Flamboyant Nuclear Power Station Visitor Centers as A Hegemonic Tool in Japan : Are They Rvealing or Concealing, or Concealing by Revealing

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type:論文

Although mass-media tend to positively report on anti-nuclear movement, they are much less likely to cover the fact that there are some local people who petition for building a new nuclear power plant in their hometown. I think it is as important to ask why and how local residents consent to receiving such a potentially lethal facility, as to ask how they act against atomic energy. In other words, it is of great importance to look at hegemony-building process. It is by far beyond the scope of this paper to deal with the whole process of hegemony-building. In this short paper I focus exclusively on the unique characteristics of visitor centers of nuclear power stations in Japan, as they are designed, not just to show how energy is made safely, but, more importantly, to play a role of serving the benefits of the local people. The significance of the role as a tool to build up trust should not be underestimated, as the visitor center is one of a few facilities of which the owner power company has full control as a means to contact general people. Some visitor centers are luxurious amusement facilities where local children enjoy themselves, and they are also large-scale tourist attractions which draw hundreds of thousands of visitors a year into a town where there are no other tourist resources. Drawing upon communication theory, I have attempted to analyze how the newly-built or renovated flamboyant visitor centers in Japan are aimed to affect the consciousness of the visitors in the post Chernobyl era.

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