ABSTRACT
This study addresses the question of whether social media activism in the wake of industrial crisis increases democratic responsiveness and corporate social responsibility, focusing specifically on the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The researcher adopts participatory action research to examine whether social media successfully challenged TEPCO’s narrative of control regarding reactor conditions using corporate webcam and government radiation monitoring data. Analysis of webcam watchers’ efforts to contest official accounts of “cold shutdown” focused on two specific time periods, which were significant for coinciding with TEPCO’s reassurances that fuel had cooled despite unusual activity on the webcams.
