Abstract
Fifteen years have passed since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, as of this March. The broadcasting media that covered the disaster on the ground in 2011 are now seeing the generation of employees who directly experienced the earthquake gradually stepping back from frontline reporting and production. Meanwhile, those who joined the industry after the earthquake now constitute the majority of personnel working on the ground. Against this backdrop, how are the broadcasting personnel who were involved in reporting and broadcasting during the Great East Japan Earthquake attempting to pass down their experiences and the reporting methods they developed to younger reporters and production staff?
Existing research on disasters and the media has focused primarily on documenting the damage and reconstruction efforts following the Great East Japan Earthquake. In the affected regions, initiatives to preserve earthquake-related structures and establish heritage facilities have progressed. At the same time, mass media organizations have undertaken efforts such as archiving their coverage from the immediate aftermath through later developments, which have themselves become subjects of research.
By contrast, the question of how the experiences and lessons learned from reporting and production at that time have been passed down within media organizations has not been a major focus of research, unlike analyses of disaster coverage and related programs.
This paper examines how the experiences of the Great East Japan Earthquake have been conveyed and what lessons have been learned, focusing on the specific approaches taken by NHK Sendai Station and Fukushima Central Television, a commercial broadcaster in Fukushima Prefecture.
