Beyond Disaster and Risk: Post-Fukushima Nuclear News in U.S. and German Press

With significant nuclear policy changes between the United States and Germany after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, this article examines journalistic coverage of consumption, economic systems, alternative energy, regulation, and public opinion in relation to nuclear energy within a broader political and media-structural analysis. Using W. L. Bennett's (1990) indexing hypothesis as its theoretical foundation, we conduct a content analysis of 362 articles from The New York Times and 2 German papers, the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Our results indicate there is a vast discrepancy between the countries' newspapers concerning the diversity and the quality of nuclear-oriented information. We then explain these differences in the context of the indexing hypothesis and offer detailed media policy recommendations.