Fukushima Daiichi as a heterotopia : Dark tourism in dystopian places

Sammanfattning: This thesis deals with tourism to Fukushima. Specifically, it examines how traditional tourism and dark tourism shape the identity of Fukushima. In order to do so, the thesis has adapted Digital Methods, particularly by using web crawlers, and visual qualitative content analysis of pictures complemented with word clouds to reveal how Fukushima is conceptualised on different tourism websites. Three “traditional” tourism sites were chosen together with two “dark tours” sites. Moreover, National Geographic is integrated into the analysis for its role in influencing perceptions of geographical areas around the world. Adapting Foucault's “heterotopia”, to study Fukushima Daiichi as a possible dark tourism site and therefore a place of ‘otherness’, the thesis found that traditional tourism sites direct attention away from the disaster while dark tours sites embrace it. The thesis also found that traditional tourist sites and dark tour sites keeps distance between themselves and use different visual strategies to promote Fukushima. This paper concludes that Fukushima can be considered a dystopian heterotopia whose stigmatisation affects all of Fukushima prefecture.