PRELIMINARY PAPER f146 A CROSS-SOCIETAL COMPARISON OF DISASTER NEWS REPORTING

project on mass media reporting of news about disasters in both countries. Using a common although not identical research design, cooperatively developed ahead of time, the Americans studied local community-level reporting of a major hurricane (Hurricane Alicia in the Houston, Texas area in 1983) and a major sudden flood (around Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1984) while the Japanese concurrently researched the reporting of two similar disasters (floods around Nagasaki in 1982 and an earthquake in the Tohoku district in 1983) in their country. After the field data had been mostly analyzed, the researchers from both societies held a meeting in the United States to compare their findings. The conclusions drawn at that meeting as well as other later comparison of interviews and content analyses are summarized in this paper. We additionally point out the new questions generated by our findings. Also, since despite the considerable socio