This study examined the experience of watching typhoons on television from the perspective of media history. Focusing on the Ise Bay Typhoon （1959）
and
the Second-Muroto Typhoon （1961）, the study compared how each typhoon was reported on television
and
how the reports were evaluated by people. We referred to newspapers, broadcasting magazines,
and
meteorological magazines to gather a wide range of materials that described the media experience of the two typhoons.
The two typhoons occurred during the transitional period of the media environment, when television was growing rapidly. When the Ise Bay typhoon hit, radio was the mainstream media; it was not common to obtain disaster prevention information on television. However, on television, weather experts provided people with typhoon risk reduction information. People who owned a television were able to watch weather maps
and
typhoon information on it. However, the typhoon disrupted signal transmission
and
brought massive blackouts, interrupting the TV broadcast of footage of the typhoon hitting cities. In the case of the Ise Bay Typhoon, television programs could only report on the damaged areas after the typhoon had left.
In contrast, when the Second-Muroto Typhoon hit, many people were able to watch typhoon information on TV. We identified two kinds of viewing experiences on TV. The first was the same as in the case of the Ise Bay Typhoon: watching typhoon information delivered by experts on TV. The second was to watch the coverage of the typhoon hitting the cities, which was broadcast live via TV networks. As such, people in the areas where the typhoon would pass could watch it on TV. In other words, television enabled people to see typhoons with a predictive effect. This “predictive effect” allowed people to understand weather phenomena even without any knowledge of science.
抄録全体を表示