Narrativization of the global financial crisis by the Japanese press
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Date
09/07/2019Author
McDougall, Roderick William
Metadata
Abstract
The Global Financial Crisis of 2007 – 2008, culminating in the Lehman Shock on 15th
September 2008, has been described as both a “once in a century event” and a “seismic shift”
in global economics. Yet despite the exogenous nature of the crisis, it was Japan which felt
the greatest impact to its economy. Public understanding and perception of such crises is
highly dependent upon news coverage for their dissemination, opinion, and interpretation
of unfolding events. However, in doing so, the news media are positioned as powerful
gatekeepers dictating how events become populated with meaning and understood within
the public consciousness. This is of particular concern to Japan where the kisha club system
of journalism has been widely criticised for the cartelisation of information and the
homogenization of news coverage. A common methodology to investigate this phenomenon
within the field of Communication Research is Media Framing, however this has rarely been
applied to non-Western primary sources. Likewise, despite the multidisciplinary nature of
Japanese Studies, theories of Communication Research have not been widely used. I address
these concerns through a joint quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Yomiuri Shimbun,
Asahi Shimbun and Nikkei Shimbun over the two-year period following the Lehman Shock,
employing Media Frame and Discourse Analysis methodologies. In doing so, I identify not
only the narratives employed by the ‘big three’ newspapers of Japan, but also how the
metaphor of the Lehman Shock crystalized over time, ready to be applied to subsequent
economic crises.