Media content analysis of the Fukushima accident in two Belgian newspapers

Tanja Perko, Catrinel Turcanu, Dries Geenen, Nadia Mamane, Lorenz Van Rooy

    Research outputpeer-review

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    Abstract

    In case of a nuclear accident, the media play a major role in communicating with the public. It is therefore crucial to know what messages are the media delivering in a nuclear emergency and how do they frame the event. Analysing the media reporting on the Fukushima nuclear accident can benefit nuclear emergency management in two major aspects. On the one hand, such analysis shows how to deliver risk messages effectively through the media and on the other hand, it brings insights into the information that has to be communicated by the emergency managers to the mass media. The media analysis of the nuclear accident in Fukushima reported here was done by means of discourse and content analysis. The coding method followed explicit rules of coding and enabled large quantities of data to be categorized. The newspapers included in the analysis were the Belgian newspapers "Le Soir" (French language) and "De Standaard" (Dutch language). The media news were obtained from press clippings by "Media data base at University Antwerp - MEDIARGUS " for the period between 11th of March to 11th of May, 2011.
    Original languageEnglish
    PublisherSCK CEN
    Number of pages127
    Volume1
    Edition0
    StatePublished - 21 Dec 2011

    Publication series

    NameSCK•CEN Reports
    PublisherStudiecentrum voor Kernenergie
    No.BLG-1084

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