<p>I have never been more scared by the power of communication than after my experience in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Nor have I been more fascinated with what communication, whether interpersonal or mass, can do in todays world than then. Majoring in communication, I know every brilliant theory from symbolic interaction model to McLuhans bold claim that the medium is the message in this field. But yet I have never felt them so strongly and personally as during the earthquake. </p>
<p>Studying as an exchange student in Tokyo when the earthquake hit Japan, I was entirely safe in my dorm. Fortunately Tokyo was only briefly affected, returning gradually to its normal order the very next day despite occasional aftershocks. However, it was the panic that people and especially foreigners went into that frightened me most in the days after the earthquake. People began to flee the country as quickly as they could despite reassurance by the government repeatedly that everything was being restored. By the end of the fifth day after the earthquake, all planes from Tokyo to Shanghai were fully booked and my friends even travelled all the way to Osaka to take a flight. The price of the tickets, needless to say, saw a ten-fold increase. </p>
<p>It then struck me even more that the main culprit behind that mess is nothing but media and Internet. My friends were demanding to return to China because their parents were horrified by stories in Chinese newspapers about how dangerous Tokyo was but hardly anything was true in these stories. One of my Singaporean friends was too scared to leave his room as he saw a post from twitter that radioactivity was all over Tokyo, killing every living creature. Also I experienced how efforts to explain away these rumors turned out futile. Distrust against government broke out, rendering almost every moves of government seem an effort to conceal truth. Some even went into an extreme thinking that if government says it is safe, then it must be dangerous. </p>
<p>I myself tried to stay unaffected by the stories in media. As an intern journalist for Nanfang Zhoumo, a newspaper that enjoy national circulation in China, I wrote to my editor about what life was truly like in Tokyo. I spoke of no need to escape in my interview with a journalist from the Guardian. However, reading the quotes of mine in the published stories, I was irritated to find how the meaning of my words were distorted. Frustrated, I turned away from mass media and sought solution via twitter and weibo, a Chinese version of twitter. I took pictures of how stores were open normally and how people resumed their daily life. Besides that, I uploaded reports about radioactivity released daily by academic institutions and NGOs. Disappointedly it worked only to some extent. Some of my followers commented that I must be some government official whereas those who knew me in person thanked me for the comfort provided by my posts. However my microblog was perceived, my followers were few compared to the whole population in Japan. People were still escaping in terror. Locals grew resentful towards foreigners who according to them came to Japan solely for profit and evade the very instant Japan is in danger. Almost everyday I read about Internet quarrels between Japanese and foreigners especially Chinese and Koreans. </p>
<p>Through this experience I was deeply impressed by the influence of communication in modern society. I started to ponder upon issues such as what pattern of communication would be most effective or least effective, who shall and could be the opinion leader, how ideas and meanings were twisted in communication process. I have not found answers to all these questions but I do have changed in my own perception. When reading a newspaper or watching a documentary, anything that is alledgedly real, before jumping to belief, I would reflect what is shown and what is hidden, as well as how this arrangement reveals the intention and ideology of the author or the producer. Whats more, as a heavy user of SNS, I began to take time to do fact-checking before I retweet any posts or recommend them to my friends. It has been observec that people questioning traditional authority tend to give more credit to the new media, believing that it would allow freer communication and thus truer information. Nonetheless, it might not be an accurate assessment. A higher likelihood of both truth and lies challenges our ability for discrimination and reflection, which most people as I was fail to do. Reluctance to think, consequently, is both product and producer of the information overload that makes it even more demanding for people to distinguish true from false, resulting in a vicious circle. Therefore it would be over-optimistic to conclude that SNS and new media alone will bring about a final realization of truth or even a society superior to any time before. </p>
<p>Half a year after the earthquake, I am in Shanghai preparing to apply for a graduate school. With the hope to deepen my knowledge of communication particularly concerning what I have experienced, I choose to submit my application to program in communication.</p>
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