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Fabian SCHÄFER, Auf der Jagd nach der Sonne. Das journalistische Feld und die Atomkraft in Japan, Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2021, Pages 213–216, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaa034
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Extract
Numerous academic and non-academic publications have discussed the Japanese and non-Japanese media coverage of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011 and its aftermath. Tobias Weiß, in this book based on his PhD thesis, provides the most detailed and empirically grounded analysis of a phenomenon that has been condemned by some commentators as a four-fold disaster—if one includes the disastrous media coverage of the events in Japan. Weiß, in this meticulously researched study, chooses a two-fold methodological approach to engage with the complexity of the subject and to go beyond superficial condemnations of the Japanese press. On the one hand, he conducted (a) a frame analysis of the content of three national newspapers over a period of more than five decades; and (b) carried out several interviews with journalists from the respective newspapers to closely analyze what he calls the journalistic ‘field’ (using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept) in Japan. Both approaches take time and academic rigor in order to establish personal relationships and trust with the informants and to systematically study thousands of newspaper articles.