Paper short abstract:

I will trace the spread of different framings of responsibility for the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in different media. Using frame analysis, two major framings of responsibility will be sketched and their dominance in different media platforms and different time periods will be analysed.

Paper long abstract:

The Fukushima accident in 2011 brought to the fore existing fault lines in the Japanese media landscape. It is often argued that the split in editorial opinion on nuclear power policy led to polarization in the Japanese media world. In the paper I will scrutinize how this polarization can be observed in the different framing of the responsibility for the nuclear accident in different media. One framing underlines the responsibility of TEPCO and the nuclear industry, another framing underlines the failure of the Democratic Party (DPJ) and especially Prime Minister Kan Naoto in managing the accident. I will trace both frames from their formulation by political players (PM Kan on the one side and later PM Abe among others on the other side) and trace how both frames spread and acquired different degrees of dominance across different media including newspapers and online blogs and news outlets over time.