Roles of Social Media in Elections: Those Who Underpin SNS Activities / Political Videos Can ‘Make Money’ — and Trouble; Quickie Clips Often Convey False, Misleading ‘Info’

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:00 JST, March 4, 2025

Social media has become a powerful force that can influence the outcome of elections. This is the first installment in a series examining how such influence has altered elections from the perspective of various people involved in them.

“Video editor wanted to make clips of Diet session video. Fast delivery important. Bonus for adding captions!”

A 40-year-old nursing care worker in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, had been checking online job boards to see if there was any work available creating short videos related to politics and elections.

He would apply for a job if he thought it would pay him at least ¥1,000 per hour, weighing up the workload and the fee amount presented.

Following a script, he clipped and merged videos of a Diet member’s live stream and street speech sent by his client and added subtitles and audio. He completed a 90-second video in about an hour. Once he sent it to the client, the video was soon posted on the client’s YouTube channel.

The more the video is viewed, the more advertising revenue the channel operator earns.

The man said he was asked to send back such a video within three hours when assigned to edit live broadcasts of press conferences by such politicians with high profiles on social media, such as Hyogo Gov. Motohiko Saito or Shinji Ishimaru, a former mayor of Akitakata, Hiroshima Prefecture.

The fees from clients are a valuable side income for the man. He accepts orders regardless of whether he agrees with the political beliefs or finds the content is biased.

“I just produce them as instructed by my client. That’s my job,” the man said.

Segmentalized job

Such video clips began to spread around 2021 when YouTube started a short-form video service called Shorts. Ishimaru’s fame increased exponentially after videos of him in conflict with city assemblymen during his tenure as mayor were edited and spread on Shorts. This made him a focus of attention in the political world.

Unauthorized reproduction of video content produced and posted by others violates copyright. Celebrities sometimes grant permission to use their videos on the condition that a share of the profits is paid to them. On the other hand, political parties, such as the Democratic Party for the People, allow use of their videos free of charge and actively encourage their reproduction for the purpose of appealing to voters.

“I don’t have to worry about copyright and can produce videos without any seed funding, so it’s good value for the price,” a 36-year-old Osaka Prefecture man said, giving a reason for having started his political video channel in January.

The work of “video trimmers” has become segmentalized. To quickly post massive amounts of video content, channel operators have begun outsourcing video production by dividing each project into its component tasks, from material gathering, scriptwriting and editing to proofreading.

On one job search website, the number of jobs related to political videos has doubled since the House of Representatives election in October.

The Osaka man said: “It takes time and effort to find videos that are likely to go viral and think about how to edit them. If I can outsource that work, I can post more videos and get more views.”

Silly to believe

An increase in profit-oriented political videos has allowed the spread of false, misleading or dubious information.

At the time of November’s Hyogo gubernatorial election, held following allegations that Saito had engaged in workplace harassment and misconduct, Takashi Tachibana, who leads the NHK Party political group, made a political broadcast in which he shared untrue personal information about a former director of the Nishi-Harima regional affairs bureau who had accused Saito before dying.

The operator of another political video channel in Nara Prefecture edited Tachibana’s broadcast before the vote and posted it under the title “Takashi Tachibana’s monologue.”

“I thought it would be interesting to clip the video and make money from it,” he said.

The man, 36, earns ¥500,000 a month from advertising. He said he would outsource editing jobs in the future to earn even more.

Asked about the impact of social media on elections, the man said: “Viewers of these clipped videos don’t scrutinize the information. It’s just silly to decide who to vote for based on these videos.”

Restrictions sought

The fact that profit-oriented political posts under the guise of election campaigning are spurring the spread disinformation has been seen as a problem in the Diet.

A conference on election matters, comprising seven ruling and opposition parties, began discussions in February on restrictions on social media during election periods. At the meeting, the Liberal Democratic Party raised the following issues: the need to clarify the responsibilities of platform operators that run social media; the need for rigid application of the Public Offices Election Law, which prohibits the “publication of false matters;” and the need for restrictions on monetization. To act on these points, the LDP suggested amendments to the Public Offices Election Law and the Information Distribution Platform Law.

The conference aims to compile an interim report by the summer, when the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election and the House of Councillors election will be held.