Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-sl7kg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-08T23:15:46.594Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tracing Individual Perceptions of Media Credibility in Post-3.11 Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Sonja Petrovic
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The 3.11 disaster revealed many shortcomings in Japan’s mass media organisations and government, the most prominent arguably being the poor handling of the disaster by central government and TEPCO, including miscommunication and delays in releasing accurate data on the dispersal of radioactive materials. The lack of transparency in mass media coverage of the nuclear meltdown and levels of radiation resulted in growing distrust among the public, who turned to online sources and social media to confirm or challenge information provided by the mass media.

Based on in-depth interviews with 38 Japanese individuals, this study explores individual perceptions of media credibility in a disaster context and in the present, elaborating how changes in trust in media intersects with the changes and dynamics in media use and how the 3.11 disaster continues to influence media use and perceptions of credibility today. The main findings of the study suggest that in the wake of the unprecedented national disaster, Japanese media users moved from using traditional mass media as their sole source of news to a personalised, inter-media environment which integrates both online and traditional modes of communication without replacing traditional media players. This further facilitated the practice of seeking and evaluating information and media credibility through new media forms of connectivity such as social media platforms and news websites.

Keywords

3.11 disastercommunication gapinter-media environmentmass mediamedia credibilitysocial media
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 10 , May 2020 , e3
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Reference list

Aldrich, D. (2012). Building resilience: social capital in post-disaster recovery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döveling, K., von Scheve, C., & Konijn, E. A. (2011). The Routledge handbook of emotions and mass media. London; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Edelman (2018) 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer Global ReportGoogle Scholar
Endo, K. (2013). Social Journalism in the Intermedia Society: Results from the Social Survey on the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster. Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, 12(2), 5–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, L. (2000). Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan’s Mass Media Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, S. M. (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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Funabashi, Y., & Kitazawa, K. (2012). Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 68(2), 9–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galbraith, P. W., & Karlin, J. G. (2016). Media convergence in Japan. Kinema Club.Google Scholar
Gaziano, C., & McGrath, K. (1986). Measuring the Concept of Credibility. Journalism Quarterly, 63(3), 451–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, T., Slater, D. H., & Steger, B. (2013). Japan Copes with Calamity: Ethnographies of the Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disasters of March 2011. Peter Lang.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gripsrud, J. (1999). Television and common knowledge. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, C. (2015). Rebuilding Trust after Fukushima. Fukushima Global Communication Programme Working Paper Series 4 (March): 1–7. United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability.Google Scholar
Ito, M. (2012). Terebi ha Genpatsujiko wo Dou Tsutaetanoka [How Television Covered the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Crisis]. Tokyo: Heibonsha.Google Scholar
Jung, J.Y. (2012). Social media use and goals after the Great East Japan Earthquake. First Monday, 17(8).Google Scholar
Kaigo, M. 2017. Social Media and Civil Society in Japan. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingston, J. (2012). Natural disaster and nuclear crisis in Japan: response and recovery after Japan’s 3/11. London; New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuga, K. (2016). Japan’s press clubs: an impregnable fortress of information. Media Asia, 43(1), 14–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Lachlan, K., Spence, P. R., Edwards, A., Reno, K., & Edwards, C. (2014a). If you are quick enough, I will think about it: Information speed and trust in public health organizations. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, 377–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lachlan, K., Spence, P. R., & Lin, X. (2014b). Expressions of risk awareness and concern through Twitter: On the utility of using the medium as an indication of audience needs. Computers in Human Behavior, 35, 554–559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, X., Spence, P. R., & Lachlan, K. (2016). Social media and credibility indicators: The effect of influence cues. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 264–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: the extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (2013). Truth to Power: Japanese Media, International Media and 3.11 Reportage. Asia-Pacific Journal - Japan Focus, 11(10).Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (2014). Japan’s contemporary media. In Kingston, J. (Ed.), Critical issues in contemporary Japan (pp. 80–92). London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.Google Scholar
Mehta, A., Bruns, A., & Newton, J. (2017). Trust, but verify: social media models for disaster management. Disasters, 41(3), 549–565.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moser, A., & Korstjens, I. (2018). Series: Practical Guidance to Qualitative Research. Part 3: Sampling, Data Collection and Analysis. European Journal of General Practice, 24(1), 9–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newman, N., & Fletcher, R. (2017). Bias, Bullshit and Lies: Audience Perspectives on Low Trust in the Media. SSRN Electronic Journal.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Levy, D. A. L., & Nielsen, R. K. (2016). Reuters Institute Digital News Report. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., Levy, D. A. L., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Reuters Institute Digital News Report. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Oishi, N. & Hamada, I. (2019). Silent Exits: Risk and Post-3.11 Skilled Migration from Japan to Australia. Social Science Japan Journal, 22(1): 109–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okumura, N., Hayashi, K., Igarashi, K., & Tanaka, A. (2019). Japan’s media fails its watchdog role: Lessons learned and unlearned from the 2011 earthquake and the Fukushima disaster. Journalism.Google Scholar
Pacchioli, D. (2013). Communicating Disaster. Oceanus, 50(1), 24–26.Google Scholar
Petrovic, S. (2019). A Sense of Communal Belonging in Digital Space: The Case of the 3.11 Disaster. New Voices in Japanese Studies, 11, 74–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reporters Without Borders. (2018). World Press Index report 2011-2018. Retrieved September 27, 2018.Google Scholar
Segawa, M. (2011). Fukushima residents seek answers amid mixed signals from media, Tepco and government. Report from the radiation exclusion zone. Asia-Pacific Journal-Japan Focus, 9(16).Google Scholar
Slater, D. H., Nishimura, K., & Kindstrand, L. (2012). Social media in disaster Japan. In Kingston, J. (Ed.), Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan. (pp. 94–108). Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Snow, N. (2017). Japan’s Global Information War: Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control Since 3/11. In Kingston, J. (Ed.), Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan. (pp. 274–284). Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Sutton, J. N., Palen, L., & Shklovski, I. (2008, May). Backchannels on the front lines: emergency uses of social media in the 2007 Southern California wildfires. Paper presented at the Fifth International, ISCRAM Conference, Boulder, CO.Google Scholar
Takayasu, M., Sato, K., Sano, Y., Yamada, K., Miura, W., & Takayasu, H. (2015). Rumor diffusion and convergence during the 3.11 earthquake: A Twitter case study. PLoS one, 10(4).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tanaka, T. (2013). NHK’s Disaster Coverage and Public Value from Below: Analyzing the TV Coverage of the Great East Japan Disaster. Keio Communication Review, 35, 91–104Google Scholar
Umejima, A., Miyabe, M., Aramaki, E., & Nadamoto, A. (2011). Tendency of Rumor and Correction Re-tweet on the Twitter during Disasters. IPSJ SIG Notes, 4, 1–6.Google Scholar
Westerman, D., Spence, P. R., & Van Der Heide, B. (2014). Social Media as Information Source: Recency of Updates and Credibility of Information. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(2), 171–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Press Freedom Index 2010-2018, Reporters Without Borders.Google Scholar
Yamakoshi, S. (2015). Re-examining the Journalistic Function of Public Service Broadcasting in Japan: A Discourse Analysis of Television News Coverage on the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis. Keio Communication Review, 37, 5–14.Google Scholar
Yoshimi, S. (2003). Television and Nationalism: Historical Change in the National Domestic TV Formation of Postwar Japan. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(4), 459–487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar