Japan Looks To Amend Election Law For Social Media Age

This comes after fringe parties used rogue tactics to wreak havoc on polls in 2024

- Walter Sim

TOKYO - Japan is looking at updating its election law for the social media age, having been jolted by how digital platforms were exploited for commercial profit and weaponised to influence outcomes across several domestic elections in 2024.

Stakeholders across the political divide are on the same page over the need to amend the law and are now discussing the finer details for a Bill that is expected to be tabled in the Diet within weeks.

"It is necessary to take measures to protect the healthy development of democracy," Mr Ichiro Aisawa, a 12-term lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) who chairs the party's research commission on the election system, said at a multi-partisan meeting on Feb 6.

"If things continue as they are, there will be real chaos."

The urgent intervention comes after fringe parties used rogue tactics to wreak havoc on several elections in 2024, and mainstream parties hope the new rules can be enforced in time for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election in June and the national Upper House polls a month later.

This will be the first significant revision to Japan's Public Offices Election Act since 2013, when the law was revised to allow campaigning on the internet. Prior to that, all electioneering was done offline.

Unlike other countries grappling with the problem of alleged foreign election meddling, the threat in Japan is largely domestic and linked to abuse for commercial interests.

Miscreants have used social media - whose algorithms promote viral posts - to spread incendiary comments and fake news to draw clicks, eyeballs and hence earn advertising revenue.

In December 2024, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Seiichiro Murakami pointed to how candidates are increasingly subject to malicious slander and libel, mainly from anonymous accounts.