著者

山本 昭宏

出版者

日本マス・コミュニケーション学会

雑誌

マス・コミュニケーション研究 (ISSN:13411306)

巻号頁・発行日

no.84, pp.9-27, 2014-01-31

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The purpose of this paper is to propose a hypothesis about the process through which the media builds up collective expectations concerning nuclear power (the Nuclear Dream) and the transformation of such expectations. We focus on the Asahi and Yomiuri Newspapers and study not only editorials, but also regular features that are likely to have affected public opinion as much as editorials. The period targeted in this paper is the 20 years from 1945 to 1965. We divide these 20 years into three periods based on changes in the Nuclear Dream: the dream of war deterrence (1945 to 1949) ; the dream of peaceful use (1949 to 1957) ; and the dream of nuclear power generation (1957 to 1965). Japanese newspapers were unknowingly trapped in the Nuclear Dream that they built up through their own discourse; while they detached themselves from the Nuclear Dream in the late 1950s, they expanded the dream again in the 1960s. By describing this process, we examine how it is possible to meet collective expectations built up by the media.