Saturday 9 April 2011

JAPAN AND INFORMATION

The Japan Times

WITH THE WORLD LOOKING IN, JAPAN NEEDS TO SPEAK OUT

Kumi Sato and Michael J. Alfant

The Japan Times, April 9, 2011

Japan is known as having some the world's most developed earthquake- and tsunami-detection systems. However, the destruction caused on March 11 amply illustrated what can happen even when it is well prepared for crises.

Imagine what happens in a crisis when you are not well prepared. We believe that this disaster has illustrated Japan's lack of preparedness in a different sense: crisis communication.

While it must be said that DPJ politicians have been a constant fixture on TV since the earthquake and tsunami hit, overall Japan has not done a good job of communicating the situation on the ground (especially that of Tokyo) to the rest of the world.

The lack of preparedness and the lack of a holistic strategy to disseminate accurate information to outside audiences — who watched in horror as the pictures of towns being reduced to rubble and explosions at Fukushima's nuclear power plant were beamed across the world — quickly resulted in a chaotic blur of misinformation and half truths being spread across rolling news channels and the Internet.

(...) [artículo aquí]

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