A specter is haunting local governance in Japan—the specter of the attention economy. Municipal officials, whose daily work usually revolves around routine community services, now find themselves confronting sudden waves of outrage generated by people they will never meet. These mobilizations materialize without warning, overwhelm phone lines and email inboxes, and disappear just as quickly. What unsettles local governments is not only misinformation, but the speed at which online anger transforms into coordinated political pressure—particularly when the issue involves foreign residents, Muslim minorities or efforts to promote local diversity.
In 2023, Kumamoto City considered revising its basic municipal ordinance to clarify that “residents” included foreign nationals—a change entirely unrelated to voting rights. Yet posts on X (formerly Twitter) reframed it as an attempt to grant foreigners suffrage. The city’s consultation process was inundated with nearly 2,000 comments—most from outside Kumamoto—and the revision was withdrawn. The episode signalled that local policymaking could now be derailed by online narratives born far beyond the city’s borders.
In Kitakyushu City, the dynamic took a similar shape, though on the surface the issue appeared entirely different. In February 2024, the city’s school lunch program offered a one-day menu excluding 28 common allergens—a routine exercise to ensure children with severe allergies could participate. Because pork was among the allergens removed, a local politician’s blog post framed the lunch as a “Muslim-friendly” initiative. That mischaracterization soon spread across X and online comment threads, generating more than a thousand angry complaints to the city’s education board. Officials held an emergency press conference to clarify that no religious accommodation had occurred.
Sakai in Ibaraki Prefecture demonstrates how partial facts can be distorted into something unrecognisable once they circulate online. In September 2024, the town offered a one-day “halal-inspired” lunch as part of its long-running monthly “World Menu” program. The adjustments were modest: kelp broth instead of bonito stock, halal soy sauce and voluntary participation. But once the story was mentioned in national newspapers, X users recast the event as if the town had “introduced halal school lunches” as a permanent institutional accommodation—a claim nowhere supported by the reporting. Viral posts framed the lunch as unconstitutional or evidence of “forced diversity,” with one gaining 45,000 likes and another 25,000. The town’s school lunch center was soon inundated with hostile calls and emails—almost all from outside the region. According to a municipal official I interviewed, the initiative had been well received locally, but the intensity of the backlash made repeating it difficult.
Japan’s low levels of street protest have not produced disengagement; participation has migrated online
These three cases differ in detail—misinformation, misinterpretation, decontextualization—yet they follow the same pattern: a small local initiative becomes visible online, is reframed by influential users and triggers a backlash that overwhelms municipal capacity. Similar online mobbing dynamics have been observed in other democracies. Japan’s version is shaped by a distinct media ecology—and by the continued reliance on telephone communication in municipal administration. A single viral post can instantly translate into hundreds of calls that staff cannot ignore.
Part of what accelerates these backlashes is the logic of the attention economy itself. On platforms like X, posts that trigger outrage or moral shock are rewarded through algorithmic amplification and, increasingly, monetization. Users who spread inflammatory interpretations gain visibility and sometimes financial incentives, creating a system where emotionally charged narratives travel far faster than factual clarifications.
This marks a new phase in Japanese political behaviour. Social media once raised concerns mainly about discriminatory speech; today, it enables coordinated political action, often driven by a small but highly motivated cohort of conservative users who see themselves as defending national values.
Japan’s low levels of street protest have not produced disengagement; participation has migrated online. Activism increasingly takes the form of orchestrated phone campaigns, mass emails and surges of public comments—political action conducted from living rooms rather than public squares. Viral posts frequently supply department names, phone numbers and complaint scripts, enabling individuals to intervene instantly without researching the issue or understanding the local context.
Strengthening municipal resilience requires more than “better communication.”
For municipalities with limited staff, these digital mobilizations create severe administrative strain. It is as if officials must confront an invisible crowd summoned by the attention economy—actors who appear, demand answers and vanish. Their voices rarely belong to local residents, yet their influence on local decision-making is decisive.
These dynamics reveal a visibility paradox: local inclusion efforts become most vulnerable the moment they are made visible online. Even neutral coverage can lift a routine initiative into the attention economy, where it is reframed, weaponized and directed back at the municipality. Visibility, not policy, becomes the problem.
At the same time, municipalities must learn to adapt. Japan’s administrative culture values politeness, patience and meticulous responsiveness—virtues in ordinary times, but liabilities when facing digitally amplified hostility. Local governments were never designed to withstand hundreds of hostile calls or emails arriving within minutes. Rather than relying on traditional norms of courteous engagement, they need new tools and new protocols.
Strengthening municipal resilience requires more than “better communication.” Municipalities need technological infrastructure that matches the speed of the attacks they face. Automated call-handling tools—routine in the private sector—could prevent sudden surges from paralysing offices. Yet for small municipalities like Sakai Town, such measures are often financially out of reach. This is precisely why prefectural and national governments must step in to provide the tools and guidance that enable local offices to respond effectively on their own. Such support could include standardised response manuals, model communication templates for moments when misinformation begins to spread, and training programs on crisis communication and digital risk.
Without such measures, Japan’s trajectory toward a more diverse society risks being shaped not by local needs or democratic deliberation, but by whoever can mobilize outrage fastest online. The specter of the attention economy will not disappear—but Japan can choose whether its local governments remain vulnerable to its sudden appearances.
Rina Komiya
Rina Komiya is a social anthropologist and PhD candidate at Tokyo Metropolitan University, where she is also a JSPS Research Fellow. Her research focuses on migration, refugee resettlement, and local inclusion in Japan and beyond. Her work examines migrants’ and refugees’ everyday practices, as well as how receiving societies and institutions are reshaped through these encounters. She holds an MSt in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford.
