Media Framing of Disability and Employment in Japan: Traditional and Progressive Approaches

Abstract

In this article, I undertake a qualitative, comparative content analysis of 14 news stories from 6 online English-language news sources from Japan during September 2018–2019. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 1995, Rethinking methods in psychology, SAGE Publications, pp. 27–65; Charmaz, 2000, Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.), SAGE Publications, pp. 509–535; Charmaz, 2015, International Encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed.), ScienceDirect, pp. 6396–6399) in which I simultaneously collected and analysed the news stories, I identify three themes or ‘frames’ of disability present in Japanese media about disabled people and their capacity for societal integration through employment. My analysis is theoretically significant in showing how news media in Japan frames stories about disabled people in both traditionally ableist and progressive ways. My findings indicate that some news stories construct disability as tantamount to unproductivity, while others perceive disabled workers as valuable contributors to the country’s labour force. This article will be of theoretical interest to media disability scholars seeking to understand how Clogston’s (1990, Disability coverage in 16 newspapers, The Advocado Press) and Haller’s (1995) models of disability can be applied to the Japanese context. This article will also be of general interest to communication scholars conscious of framing theory, which contends that mass media determines what is salient or ‘newsworthy’ about a story based on how visuals, information and images are selected and presented to audiences.