Fear of the "Alien Other": Cultural Anxiety and Opinions about Japan |
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| Authors: | W Lawrence Neuman |
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| Institution: | Professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he also serves as director of the Pacific Asian Educational Resource Center. His research interests include study of how political climate and institutional context influence changes in U. S. anti-monopoly policy. |
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| Abstract: | American public opinion toward Japan grew more negative coincident with 1980s "Japan-bashing" media messages. Two theories of opinion formation provide explanations for this. Democratic representation theory understands opinions as rational responses to new information. Cultural interpretation theory holds that public opinion is based on one's receptiveness to media discourse. Opinion is neither a rational response to information nor the passive acceptance of elite dictates. People differentially interpret media messages and form opinions in a process that is shaped by media attentiveness and their subjective cultural anxieties. Survey data permit an indirect test of the two theories applied to anti-Japan opinion. OLS regression analysis performed on GSS for four time periods reveals that anti-Japan opinion is rooted less in "rational" responses to personal economic insecurity or fear of increased global competition than in racial attitudes and domestic social-cultural concerns. America's negative opinion toward Japan in the 1990s is better understood as domestic anxieties that are redirected toward a symbolic target that the mass media has highlighted. |
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