News coverage and Japanese foreign disaster aid: a comparative example of bureaucratic responsiveness to the news media

摘要

This paper examines news coverage of overseas natural disasters in Japan and the United States and assesses the extent to which that coverage affects amounts and types of emergency assistance provided by each country's ODA program. The comparison between the two cases allows for the examination of the different effects of media on foreign policy as well as the different ways in which those effects are filtered through institutional arrangements within the aid policy-making apparatus in each country. Following up comparative work on media impact on development aid programs in five countries, this paper argues that the organization of emergency assistance programs is a key determinant in explaining media impact on aid policy.