Twitter in Japan is silent during the election campaign

In the run-up to the July 11 parliamentary elections, the Twitter accounts of most candidates went silent. Reason: Strict laws governing the use of the Internet. Even voters are banned from tweeting or blogging about the campaign.

That’s in a country that set a record of 3,283 tweets per second after winning the World Championship last week, surpassing 3,085 when the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship. Twitter Inc. It is estimated that the Japanese send almost 8 million tweets a day, which is about 12% of the world’s total messages.

Election laws, which also limit the number of posters and TV time, are designed to give less-funded candidates a chance. But in the age of the Internet, restrictions have deprived them of cheap tools that would have made campaigns more democratic, some critics say.

“As long as we ban internet campaigns, Japanese politicians won’t mature, and voters won’t mature either,” said Masahiko Shoji, leader of the movement to use the internet to promote democracy.

Efforts to change the law have been met with resistance from old-guard legislators, said Shoji, an assistant professor at the International University of Japan.

Elsewhere, politicians from President Barack Obama to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez use Twitter. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his first tweet last week from Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, exchanging greetings with other heads of state, according to Twitter spokesman Sean Garrett.

The company is hiring a representative in Washington, D.C. to promote the use of Twitter in politics and hopes to expand the initiative around the world, he said.

“Clearly there is a lot of potential for politicians, government agencies, politicians of all stripes to use Twitter and connect with their constituents,” Garrett said during a visit to Tokyo this week.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama tweeted, as did more than 100 candidates in the July 11 upper house elections. Almost everyone abstains during the official campaign for fear of breaking the law.

“It makes absolutely no sense,” said Tomoya Sasaki, senior COO of Digital Garage, which powers Twitter’s operations in Japan.

To circumvent campaign rules, he said, some people tweet about issues such as US military bases in Japan or the FMD outbreak in livestock.

Campaigning in Japan is dominated by loudspeaker vans rushing around, yelling the candidate’s name over and over and begging for a vote.

“The Japanese need more information and they should be able to discuss issues,” Shoji said. “People have the right to make smart choices, not just choose someone by name.”

MP Kenzo Fujisue, who is such an avid Twitterer that he earned the nickname “Twitter’s legislator,” is symbolically defying the ban by posting links to audio clips because his vote is not subject to election law.

However, his notes are careful and mostly chattering, reflecting uncertainty within legal limits. One of them is an instrumental piece of music.

Taichi Irie, a freelance programmer who created a website that displays live tweets from more than 560 politicians, said Twitter is mostly used in Japan for personal posts or photos. He predicted that it would take time to develop into a platform for political debate.

“I think the use of Twitter should be open,” he said, “but it’s also important that we carefully exploit the true potential of what Twitter can mean in politics.”