Old and new media in local societies in times of catastrophe: The role of local papers during the great East Japan earthqake

     On March 11, 2011, Japan suffered great damage from a M9.0 earthquake. In the early hours of the disaster, the Japanese national and global media broadcasted live what was happening on the east coast of Japan. The images of the tsunami, frightened crowds, and devastated landscapes spread across world in real-time. Meanwhile, in the seriously afflicted areas, the people in freezing cold temperatures suffered not only from food and water shortages, but, just as importantly, from a lack of reliable information directly concerning their own communities. As one of the survivors said, “we desperately needed news and information about ‘our place’ rather than news about other areas or about crowded train stations in Tokyo.” Their needs were met by the journalists of local newspapers, who stood by their side trying their best to provide local people with urgent and practical information. For example, in Ishinomaki, in the absence of electricity, a long-established newspaper was copied out in handwriting and distributed on the day following the disaster. In a subsequent documentary on the newspaper’s heroic efforts, one of the editors of that paper said that on that particular day, he reported, not as a journalist, but as a ‘localist’. Their local knowledge and the relationship of mutual trust with the local people made this possible. The purpose of this presentation is 1) to examine how local and non-local information diffused or was mediated by the affected local societies and 2) to point out the effectiveness of paper media and local journalists. These focal points lead us to rethink the social significance of local papers and the importance of focusing on the feeling of ‘our place’ (locality) in media studies. I will also discuss the collaborative relationships of the paper media and the new media such as SMS and twitter.