Mainstream PR in a Risk Society: Fukushima Nuclear Power Station Incident - Case Study Example

Question 1: Using the case study of the Fukushima nuclear power station incident, discuss what may happen to mainstream ‘PR’ in a risk society and the problems that arise when fixed assumptions are used to predict the behaviour of target publics. Use Beck’s theories and one other in the unit to argue your case. Student’s Name Grade Course Tutor’s Name Date Mainstream ‘PR’ in a Risk Society: The case of Fukushima Nuclear Power Station Incident The Fukushima Nuclear Power Station incident occurred in and around 11 March 2011, when a major earthquake, which was triggered by a Tsunami led to the disabling of power supply in three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan. According to World Nuclear Association (2015), the power loss meant that cooling to the three Daiichi reactors could not be attained, and consequently, three cores in the reactors melted within 72 hours of power failure. The incident was considered a full blown accident and got a level 7 rating, which according to Pratt and Yanada (2012, p.3) is the highest possible rating in nuclear-related disasters. From a public relations’ perspective, the Fukushima Nuclear incident has been criticized for failing to provide different stakeholders with information that would have helped them avoid exposure to risk. The risk, in this case, refers to radiation exposure. Specifically, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been criticized for failing to communicate the risks that arose from the Fukushima incident (Pratt and Yanada 2014, p. 2). At the time of the incident, TEPCO’s communication departments were made up of three sections namely supplier relations, public relations, and investor relations. Combined, the three sections were purposed to help the company develop and sustain good relations with all its publics (Pratt & Yanada 2014, p.6). The public relations sector, however, had a more specific mandate of targeting strategic publics who included the local community and customers through information provision. To fulfill its mandate, Pratt and Yanada (2014, p. 6) note that the PR function at TEPCO used a multi-pronged approach, which include commercial and advertisements in the media to reach customers, service centers to address inquiries from customers and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs to target communities. Immediately after the 2011 nuclear incident at Fukushima, TEPCO’s PR department organized a press conference in a conference room that could only accommodate 40 people. According to Pratt and Yanada (2014, p.8), that press conference was arguably an attempt by TEPCO to control the amount of news disseminated about the incident in the media. Pratt and Yanada (2014, p. 9) report that in subsequent press conferences, TEPCO downplayed the severe nature of the Fukushima accident by creating the impression that people were not at risk of radiation exposure. As Pratt and Yanada (2014, p. 9) observes, TEPCO was clearly intent on releasing minimal information to the public, and although this was part of the Japanese culture where people are given piecemeal information and expected to figure out the rest on their own, it was counterproductive to the welfare of people living near the nuclear power plants. Beck (2006, p. 329) has a name for what happened in Fukushima and several other places where governments and corporate organisations are not forthcoming with information. He calls it the “narrative of irony” (Beck 2006, p. 329). In the aforementioned narrative, people claim to not-knowing, and according to Beck (2006, p. 330), this enhances the risks of catastrophes. In the Fukushima incident, for example, spokespeople for TEPCO would use words and phrases shown in diagram 1 below in response to specific questions about the health risks posed by the accident. Consequently, the public did not know whether to relocate or not; they did not know whether they were at a risk of radiation explosion or not. Figure 1: The Nuanced pronouncements made by TEPCO executives when questioned about the state of the reactors Source: Pratt and Yanada (2014, p.10) Beck (2006, p. 332) argues that there are only three reactions to risk. The most natural reaction is denial, closely followed by apathy, and finally, transformation. When governments and corporate organisations deny the presence of risk, they do so because they want to create the impression that they did not overlook or err in pursuing a specific activity (Beck 2006, p. 332). Apathy is, on the other hand, the result of the unwillingness of governments or corporate institutions to act on risk areas. Finally, transformation occurs when people change the manner in which they are or do things as a result of specific risks. In post-Fukushima, for example, trust levels for nuclear reactors have declined significantly (Pratt & Yanada 2014, p.10). Due to the mistrust that the public had towards government and TEPCO, Pratt and Yanada (2014, p.12) note that community members and especially mothers would actively test the air for radiation. Such actions by the community confirms Beck’s (2006, p. 33) sentiments that the public is now adopting ‘do it yourself (DIY)’ options when dissatisfied with government or corporate performance. According to Beck (2006, p. 332), the risk society is characterized by debates, preventative measures and risks management efforts, all which have been produced by the same society. The role of PR in the risk society seems to be one that conceals rather than informs publics about the possibility of a catastrophe happening. Beck (2006, p. 332) observes that the government or corporate officials have resulted in unorthodox measures in order to prove the safety of whatever activities they are pursuing. An executive in a sewage water treatment plant may, for example, drink water that has been extracted from raw sewage, treated and made safe for re-use. Just because there are no known risk of continued drinking of such water, does not mean that there are none; rather, it means that there are not any known risks at the time that the executive was drinking the recycled water. According to Beck (2006, p. 337) not knowing is in itself a risk. In the Fukushima context, for example, not knowing how the reactors would be cooled in case of a power loss was a risk. Incidentally, PR has an obligation to communicate the right information to different publics in the risk society. As Beck (2006, p. 339) notes, a perceived risk should compel communication between different parties in order to avert catastrophes. PR has an obligation to go beyond a corporate institution’s self-seeking tendencies and alert every stakeholder of the possibilities of specific risks. However, such honesty will most likely face anticipatory resistance from specific publics. For example, in Japan, the resistance to nuclear power plants may grow, especially as people anticipate risks that such projects may expose them to. The involvement of a PR function in a risk society leads to an involuntary democratization of the same society (Beck 2006, p. 340). Specifically, people make informed choices based on the information provided by PR practitioners in a specific corporate firm. In the Fukushima incident, for example, if PR had been forthcoming in telling the publics about the risks involved, most people in the surrounding areas would have opted to relocate to other regions in Japan to reduce their likelihood of exposure to radiation. If TEPCO’s PR had been forthcoming with information about possible risks even before the 2011 incident, there is a possibility that more people would have avoided settling in the geographical area where the reactors were located. There is also a possibility that publics would have demanded compensation claims. Beck (1992, p. 32) notes that in the risk society, PR engages in strategies that are not only intended to manage information, but also to limit the damage that a firm could suffer because of contestable scientific knowledge. When scientific knowledge is contested, publics may claim compensations whenever what they had feared, and which the firm supported, goes wrong. If, for example, it had been determined that people living close to the three nuclear reactors had been exposed to radiation and that their health was affected as a result, they would have claimed compensation from TEPCO. Another possible behavior from the publics is rising uncertainties and increasing social expectations (Cottle 1998, p.9). According to Beck (1995, p.101), uncertainty, and social expectations among different publics is fueled by the media, which highlights and illuminates the hazards and threats that face a specific society. Cottle (1998, p. 9) observes that in the risk society, the media plays the critical role of surveillance, and reporting its findings to a wide range of publics. As is the norm, media shapes the public debate, and once something has been highlighted in mass media, it becomes a subject of discussion among different stakeholders. There are multiple problems that arise when PR uses fixed assumptions to predict the behavior of targeted publics. One such problem is that the government or corporate ignores the reality that modern publics represent different interests (Demetrious 2013, p. 130). In other words, through communication, PR should brace itself to listen to different voices. Using fixed assumptions to predict the behavior of targeted publics also brings out the possibility that PR could act unethically, especially if it thinks that the publics do not have powers to act against them. According to Demetrious (2013, p.12), one of the ways that PR avoids being accountable to targeted publics is by avoiding two-way communication. In the Fukushima case, for example, TEPCO avoided answering questions that would have enlightened the publics to demand accountability. However, TEPCO’s failure to answer the questions led the publics (especially community members) to lose trust in the company and even in the government’s nuclear policies. Through its fixed assumptions, Demetrious (2013) creates the impression that PR is indeed a friend of governments; however, by befriending the government, it becomes an enemy of the people. Using the Fukushima incident once again, one can argue that PR not only secured the interests of TEPCO in nuclear energy, but also failed to reveal how lackluster the Japanese government had handled policies related to nuclear energy. Fixed assumptions by PR can also lead to problems in the long-run because as Miller (1995, p.20) notes, the public can become intolerant when PR communication does not reflect the entire truth. Miller (1995, p.20) draws from the example of the postwar era when statements from the aircraft manufacturing industry were perceived as a reflection of socialism creeping into the society. Additionally, fixed assumptions by PR can lead to inadequate calculations, avoidance and compensation of risk (Cottle 1998, p. 9). It has been argued that such assumptions are based on what PR understood from past decades. With changes that clearly differentiates past and modern societies; past assumptions are clearly inadequate to address modern day situations. Further, assumptions held by PR are not always applicable to cultural or social values. Culturally-appropriate assumptions might, on the other hand, fail to find justification among the intellectuals or among people from different cultures (Cottle 1998, p. 15). In conclusion, it is important to repeat that the Fukushima incident was characterized by delayed, confusing and misleading information. PR played a significant role in information dissemination, and can, therefore, be said to have failed the public by failing to disclose the magnitude of the disaster, and the possible radiation risks that people living in a particular radius to the nuclear reactors were exposed to. As argued in this essay, the risk society is characterized by not knowing what future possibilities have. Arguably, the Fukushima incident was a reflection of a risk society because no one would have expected that a tsunami would trigger an earthquake, whose magnitude was the highest ever recorded in Japan. Additionally, no one would have expected that the earthquake would lead to power loss and that four nuclear reactors would have been affected simultaneously. The nature of the risk society, therefore, is that risks that had not been anticipated will arise. However, it is the response to accidents that happen that determine how government and corporate organisations are perceived by the public. As would be expected, PR plays a critical role in informing publics about the happenings when risks become full-blown catastrophes. In such cases, PR has to balance between honesty for the sake of protecting people from further harm, and half-truths in the hope that the corporate organization’s image will not suffer irreparable damage. In Fukushima’s case, TEPCO’s PR seems to have chosen the latter. The resulting situation was one where the publics realized that both TEPCO and the government were being less than honest with them, and consequently, they (publics) lost trust in the government, nuclear energy, and TEPCO. References Beck, U 1992, Risk society – towards a new modernity, Sage, London. Beck, U 1995, Ecological politics in the age of risk, Polity Press, Cambridge. Cottle, S 1998, ‘Ulricj Beck, ‘Risk society’ and the media – a catastrophic view’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 13, no.1, pp. 5-32. Demetrious, K 2013, Public relations, activism, and social change: speaking up, Routledge, New York. Miller, KS 1995, ‘Amplifying the voice of business: Hill and Knowlton’s influence on political, public, and media discourse in postwar America’, Business and Economic History, vol. 24, no.1, pp. 18-23. Pratt, CB & Yanada, A 2014, ‘Risk communication and Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown: ethical implications for government-citizen divides’, Public Relations Journal, vol. 8, no.4, pp. 1-27. World Nuclear Association 2015, Fukushima accident, viewed 11 May 2015, Read More