Title: Fukushima and its treatment in the press

Authors: Caroline Peynaud

Addresses: Université Grenoble Alpes, ILCEA4, Gremuts, France

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to understand the treatment of complex environmental issues by the press, both general and special interest publications, to determine how different types of press fulfil their mediator role to inform the public. The adopted approach is qualitative and based on discourse analysis in a short corpus, composed of papers published in four publications from the USA and dealing with the immediate coverage of the Fukushima disaster. The analysis of the corpus evidences that the treatment of specialised information is remarkably similar in both types of press. The discourse conveys little specialised knowledge, popularisation is generally absent and explanations are meaningful in the context of the paper only. This paper's main value resides in the discourse analysis approach adopted to understand the issue of specialisation and popularisation in the press, combined to an understanding of the professional environment of journalists in the USA.

Keywords: press reports; popularisation; specialisation; terms; definition; reported speech; discourse analysis; environmental issues; complexity; Fukushima disaster; Fukushima nuclear accident; specialised knowledge; USA; United States; Fukushima coverage; press coverage; Japan; nuclear power plants; NPP.

DOI: 10.1504/PIE.2016.082148

Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal, 2016 Vol.10 No.2/3, pp.209 - 228

Received: 19 Feb 2016
Accepted: 04 Oct 2016
Published online: 08 Feb 2017 *

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