Beyond Fukushima: Japan's Emerging Energy and Environmental Challenges

This article considers the political-economic process by which “energy angst” created an embedded nuclear orientation in Japanese energy policymaking, and then how, following Fukushima, Japan initially tried to transform that structural tendency, through a political system poorly suited to reform, before edging back toward its traditional path. Due both to the prevailing systemic bias and the underlying political economy of nuclear power, the process of transformation promises to be a turbulent and extended one, with natural gas and energy efficiency being crucial tools for ameliorating the difficult realities of the domestic status quo.     

震后日本能源战略调整及其对我国能源安全的影响

东日本大地震、大海啸引发的日本核事故,对日本的核电事业乃至全球的核电事业造成巨大冲击,对我国能源安全也提出新的挑战。中日两国都是能源消费大国,在能源领域既有合作也有竞争。日本拥有世界一流的节能技术和新能源开发技术,还拥有包括能源储备等在内的保障能源安全的丰富经验,加强中日之间多种形式的能源合作对破解我国能源安全瓶颈具有重要意义。     

Re-animating a radioactive landscape: informal life politics in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident of 11 March 2011 posed massive and continuing social challenges to communities in the affected areas. People from wide areas around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant received vastly conflicting information about the levels of radiation released and about the likely health effects. They were left facing agonising decisions whether to remain and face possible (but uncertain) long-term health risks, or whether to move away, leaving behind homes, friends, jobs, schools and communities. Focusing on the case of the small farming community of Tōwa in Nihonmatsu City, this article examines self-help activities that have emerged in the affected areas in the wake of 3/11. The activities have included community monitoring of radiation levels and collaborative research with academic scientists to explore ways to reduce radioactive contamination in forests, farm soil and crops. The self-help activities of Tōwa residents can be seen as an example of “informal life politics” – that is, of the way in which grassroots groups respond to challenges to their livelihood or way of life by organising themselves and taking actions outside the sphere of formal governmental structures. It is argued here that the residents of Tōwa were able to respond rapidly to the challenges of the Fukushima disaster because they had already developed informal life politics practices in response to earlier challenges of local economic decline and depopulation. I also suggest that, in responding to the Fukushima disaster, the relationship between the people of Tōwa and their landscape has been profoundly changed, and that this change has implications not just for the community itself but also for the wider world.     

Thinking after Fukushima. Epistemic shift in social sciences

The Fukushima catastrophe is a turning point in the conception, role and management of technology in industrial societies. As did Hiroshima (on another dimension) after 1945, the Fukushima nuclear accident questions and transforms established conceptions and values concerning the relations between technology, politics, industry, society and the environment. It has become impossible to think after Fukushima as we did before. This catastrophe initiates a major epistemic and conceptual shift with long-term consequences. This paper focuses on a powerful conceptual complex associating the notions of risk, trust and knowledge society. This complex associates discourses, theories and policies. The objective is to criticize this conceptual complex in order to explore how to rethink, after Fukushima, the relations between technology, politics, industry and society.     

核事故、能源结构调整与国际气候合作

福岛核事故将对各国能源结构调整和国际气候合作产生重大影响。从短中期来看,部分国家将对核能产业实施紧缩政策,化石能源比重可能增加,在国际气候合作中作出积极减排承诺的意愿也将降低,国际气候合作可能继续陷于僵局之中。在可预见的未来,人类需要通过追求核能安全来维护能源安全和气候安全。     

Risk communication surrounding the Fukushima nuclear disaster: an anthropological approach

The Fukushima nuclear disaster highlighted the relevance of effective risk communication strategies for nuclear accidents. Poor risk communication was evidenced during the crisis and its aftermath. The government’s mishandling of radiation issues generated concern in international nuclear agencies as well as widespread anxiety among Japanese citizens. Based on anthropological research, I will argue that among the negative consequences of the government’s inability to deal with public fears are the citizens’ uncertainty and ongoing distrust toward the government, the safety regulators, and the nuclear industry. I will also suggest that such harmful effects can be mitigated by enhancing transparency of the decision-making process and by implementing participative programs where policy makers, stakeholders, and representatives of the local communities can jointly discuss energy production schemes.     

Editor's Note

On March 11,2011,the world witnessed one of Japan’s biggest earthquakes,coupled with tsunami waves as high as 23.6 meters.The earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Nuclear power plants.On12April,     

Shaved for battle—skinheads target America's youth

I explore whether newspapers that represent regions experiencing "local casualties," that is, fatalities from an international violent event, give greater coverage to the incident. Research suggests that local casualties influence domestic politics, yet scholars have given little attention to either the influence of local casualties on reporting or the impact of international events on local press coverage. I examine the effect of local casualties on local media by analyzing the frequency of newspaper coverage of the October 2000 terrorist bombing of the USS Cole. Using a variety­ of techniques, including random effects logit and repeat failure hazard analysis, I find that newspapers from areas that experienced casualties from the Cole attack were more likely to report on the bombing, even when controlling for paper-specific and temporal effects. Driven by community casualties, variation in local media atten­tion to an international news story may help to explain why the effects of international events on individual attitudes and domestic political effects vary geographically, a necessary condition for institutional arguments for the democratic peace.     

Greasing the squeaky wheel: News media coverage and us development aid, 1977–1992

This study explores the role that news media coverage plays in influencing US foreign policy in general, and foreign aid policy in particular. It is expected that foreign policy officials will be responsive to the content of the domestic news media and will attempt to align their actions with what they expect is the public's perception of the importance of a particular issue. In this study, it is hypothesized that that higher levels of news coverage of a potential recipient country will lead to higher aid commitments. The analysis examines the levels of US aid commitments to those it provided aid during the period 1977–1992. Even with an admittedly simple measure of news media coverage, the empirical findings are clear. The level of news coverage is a statistically significant factor in the levels of aid offered by the US. Thus a domestic political motive may be considered to be operative along with more widely studied determinants of aid based upon humanitarian motives and national self‐interests.     

From mourning to allegory: Post-3.11 Space Battleship Yamato in motion

Abstract

Since 1977, when the first movie version was premiered, Uchūsenkan Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato) has fueled the continuance of an earlier anime boom in Japan, and in the past decades, the anime text has generated multifarious interpretations. One of the most widely embraced readings contextualizes Yamato within Japan's defeat in the Second World War and this approach to the anime not only celebrated its scientific imagination but also legitimized, with a revisionist tone, the country's righteousness in the war. In the wake of the 3/11 earthquake and the subsequent Fukushima disaster, however, this line of canonical reading has declined. In turn, users of internet social media such as Twitter and 2 Channel have revamped the significance of Yamato, largely extolling the anime text as a prognosis of the Fukushima crisis. Surrounding Yamato, those clamorous voices on the internet appear to have grown into what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call ‘multitude’, a social body of collaboration. Online constituents of multitudes are, though still randomly and loosely connected, gravitating to Yamato's newly discovered quality as the allegory of apocalyptic post-3/11 Japan. Whereas concrete action is yet to be taken, the internet multitudes of Yamato fans have engaged in various brainstorming conversations that concern Japan's future and its relation with nuclear technology.     

日本强震及核危机对世界经济的影响分析

地震、海啸、核安全问题接连发生,日本正在经历史上罕见的"大创伤"。强震、海啸、核危机对日本经济的负面冲击明显大于阪神地震。日本地震后的灾后重建与阪神地震时的财政环境明显不同,地震提高了日本政府的违约风险和隐含的主权债务风险。但对世界经济整体而言,日本大地震不会影响全球经济复苏的步伐。虽然全球股市企稳回升,但"核阴云"笼罩亚太、大宗商品呈现先抑后扬的态势,加之受利比亚战争及发达国家的量化宽松货币政策等外围因素影响,日本大地震使全球金融市场未来面临诸多不确定性。日本地震对中国经济影响有限,灾后重建对我国出口及产业发展带来有利契机。     

American and foreign terrorists: an analysis of divergent portrayals in US newspaper coverage

American news coverage of terrorist activity consistently portrays the attacker as abnormal, but the mechanics of this othering process are entirely dependent on the nationality of the attacker in question. Coverage of domestic terrorism stresses the attacker’s personal instability and contrasts the perpetrator with his or her victims, painting the terrorist as an anomaly in American society. Foreign attackers, with whom journalists more frequently apply the terrorist label, are othered in US news media through heavy emphasis on their association with distant groups and conflicts. To explore how framing techniques differ throughout coverage of domestic and foreign terrorists, two separate corpora of articles from popular American newspapers were systematically compiled. One corpus contained articles about American attackers, while the other contained articles about foreign terrorists. The corpora were processed using both corpus linguistics software and a comparative analysis of texts. Exploring the American media’s framing choices illuminates how popular biases and perceptions of terrorist violence came to be; framing theory asserts that communicating entities inevitably shape the story they relay, influencing the reactions of those who experience the event second-hand. Not only does news coverage use distinct framing patterns for American and foreign perpetrators, but those patterns foster a populace that conceptualises American and foreign terrorists differently.     

Food safety and consumer trust in post-Fukushima Japan

Abstract

The contamination of food with radionuclides has posed serious problems to consumers, producers and policy makers in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011. Many Japanese consumers were and still are worried about the safety of domestic food products. How did the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima affect consumer trust in food safety regulation, and how did the Japanese government try to (re)establish consumer trust in its food governance system? Drawing on empirical data from a consumer survey, expert interviews and documents issued by the Japanese government and public authorities, this paper argues that existing institutions had difficulty handling the situation and rebuilding consumer trust. I will argue that consumers in Japan lack trust in government institutions and the food industry and that the government's risk communication was not suitable for rebuilding trust. This specific situation saw the emergence of new actors from civil society, such as citizens’ radioactivity monitoring stations (CRMS). These actors took over some of the functions of public authorities by providing information and monitoring food. I argue that they have the potential to build trust by fostering the participation of lay people and encouraging a more democratic discourse on food safety. Nevertheless there are some limitations.     

Nuclear power for climate mitigation? Contesting frames in Korean newspapers

Korea has been one of the most aggressive countries pursuing nuclear power expansion, ranking in the top five nations globally for the installation capacity of nuclear power plants, nuclear power generation, and the number of reactors in operation. Even after the Fukushima accident, the Korean government has made no policy changes in regards to nuclear power, and public support for nuclear power remains relatively high. This study focuses on the role of the mass media in representing the Korean government’s benefit-oriented nuclear frame and the persistence of public support in the country for nuclear power. The study further aims to answer the following questions: What kind of frame was mobilized by the mass media? What kinds of speakers were chosen by the media to represent a particular side to the issue? A total of three conservative, progressive, and business newspapers were analyzed. The benefits and/or risks of nuclear power in the context of climate change were major topics in the three newspapers. The benefit and risk frame constructed in these three newspapers was characterized as “slightly risky but significantly beneficial” in the conservative Chosun Daily and MK Business and “seemingly beneficial but intrinsically risky” in the progressive Hankyoreh. Different frames were contested in the three newspapers; however, because the influential power of Korean progressive newspapers is weak, arguments supporting the growth and benefits of nuclear power have become pervasive in Korea.     

Protecting people's livelihoods,restarting nuclear reactors: ‘risk recalibration’ in Prime Minister Noda's 8 June 2012 national address

Given popular concerns about nuclear accidents in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese state shut down the last of its fifty-four reactors for inspections on 5 May 2012, the first time the country had been without nuclear energy since May 1970. However, on 8 June 2012, in a nationwide address, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko justified a resumption of nuclear power generation at the Oi nuclear plant in Oimachi, Fukui Prefecture. This article examines Noda's speech as an example of ‘risk recalibration’. The first section outlines the underlying theoretical assumptions, while the second section provides the context behind the speech. This involved the input of political, economic and social actors as they vied for policy influence. The third section then analyses the risk rationality used in the speech itself. The argument is that while the speech is an important example of risk rationality operating through discourse as a medium of power, the overall ‘recalibration’ runs contrary to what recent studies have shown in other areas. In short, it is held that the speech follows a more traditional paternalistic logic of centralized risk management rather than a neoliberal logic of ‘individual responsibility’.     

Framing the IRA: beyond agenda setting and framing towards a model accounting for audience influence

Coverage of Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacks and the Northern Irish peace process is affected by both the country a media organisation is located and their format. The coverage of the IRA in 1996 was studied in five newspapers based in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the UK and the USA to reveal similarities and differences in language use, stories reported and general emphasis. The frequency of keywords was examined to show that the location a newspaper is based in affects the stories run by the newspaper. However, the format of a newspaper affects the framing of this coverage more than the location. These results were analysed through the lens of two leading theories pertaining to media–public relations: agenda-setting theory and framing theory. While both are shown to be partially useful in explaining the results, a more holistic view that accounts for public influence on media coverage would be even more useful. As a result of this narrow focus on only one part of media–public relations, the two theories do not exhibit predictive power, and further study should be conducted to expand their scope to encompass the public’s affect on media coverage.     

Developing terrorism coverage: variances in news framing of the January 2015 attacks in Paris and Borno

Written news coverage of an event influences public perception and understanding of that event. Through agenda setting and news framing, journalists control the importance and substance of readers’ beliefs about the event. While existing research has been conducted on the relationship between media coverage and the geographic location of the country an event took place in, there is limited understanding of this relationship in terms of terrorist events. Utilising an agenda-setting theory and news framing theory lens to compare news coverage of the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and Borno, Nigeria revealed significant variances in the overall coverage, headline style and discourse usage based on the event. In particular, the American news coverage positively framed France through detailed, sympathetic coverage and negatively framed Nigeria by overgeneralising and placing blame. Determining the origin and impacts of these variances is integral to forming a more comprehensive understanding of international terrorism and the most effective ways to combat it.     

When News Norms Collide,Follow the Lead: New Evidence for Press Independence

The literature on media independence shows that the public statements of government officials can simultaneously stimulate news coverage and regulate the discursive parameters of that coverage. This study investigates two sources of uncertainty in that literature which have limited the ability of researchers to draw firm conclusions about the nature of media independence: how critical the news actually is, and how journalists put the indexing norm into practice. I examine policy discourse appearing in evening news broadcasts during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf crisis, and find that sources outside the institutions of American government produced far more discourse critical of American involvement in the Gulf crisis than was produced by the "official" debate among domestic political leaders. Moreover, changes in the amount of governmental criticism coming from official circles did not tend to produce parallel changes in the amount of critical news coverage. This suggests that criticism of government in evening news discourse was not triggered by or closely tied to patterns of gatekeeping among elected officials. Television news coverage did not merely toe the "line in the sand" drawn by the Bush administration. Instead, the evidence from this case suggests that journalists exercised considerable discretion in locating and airing oppositional voices.     

Priming,Issue Ownership,and Party Support: The Electoral Gains of an Issue-Friendly Media Agenda

Issue ownership theory posits a positive relationship between electoral support and public attention to issues that a party “owns.” We investigate this key prediction of the issue ownership theory in a dynamic analysis of 20 years of party support and media coverage across multiple parties and issues. The results provide support for the basic electoral implication of issue ownership theory, showing that increased media attention to owned issues increases support for the issue owners. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the effect of the ownership mechanism materializes differently for opposition and government parties. Opposition parties benefit from media attention to owned issues without losing ground when news concentrates on issues owned by government parties, while government parties, always struggling with the electoral cost of ruling, lose votes when news about opposition-owned issues increases without gaining support when the media agenda is “issue-friendly.”     

Two Faces of Media Attention: Media Storm Versus Non-Storm Coverage

A media storm is a sudden surge in news coverage of an item, producing high attention for a sustained period. Our study represents the first multi-issue, quantitative analysis of storm behavior. We build a theory of the mechanisms that drive media storms and why the “anatomy” of media storms differs from that of non-storm coverage. Specifically, media storm coverage should change less explosively over time, but be more sharply skewed across issues, compared to non-storm coverage. We offer a new method of operationalizing media storms and apply our operationalization to U.S. and Belgian news. Even in these two very different cases, we find a common empirical storm anatomy with properties that differ from those of non-storm coverage in the predicted fashion. We illustrate the effects of media storms on the public through discussion of four key examples, showing that online search behavior responds strongly to media storms.