言語能力の違いに着目した東日本大震災後の外国人の災害情報収集分析

抄録

Breaking news of the "Great Earthquake in Japan" was spread all over the world just five minutes after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011. During the great flurry of information from both domestic and overseas sources, how did foreigners residing in Japan collect disaster-related information? On which information sources did they rely? Did the difference in language ability for Japanese and English have an influence on their information collection behavior? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a questionnaire survey of foreigners and Japanese who were residing in the Kanto region at the time the earthquake occurred. Five sample groups were created based on the respondents' language ability, and their disaster information collection behavior was analyzed. The results illustrate the channels of information dissemination among foreigners during the disaster, and measures for improving disaster information dissemination to foreigners were proposed.