Role of SNS as media will grow in years ahead

作者: Choi Sun-hwa on 25 June , 2012.
类别: All, News, Society

Yoichi Funabashi, Chairman of Rebuild Japan Initiative foundation (Photo : Kris Min)

“Social Network System (SNS) can play an important supplementary role for conventional media at the time of catastrophe like the nuclear accident in Fukushima,” said Yoichi Funabashi, a noted Japanese journalist who was editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun.

He made the remarks at the International Media Conference, jointly organized by the East-West Center and Adenauer Foundation, held at Yonsei University in Seoul on June 22-24 amid attendance of some 300 journalists and media-related scholars from some 20 countries.

“When Fukushima nuclear accident erupted, many journalists were prompted to rush to the scene of the accident, thinking that it was the only way to get the fresh and realistic informations. The move was motivated by their notion that the government announcements and news coverage by the conventional media would not be enough to know about what was actually taking place at the scene,” he went on to say.

In connection with this, he formed an investigation team, composed of scholars, lawyers and journalists, and looked around the scene of the nuclear accident to see what actually happened without any government intervention.

“A larger and variety of communications are taking place in time of disasters than in ordinary situations because of the surging desire to confirm the safety of the people in the affected regions,” he said.

Such situations were confirmed at the time of Kobe Earthquake in 1995 and the need for utilizing SNS has grown since then in Japan, he said. The various actual informations, sent from the scene of the disaster, were relayed instantly through the internet. Thus, people in Japan have come to realize the importance of SNS at the time of natural catastrophe, Funabashi said.

It is needed to rely on the information offered by conventional major media, but the role of SNS including twitter and facebook that relay fresh informations from the scenes directly is becoming more important in time of emergency, he went on to say.

The messages through SNS can also serve as an important source through which the safety of those, trapped in the scene of disaster, can be confirmed. Those who send messages through SNS can also play a role of journalist by carrying their personal opinion together with the informations they gathered at the site of the accident.

Funabashi further expected that “the influence of the SNS in our society will be expanded greatly in the days to come especially in time of disaster. It is already confirmed that the government announcements and news coverage by conventional media are not enough to satisfy the people’s desire to know.”

“The areas, where the conventional media are unable to fully cover, are growing, expanding the room for activities by SNS. The SNS may fall behind the conventional media in the way of reporting and the ability to express informations, but they are far ahead in the quantities of informations they can supply. The both are already in the relationship of supplementing each other,” he said.