Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

Since after the Fukushima disaster, polarization and stigmatization occured in the contemporary media environment, and experts had a crucial role there. According to the quantitative media study, we will present how this phenomenon occurred.

Paper long abstract:

In the present day, social agenda is constructed on media, but its manner has become complicated after the rise of the social media. Socio-scientific issues also form their shape on media, so it could be said media is an origin where misunderstanding between experts and citizens begins. The theme of this report is to depict the difficulty of performing deliberation within this complex media ecosystem with subsuming socio-scientific issues, at studying the Fukushima disaster.

Five years passed since the disaster, and now the Japanese society has polarized into their ideologies on the socio-scientific issues related to Fukushima disaster. For example, pro- vs. anti- nuke, 'anzen-chu (means "Safety-parties," generally implies person in scientism)' vs. 'housha-nou (means "Radioheads").' But how this partyism arose? To outline this complicated problem, we will focus on (1) mechanism of polarization about socio-scientific issues on SNS, (2) the nest of stigmas on media ecosystem, from a provincial press in Fukushima to global press and social media. The results indicate that science experts have a catalytic function of forming 'disaster utopia (Solnit, 2009)' at crisis stage just after the disaster, but also catalyzed polarization in post-crisis stage by legitimizing risk. Also, studies on media ecosystem proved that actual victims are hidden in the blind spot of the views of both legacy and social media. The result of this study will also throw questions at STS about its significance and limitation on intervening agenda building and framing processes in the media.