Using emotions for politics: a visual analysis of the video message from the families of Japanese victims abducted by North Korea

The North Korean abduction issue has long been an important factor in Japan’s foreign policy towards the DPRK, the Japanese government has made attempts at raising awareness among people living outside of Japan through various media. This research set out to analyze how the Japanese government used emotion in a video posted on the government-run rachi.go.jp website, in an attempt at gaining the support of English-speaking viewers for its stance on the issue. In this way, the research contributes both to the fields of emotion in IR, as well as to the extant scholarly work on the abduction issue. I have carried out the analysis by using discourse analysis, as proposed by other scholars in the field of emotion in IR. From this analysis, I conclude that the Japanese government attempts to create three primary emotions in the viewer: compassion, hope and outrage. These three emotions are created through various visual, as well as audible symbols, ranging from colors used in the video to...Show moreThe North Korean abduction issue has long been an important factor in Japan’s foreign policy towards the DPRK, the Japanese government has made attempts at raising awareness among people living outside of Japan through various media. This research set out to analyze how the Japanese government used emotion in a video posted on the government-run rachi.go.jp website, in an attempt at gaining the support of English-speaking viewers for its stance on the issue. In this way, the research contributes both to the fields of emotion in IR, as well as to the extant scholarly work on the abduction issue. I have carried out the analysis by using discourse analysis, as proposed by other scholars in the field of emotion in IR. From this analysis, I conclude that the Japanese government attempts to create three primary emotions in the viewer: compassion, hope and outrage. These three emotions are created through various visual, as well as audible symbols, ranging from colors used in the video to the music played while giving general information on the issue. While the intended emotions are successfully created in the viewer, the full potential effectiveness of the video is not reached due to a lack of circulation caused by the obscureness of the website which hosts it.Show less

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Using emotions for politics: a visual analysis of the video message from the families of Japanese victims abducted by North Korea