JAPAN Government IMAGE during the Release of Fukushima Daiichi Treated Waste Water

Japan experiences nuclear incident which resulted in scale 7 in INES in 2011. The government were scrambling to address not only the aftermath of tsunami, but also the subsequent nuclear disaster in Fukushima. 12 years after the tsunami struck, the resulting 1F incident has forced the Japan government to consider releasing treated waste water coming from the powerplant into the sea, a process expected to take decades. This situation however, has triggered international responses who expressed their concern over the environmental impact due to the discharge, despite extensive due diligence and stakeholders’ engagement both from the government and the IAEA. The study will focus on identifying image repair strategies employed by the Japan government and how the framing and priming strategies may or may not have affected the public sentiment, based on analysis of news statement and sentiment analysis in the social media.