Rethinking Journalistic War Testimony from the Perspective of Dialogical Constructionism

A Case Study of the NHK War Testimony Archives

Abstract

This paper clarifies the role of journalists in war testimony interviews by bridging journalism theory and dialogical constructionism, one of the main theories in life story studies. Many life story studies and life history studies have attempted to analyze the listenerʼs positions and roles in the interview process. However, little research has focused on journalists, some of the most important listeners and authors of war testimonies.

In journalism, the importance of objectivism is often emphasized. Some critics of objectivism have suggested the idea of journalists as the subject. This idea and dialogical constructionism can be theoretically connected. Moreover, war survivors discuss harsh experiences, and their stories vary depending on journalists' attitudes and the framing of questions. From this perspective, dialogical constructionism is effective in analyzing the process of creating news about war testimony.

More than 1300 testimonies are recorded in the NHK War Testimony Archives. Generally, media content, such as news articles and TV documentaries, display only the results of interviews, but the NHK War Testimony Archives preserves videos of the interview process. This advanced archive contains groundbreaking media content and reveals a way to analyze journalistic interviews from the perspective of dialogical constructionism.

This article focuses on the testimonies of Tadahiro Murakami and Lee Kwan Ho and analyzes them using dialogical constructionism. By analyzing the testimonies of two people in the NHK War Testimony Archives, this article clarifies the multiple layers of narrative and the language format that defines the interview process. In addition, this article argues that as these archives are developed, it is necessary to compile sociological analyses that take journalistic interviews into account.