The discursive reproduction of technoscience and Japanese national identity in The Daily Yomiuri coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

Abstract

Using critical discourse analysis, this article analyzes the discursive representation of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in The Daily Yomiuri, part of the largest and most influential media conglomerate in Japan. A critical discourse analysis of The Daily Yomiuri reveals that Japanese national identity and the ideology of technoscience are reproduced through two discursive constructions: a diminished ‘risk’ from Fukushima radiation and citizens’ national duty in the nuclear crisis. Within these two constructions, 11 major techniques are identified by which The Yomiuri discursively mitigates the risks from Fukushima and calls Japanese national identity into the service of the nuclear industry. The article concludes with implications for understanding the impact of political discourse in mass media on other policy debates in Japan and elsewhere.

Keywords

Critical discourse analysis Fukushima Great East Japan Earthquake high reliability organization Japan legitimization mass media national identity news in the press nuclear power representation technoscience Tohoku earthquake

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abe

(2013) Why Safecast matters: A case study of collective risk assessment. Forum on the 2011 Fukushima East Japan Disaster, University of California at Berkeley, 11–14 May. Available at: http://fukushimaforum.wordpress.com/ (accessed 30 May 2013).

Arendt

(1958) The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Areva Group (2012) Corporate website. Available at: http://www.areva.com/EN/group-57/global-leader-in-nuclear-energy-and-renewable-energy-solutions.html (accessed 15 May 2013).

Arima

(2008) Genpatsu, Shoriki, CIA [Nuclear power plants, Shoriki, and the CIA] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Shinchosha Publishers.

Bakhtin

(1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Billig

(1995) Banal Nationalism. London: SAGE.

Binder

(2012) Figuring out #Fukushima: An initial look at functions and content of US Twitter commentary about nuclear risk. Environmental Communication 6(2): 268–277.

Chan

(2012) The discursive reproduction of ideologies and national identities in the Chinese and Japanese English-language press. Discourse & Communication 6(4): 361–378.

Chilton

(2004) Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

10.

Dvorak

Hayashi

(2011) Lawmaker broached plant risk. Wall Street Journal, 28 March. Available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703576204576226530875684182.html (accessed 20 May 2013).

11.

Dvorak

Obe

(2012) Fukushima watch: Highlights from video inside TEPCO’s nuclear crisis center. Japan Real Time (Wall Street Journal Japan), 6 August. Available at: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/08/06/fukushima-watch-soundtrack-to-a-nuclear-accident/ (accessed 1 May 2013).

12.

EXSKF (2012) City assemblyman in Tokyo to school children: Don’t be an egoist, eat your school lunch to share the pain of Tohoku. Available at: http://ex-skf.blogspot.hk/2012/01/city-assemblyman-in-tokyo-to-school.html (accessed 25 May 2013).

13.

Fairclough

(2010) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson.

14.

Friedman

(2011) Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima: An analysis of traditional and new media coverage of nuclear accidents and radiation. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 67(5): 55–65.

15.

Frontline (2012) Yotaro Hatamura: Was Fukushima an accident waiting to happen? Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/japans-nuclear-meltdown/yotaro-hatamura-was-fukushima-an-accident-waiting-to-happen/ (accessed 19 June 2013).

16.

Habermas

(1989/1962) Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press.

17.

Hsieh

Shannon

(2005) Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research 15(9): 1277–1288.

18.

Johnston

(2011) The Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor, and How the World’s Media Reported Them. Tokyo: Japan Times.

19.

Kinsella

(2004) Nuclear discourse and nuclear institutions: A theoretical framework and two empirical examples. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication 5: 8–14.

20.

Kinsella

(2013) Negotiating nuclear safety: Responses to the Fukushima disaster by the U.S. nuclear community. Forum on the 2011 Fukushima East Japan Disaster, University of California at Berkeley, 11–14 May. Available at: http://fukushimaforum.wordpress.com/workshops/sts-forum-on-the-2011-fukushima-east-japan-disaster/manuscripts/ (accessed 20 May 2013).

21.

Kuznick

(2011) Japan’s nuclear history in perspective: Eisenhower and atoms for war and peace. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (web edition). Available at http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/japans-nuclear-history-perspective-eisenhower-and-atoms-war-and-peace (accessed 10 May 2013).

22.

LaPorte

Consolini

(1991) Working in practice but not in theory: Theoretical challenges of ‘high-reliability organizations’. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 1(1): 19–47.

23.

Latour

(2004) Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

24.

Latour

Woolgar

(1979) Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Laboratory Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

25.

Liscutin

(2011) ‘Indignez-vous! Fukushima’: New media and anti-nuclear activism in Japan. The Asia-Pacific Journal 9(1). Available at: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Nicola-Liscutin/3649 (accessed 15 May 2013).

26.

Martin

Hansen

(1998) Newspapers of Record in a Digital Age: From Hot Type to Hot Link. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

27.

Murillo

LFR

(2013) New expert eyes over Fukushima: Open source responses to the nuclear crisis in Japan. Forum on the 2011 Fukushima East Japan Disaster, University of California at Berkeley, 11–14 May. Available at: http://fukushimaforum.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/luis-felipe-murillos-full-paper1.pdf (accessed 1 May 2013).

28.

National Academy of Sciences (2006) Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11340#toc (accessed 12 May 2013).

29.

NewsOnJapan.com (2012) Exodus of disaster-panicked foreigners post 3–11 Japan doesn’t add up. Available at: http://www.newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/96340.php (accessed 5 June 2013).

30.

Onishi

Fackler

(2011) In nuclear crisis, crippling mistrust. New York Times, 12 June. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/world/asia/13japan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed 21 June 2013).

31.

Pellizzoni

Ylönen

(eds) (2012) Neoliberalism and Technoscience: Critical Assessments. London: Ashgate.

32.

Perko

. (2011) Media Content Analysis of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident in Two Belgian Newspapers. Report for the Studiecentrum voor Kernenergie, Mol, Belgium. Available at: http://publications.sckcen.be/dspace/bitstream/10038/7502/1/blg_mediaanalysisfukushimabelgianmedia.pdf (accessed 20 May 2013).

33.

Pew Research (2012) Japanese wary of nuclear energy. Global Attitudes Project. Available at: http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/05/japanese-wary-of-nuclear-energy/ (accessed 10 June 2013).

34.

Samuel

Khan

Cheang

(2012) Articulation of medium of instruction policies in the Malaysian Chinese press. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (online edition): 1–13. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2012.745731#.UhutNWQpZf8. (accessed 10 June 2013).

35.

Schnoebelen

(2012) Emotions are relational: Positioning and the use of affective linguistic resources. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University. Available at: http://stanford.edu/~tylers/notes/papers/emotion/Dissertation_Schnoebelen_final_8–29–12.pdf.

36.

Tabuchi

(2011) Japan panel cites failure in tsunami. New York Times, 26 December. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/world/asia/report-condemns-japans-response-to-nuclear-accident.html?scp=1&sq=YOTARO%20HATAMURA&st=cse&_r=0 (accessed 14 June 2013).

37.

van Dijk

(1995a) Discourse semantics and ideology. Discourse & Society 6(2): 243–289.

38.

van Dijk

(1995b) On macrostructures, mental models and other inventions: A brief personal history of the Kintsch–van Dijk theory. In: Weaver

Mannes

Fletcher

(eds) Discourse Comprehension: Essays in Honor of Walter Kintsch. New York: Routledge, pp. 383–410.

39.

van Dijk

(2006) Ideology and discourse. Journal of Political Ideologies 11: 115–140.

40.

van Dijk

(2009) News, discourse, and ideology. In: Wahl-Jorgensen

Hanitzsch

(eds) The Handbook of Journalism Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 191–204.

41.

Warnock

(2012) Japan’s nuclear industry: The CIA link. Japan Real Time, 1 June. Available at: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/01/japans-nuclear-industry-the-cia-link/ (accessed 10 May 2013).

42.

Weston

(2013) Unwanted intimacies: Technostruggle and radioactive embodiment after 3/11. Forum on the 2011 Fukushima East Japan Disaster, University of California at Berkeley, 11–14 May. Available at: http://fukushimaforum.wordpress.com/workshops/sts-forum-on-the-2011-fukushima-east-japan-disaster/manuscripts/session-3-radiation-information-and-control/unwanted-intimacies-technostruggle-and-radioactive-embodiment-after-3-11/ (accessed 24 June 2013).

43.

Wodak

Meyer

(2009) Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology. In: Wodak

Meyer

(eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp. 1–33.