ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews Anthropocene coverage in the mass media of six countries in North Asia. Chinese media gave over 80 items, Japanese over 40 items, and South Korean and Taiwanese media produced around 30 items each, with not a single item being found in media searches for Mongolia and Afghanistan. China was divided into five broad geographical areas (Northeast, Beijing/Tianjin, Shanghai, Hong Kong/South, and West), plus the multi-lingual transnational coverage of People’s Daily, China Daily, and Global Times. Comparisons between these media ecologies are explored, along with issues of China’s Anthropocene raised by the ‘Tongji Declaration’ and the relationship forged in Chinese media between the Anthropocene and Confucianism (media in Taiwan did not cover this latter topic). Japan presented problems of multiple translations of ‘Anthropocene’, whereas South Korea’s coverage appeared to rely more heavily on foreign sources. Overall, with some notable exceptions, most articles presented reassurance, with around two-thirds of the articles sampled expressing optimistic ‘good’ Anthropocene narratives of various types.
