case she says she got as many as 20,000 daily. She says Zainichi Korean women are especially targeted because were at the bottom of the bottom of society.

She won the case in 2017, but it took a toll: Lee has suffered from weight loss, insomnia, and stress-related hearing loss. The harassment on Twitter hasnt stopped, but when she reports these posts to Twitter, shes told that they dont violate Twitters rules.

Last December Natsuki Yasuda, a well-known photojournalist, filed a lawsuit against two anonymous Twitter users who posted discriminatory comments about her late father, who was a Zainichi Korean.

Her suit came in the wake of another, by Choi Kang I-ja, who sued a man who repeatedly harassed her on his blog and Twitter. She also received a death threat at work and has been wearing a protective vest, fearing for her life.

The area around her workplace, the Sakuramoto district of Kawasaki City in the Greater Tokyo area, is where many Zainichi Koreans live. Its also a popular site of anti-Korean hate rallies, and its residents have been threatened with violence.

Read More: 4 Ways for Fix Social Media That Dont Cost $44 Billion

Platforms need to enforce their own guidelines against hate speech, says Hajime Kanbara, a human rights lawyer, who represents both Yasuda and Choi. He says that American companies like Twitter make filing a lawsuit against anonymous users difficult because they withhold user identities. I want them to respond more flexibly to user disclosure, he says. (Japan now has a law, the Provider Liability Limitation Act, that allows victims of online defamation to request disclosure of the senders details).

In June of this year, the Japanese parliament passed legislation that makes online insults punishable by up to a year in prison. But precisely what it covers is vague, and activists and lawyers worry that the measure will be used to protect powerful people in the establishment, while having little effect on countering hate speech.

Its very hard for victims to file a complaint or go to civil court, says Sinhae Lee. Rather than placing the burden on the victims, she says that the platforms, the government, and society should do more.

Last summers arson attack in Uji could be a signal of whats to come, unless the government and the platforms take action, says Kanbara, who warns of a hate crime with numerous casualties.

Zainichi Koreans are now fearing the worst.

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com.

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Online Platforms Are Missing a Brutal Wave of Hate Speech in Japan - TIME

AMIR KHAN stunned fans when he "violated" Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford - then posted a bizarre caption from Wikipedia on Instagram sharing the moment.

Khan's had some extra time on his hands since retiring from boxing in April following his crushing defeat to rival Kell Brook.

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The 35-year-old admitted after the fight that he no longer wanted to get hurt in the ring.

And Khan spent a moment of his free time having a catch-up with Fergie at the Theatre Of Dreams, in a clip shared on Instagram.

The pair were full of smiles as they laughed and appeared to discuss their physiques.

Fergie endearingly placed a hand on Khan's shoulder while they spoke.

But it was Khan's reaction that shocked fans and left them jokingly claiming he violated the ex-United boss.

The Bolton native, wearing a black Christian Dior jumper, proceeded to rub Fergie's belly - causing it to jiggle.

Although it was clear to see Khan meant no harm, one fan mused: "Cant believe you rubbed his belly."

While another quipped: "Man fully violated Fergie with the belly rub, he went home and shadow boxed Amir Khan in the mirror straight after, " along with a slew of crying face emojis.

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Others ribbed Khan for his caption on the picture, as it was a direct excerpt from Wikipedia.

The caption, stolen from Wikipedia, read: "Lovely to meet Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester Old Trafford Stadium. Best known for managing Manchester United from 1986 to 2013.

"He is widely regarded as one of the greatest football managers of all time."

One more mocked Khan for stating the obvious in his caption, adding: "Cheers for that Amir Id never heard of him."

Man United kept a smile on Fergie's face when they defeated Southampton 1-0 on Saturday.

The Red Devils are coming off the back of a resounding win over Liverpool which saw Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire dropped.

And boss Erik ten Hag has left the duo out of his squad again, as United won back-to-back games for the first time since February.

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Fans stunned after Amir Khan violates Sir Alex Ferguson and posts bizarre Wikipedia caption about Man Utd... - The US Sun

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'Preference whisperer' Glenn Druery is, shall we say, a colourful character. So it's unsurprising someone in the Victorian Parliament wants to 'correct' his Wikipedia page.

We've always had something of a soft spot for Glenn Druery, known as the "preference whisperer" on account of his impressive -- and lucrative -- ability to manipulate the upper house preference system, allowing micro-parties with very low primary votes to get elected.

As Guy Rundle once put it, Druery is someone "who, with no time to spare, will still give you 10 minutes, three libellous stories about candidates, and never goes off the record. Never. If Glenn broke down and said yeah, he pushed that one model off that one Sydney cliff once, hed still stay on the record."

And we see we're not the only ones: Aussie Parl&Gov WikiEdits, a Twitter account that logs when people using government or parliamentary IP addresses anonymously edit Wikipedia pages -- as likely to collect someone correcting the record on an '80s power ballad as a politician's legislative record -- picked up some interesting changes to Druery's page coming from the Victorian Parliament.

To keep reading, join us as a member. You can join us through our 50% off sale using promo code LETTERS. Or, if you have the means and want to help us even more (thank you!), you can take out a full price annual membership. It really makes a difference.

Charlie Lewis

Tips and Murmurs Editor @theshufflediary

Charlie pens Crikey's daily Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet. He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.

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Who tried to clear the Glenn Druery 'smear'? - Crikey

All the Knowledge in the World:The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaedia

Simon Garfield

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp. 352, 18.99

Two thousand years ago, a young Cilician named Oppian, wanting to rehabilitate his disgraced father, decided to write Halieutica, an account of the world of fishes, as a gift for Marcus Aurelius. It was a mixture of possible fact and definite fiction if only there were octopuses that climb trees and fishes that fancy goats and it was a success. His father was forgiven, and the sons written work accepted as authoritative knowledge. In short, although Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, calls Halieutica a didactic epic, it was an early encyclopaedia a word taken from the Greek enkyklios paideia, meaning knowledge in the round, and which has come to denote a set of books that contains articles that can be cross-referenced, is in alphabetical order and is the authors view of what knowledge needs to be known and what unknowns need to remain unknown.

Simon Garfield does not write about Oppian (I mention him not for one-upmanship but because more people should know about a man who wrote that deer sailed the sea using their horns as sails). But this history of the encyclopaedia (and its future) does not lack for learned gentlemen and their learned books. This is definitely a mans world: in the first Encyclopaedia Britannica the definition of woman was the female of man. See Homo, and things did not much improve until the 20th century.

And so many men: British, German, French, Chinese. Britannica was by no means the first. Garfield makes a convincing case for the encyclopaedic status of works by Pliny (who believed menstruating women can expel insects from the trees), Gervase of Tilbury, Isidore of Seville and (delightfully) a Herr Franckenstein, whose detailed medical entries instructed any prospective amputators of arms that the time needed for sawing through forearm bones was about the same needed to say the Lords Prayer. All had ambition to encircle knowledge and transmit it to others, for the common good and for profit. All had elements of what Garfield calls the vast commitment required to make those volumes an astonishing energy force and the belief that such a thing will be worthwhile. Those who bought them did so in the hope of purchasing perennial value.

And what value, sometimes. Britannica was founded in 1768 in Edinburgh, and its first compilers were not necessarily experts. Andrew Bell was an engraver with an unfeasibly large nose and William Smellie an ex-priest and polymath. The entries were in alphabetic order, a controversial decision that became the standard. The first volume covered Aa to Bzo, a town of Africa, in the kingdom of Morocco. Expert contributions came from filleting published books, a common practice. See Plagiary in Ephraim Chamberss encyclopaedia of 1710, in which Chambers wrote that he could not be accused of author theft because what they take from others they do it avowedly, and in the open sun. In effect, their quality gives them a title to everything that may be for their purpose, wherever they find it.

Denis Diderots Encyclopdie, published between 1751 and 1772, instead had original writing from Voltaire (Elegance, History, Taste and others) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose entry on political economy should be required reading for our current government: It is one of the most important concerns of government to prevent the extreme inequality of fortunes... not by building hospitals for the poor but by guaranteeing that the citizens will not become poor.

An encyclopaedia was meant as reference, but also to be savoured. The 11th edition of Britannica (1929) featured Cecil B. DeMille on motion pictures and J.B. Priestley on English literature. It was, wrote Denis Boyles, plausible, reasonable, unruffled, often reserved and completely authoritative. And sometimes plain wrong. Garfield reaps many pages out of the unsavoury views of the past, from awful entries on negroes and Hitler and homosexuality, even while believing that scholarship of any era is still scholarship. It is valuable to know what 1819 knew about Egypt, and what 1824 understood about James Watt.

Sometimes the book drags, weighed down by the encyclopaedic bounty. Turn the page and my heart sinks to find yet another set of learned gentlemen compiling yet another set of clever books. I think back to the entry of Abridgement in the first Britannica, written by the polymath Smellie, who attended many lectures. He wrote: The art of conveying much sentiment in a few words is the happiest talent an author can be possessed of; and abridging is particularly useful in taking the substance of what is delivered by professors. Or authors attempting to be encyclopaedic about encyclopaedias. (Garfield states early on that this is not his intention; he will write only about those he judges most significant or interesting, or indicative of a turning point in how we view the world.) Perhaps, then, this is a book to be used like an encyclopaedia: to be put down but always picked up again. To be read with pleasure, but not all at once.

Because it is a pleasure. Garfield writes fluidly, cheerily and charmingly, even while the breeziness does not detract from the scale of his ambition: to understand nothing less than humans need for knowledge and how to convey and preserve it. When is knowledge a factoid? Who gets to be the gatekeeper? Who, in the words of Arthur Mee, the editor of the Childrens Encyclopaedia, is holding up the stars?

Garfields love for Wikipedia, dismissed by snobs but used by us all, is surprising but heartfelt. He believes in the democracy of input, and that errors are usually righted and that Wikipedias gatekeeping works. (He also believes that people cant edit their own entries, but I corrected mine with no trouble, as it said I was American and I cant have that.)

Wikipedia is now the way of all knowledge and the printed encyclopaedia is doomed by its very structure. It can never know it all or show enough of what it knows. It cant hope to keep up with important developments in the world, nor take back what it said about Hitler or slavery. Endless editions, salesmen crisscrossing America selling expensive sets none can compare with the speed of the click. Even so, Garfield concludes, there is still a place for Slow Books. A fine encyclopaedia will stand you in good stead like an old wristwatch: its timing may be out, and sometimes it may not work at all, but its mechanics will always intrigue.

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An old Encyclopaedia Britannica is a work to cherish - The Spectator

Lydia Bello, science and engineering librarian, and Jennifer Bodley, adjunct librarian, collaborated on a blog article, SIFT-ing Through Information Online to provide the campus community with guidance on media literacy, which is being critically engaged when receiving, finding, evaluating, using, creating and sharing media, particularly in an online environment.While some question the legitimacy of Wikipedia, learn how its their first trusted line of defense in avoiding misinformation.

Q: What prompted you both to write a blog article that addresses media literacy and misinformation?

JB: We were asked to write about misinformation, mostly prompted from events happening in the world. I think at the time the Russia-Ukraine news cycle had started and ... COVID-19 has obviously been in the news cycle for a long time and theres a lot of other issues where misinformation is very problematic with information getting to the public.

LB: In the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, there was information flowing fast and furious. A lot of it misinformation and unverified and a lot of people here [at SU] are directly impacted by those current events. Along with that, Jennifer had just finished teaching a workshop on these skills and it all sort of fell into place that we thought this might be a good time to offer a reminder.

JB: News is a fire hose, so whenever you have that fire hose obviously you dont have checks and balances and controlled dissemination of factual reporting.

Q: What are some of the sources where misinformation is the highest or spreads fastest (i.e., social media/specific platforms, news media, etc.)?

LB: Some of the really obvious places include social media designed to spread information quickly. Weve all seen articles and research about the addictive nature of social media, about how its designed to engage you in order to create advertising dollars. Because of that, its a core place where information moves.

Misinformation and disinformation also move quickly when theres a strong sense of emotion attached to it. Emotions like fear or anger are ones that come to mind, but also vindication, satisfaction and a really strong desire to help. When those emotions are attached or are involved, they help move the flow of misinformation on these platforms really quickly as well.

JB: Were talking about social media being behind a lot of misinformation and disinformation, but the mainstream media also reports on social media and we also know that governing bodies and other institutions of power disseminate a lot of information through social media.

Its about figuring out whats okay. I can use the social media from this organization because its a quote good organization. But then Im supposed to be able to spot this bad information from this other social media channel.

Were in a flat environment (lacking indicators around credibility). Years ago, when you went to the checkout stand, you could tell what was a tabloid like The National Enquirer by the paper it was printed on, the colors used and the sensational headlines. There was a tactile or concrete way that you could process and evaluate. And right now, everything is just in this flat environment, so it's just that much harder to process.

Q: As librarians, how do you view your roles when it comes to combatting misinformation?

LB: One of the key parts of our jobs is helping our students, faculty and staff build skills to navigate the information environment (through courses, research services, etc.). The first thing you think of when you think librarians is that we help students navigate the library and navigate the information we have in the library, which is its own type of complex information environment.

We see those skills transferring to teaching students how to navigate the world and the information environment outside of their assignments as well. Helping students build those skills and then also helping them understand that they need to be engaged with the information they see on a day-to-day basis, not necessarily as passive consumers.

We [as humans] dont innately know how to navigate information and theres a lot of talk about someone who has grown up around technology, but even young people dont innately know. It depends on who has access to what sort of technology growing up and thats very financially based. It also depends on if youre actually taught those skills or not.

A good part of our job is explicitly teaching those skills and teaching them in such a way that they fit with their day-to-day lives.

JB: As librarians, were teaching students particularly in content-related classes. When we teach students in an introductory chemistry or psychology class, we arent working with domain experts [in those subjects]. Domain experts already know seminal works and know prominent, authoritative researchers and organizations within their domain who are disseminating information. Domain experts can go to these sources directly or see them quickly in search results. Domain novices dont have that head start when evaluating information. They have to evaluate a lot of unfamiliar and complex information with no specialized knowledge.

Take for example health information. A student could say, I know the CDC, I understand the government structures, so I know that the CDC would potentially be a good source. Somebody else could say, Oh, you know doctor so and so has this blog, I think that would be a good source. This directly ties into what we teach them in the classroom and how they apply that in their lives outside the classroom.

Q: Anything you would like to highlight or expand on regarding Michael Caufields work/approach (SIFT Method, etc.)?

JB: Caulfields approach is kind of simplistic, but he specifically created it so that you could use it in that flat environment. His method helps you recontextualize information.

LB: Its grounded in a Stanford Graduate School of Education study on how students navigate the credibility of information online. There have been updates to this research recently, but one of the original studies was from 2016.

Also, I want to emphasize the SIFT method isnt like a checklist or a long, arduous process.

Its supposed to be a quick fact-checking habit. Its designed to help you decide whether you want to spend more time on a source. Its supposed to be something that you can just build in your daily practice of consuming information on a day-to-day basis. A lot of times Ill investigate sources on Wikipedia for the original source if Ive never heard of it before. Caufield calls it the Wikipedia Trickchecking to see what somebody says about a source and figure out if its a known site for misinformation.

Q: What are some ways people can spot and/or avoid misinformation?

LB: Because so many things around this flat environment are on the Internet, were losing all these contextual clues and its really easy to convince someone that something is true or something is fake. Known misinformation sites can look really well polished, have great web design and a really specific tone and a well-known and respected scholarly article or source.

All of this is why having SIFT as a habit knowing that it takes 30 seconds or less is really helpful so you dont waste time looking for clues or hints. Sometimes misinformation is not designed to be actively harmfulits satire or something else thats been moved to a completely different context.

Q: Are there any additional points, resources or intersections of media literacy/misinformation research you would like to mention?

JB: This isnt going away anytime soon or ever so theres no way we can legislate our way out of this. Corporate responsibility is not going to get rid of this. Everything from the Australian wildfires to war in Ukraine to school board meetings. I mean theres absolutely nothing that's immune to misinformation.

To view the full Lemieux Library blog article, visit https://libguides.seattleu.edu/blog/SIFT-ing-Through-Information-Online.

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