Terrorism, fear, and media are interconnected. Terrorists use the media to advertise their attacks and or messages, and the media uses terrorism events to further aid their ratings. Both promote unwarranted propaganda that instills mass amounts of public fear. The leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, discussed the weaponization of media in a letter written after his organization committed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In that letter, bin Laden stated that fear was the deadliest weapon. He noted that the Western civilization has become obsessed with mass media, quickly consuming what will bring them fear. He further stated that societies are bringing this problem on their own people by giving media coverage an inherent power.
In relation to one's need for media coverage, al-Qaeda and other militant Jihadi terrorist organizations can be classified as a far-right radical offshoot of mainstream mass media. The Jihad needs to conceptualize their martyrdom by leaving behind manifestos and live videos of their attacks; it is crucially important to them that their ill deeds are being covered by news media.
The components the media looks for to deem the news "worthy" enough to publicize are categorized into ten qualities; terrorists usually exceed half in their attacks. These include: Immediacy, Conflict, Negativity, Human Interest, Photographability, Simple Story Lines, Topicality, Exclusivity, Reliability, and Local Interest. Historically, morality and profitability are two motivations which are not easily weighed when delivering news; recent news coverage has become far more motivated in making money for their parent corporation than serving as a defender of truth, doing true journalistic fact-finding, and shielding the public from news which is sensational, outright untrue, or politically-motivated propaganda.
A study concerning the disparity in coverage of terrorist events took attacks from the tenyear span of 2005–2015 and found that 136 episodes of terrorism occurred in the United States. LexisNexis Academic and CNN were the platforms used to measure the media coverage. It was found that out of other terrorist attacks showed on the news, one's with Muslim perpetrators received more than 357% coverage. In addition to this disparity, attacks also received more coverage when they were targeted at the government, had high fatality rates, and showed arrests being made. These findings were aligned with America's tendency to categorize Muslim people as a threat to national security. Thus, mass media coverage on terrorism is creating fake narratives and an absence of related coverage. For instance, the American public believes that crime rates have been on the rise which in fact they have been on an all-time low. Given that the media often covers crime almost immediately and frequently, suggests that people infer it happening all the time. In reference to the disparity in terror attacks, three attacks were seen to have the least media coverage of all the 136. The Sikh Temple massacre in Wisconsin which had 2.6% coverage, the Kansas synagogue killings which had 2.2%, and the Charleston Church deaths which only resulted in 5.1% coverage. The three events had commonalities worth mentioning in that they all had white perpetrators and were not directed at government intuitions (in fact all targeted minorities). The media's obsession with terror is making people fearful of the wrong things and not attentive enough to the issues that are radically unseen.
Not only are minorities usually not the perpetrators of domestic terrorism, but they are common victims in mass casualties or proximal witnesses to the attacks. In an early 2000s study, 72 Israeli adults were measured pre and posttest for increased anxiety after being exposed to news broadcasts of terrorism attacks. The study found that the group exposed to the broadcasts without any treatment (preparation intervention) had heightened levels of anxiety compared to the group that received the treatment along with viewing the broadcast. Since preparatory intervention is not yet normalized, people in proximity to ongoing coverage of terror events are suffering from the lasting impacts of fear and anxiety. Preparatory Intervention, in this case, was conducted by a group facilitator who introduced a topic concerning terrorism in which participants were instructed to write down feelings to share with the group and later learn to cope with.
A discourse of fear created by mass media presence, but false information is leading people to prepare for the wrong situations. In the early 2000s, police units circulated public schools flooding the idea of Stranger Danger into the minds of adolescents. Children and their parents cautiously separated from strangers while perpetrators in those families' social circles continued to offend under the radar. For myths are becoming common, precedent and real danger is buried beneath the surface. It is these implementations of fear that are falsifying the true narrative which for terrorism is a huge social problem but one that is not resolved through entertainment and mass media production. Mass media like news outlets and even social media platforms are contributing to the growing discourse of fear surrounding terrorism.
Terrorism and social media refers to the use of social media platforms to radicalize and recruit violent and non-violent extremists.
According to some researchers the convenience, affordability, and broad reach of social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, terrorist groups and individuals have increasingly used social media to further their goals, recruit members, and spread their message. Attempts have been made by various governments and agencies to thwart the use of social media by terrorist organizations.
Despite the risks of making statements, such as enabling governments to locate terror group leaders, terror leaders communicate regularly with video and audio messages which are posted on the website and disseminated on the internet. ISIS uses social media to their advantage when releasing threatening videos of beheadings. ISIS uses this tactic to scare normal people on social media. Similarly, Western domestic terrorists also use social media and technology to spread their ideas.
Traditional media Many authors have proposed that media attention increases perceptions of risk of fear of terrorism and crime and relates to how much attention the person pays to the news.Nellis and Savage (2012) The relationship between terrorism and the media has long been noted. Terrorist organizations depend on the open media systems of democratic countries to further their goals and spread their messages. To garner publicity for their cause, terrorist organizations resort to acts of violence and aggression that deliberately target civilians. This method has proven to be effective in gathering attention:
While a media organization may not support the goals of terrorist organizations, it is their job to report current events and issues. In the fiercely competitive media environment, when a terrorist attack occurs, media outlets scramble to cover the event. In doing so, the media help to further the message of terrorist organizations:
One notable example of the relationship between terror groups and the media was the release of the Osama bin Laden audio and video recordings. These tapes were sent directly to mainstream Arabic television networks, including Al-Jazeera.
Media can often be the source of discontent for terrorist groups. Irene Kahn says,
Most terrorist groups use social media as a means to bypass the traditional media and spread their propaganda.
Media surveillance The network described in Michel Foucault's theory of surveillance, panopticism, is a networks of power where all parties are transfixed by the actions of the others in the network. It is especially imperative when major events in the world occur, which is usually the case with terrorism. This model can be transposed on the network of power that media-outlet consumers and producers enter. In a network of power that includes consumers and producers, both parties have fixed gazes' on each other. The consumers transfix their gazes' on the stories that media outlets produce. And, the needs of the consumers, which is in this case their need to be updated regularly, becomes the producers gaze. The producers or media outlets are in competition with other media outlets to supply their constituents with the most up-to-date information. This network of fixed gazes' is both "privileged and imperative" for the system to satisfy the status quo.
Consumers looks to media outlets to provide news on terrorism. If consumers believe terrorism is a threat to their safety, they want to be informed of the threats against them. Media outlets fulfill their viewers' needs, and portray terrorism as a threat because of the cycle that surveillance engenders. As terrorism flourishes as a prominent discourse of fear, consumers want information faster because they feel their safe being is in peril. The idea of total surveillance, as prescribed by Foucault, becomes a cycle where the disruption of power causes scrutiny by various players in system. If the media-outlets are not constantly looking for stories that fulfill consumer needs, then they are scrutinized. In addition to the surveillance aspect of news dissemination, therein is the notion that "needs" drive the network of power: both the media outlets and consumers have needs that are fulfilled by broadcasting the news. It is this idea expressed in the uses and gratifications theory. It stipulates that the active audience and the terrorist "seek to satisfy their various needs" through media transmission. While media outlets know the stories they show have astounding effects on the political and sociological perspective in society, the impetus on economic gains is of greater importance.
Use of social media In a study by Gabriel Weimann from the University of Haifa, Weimann found that nearly 90% of organized terrorism activities on the internet takes place via social media. According to Weimann, terror groups use social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and internet forums to spread their messages, recruit members and gather intelligence.
Terror groups take to social media because social media tools are cheap and accessible, facilitate quick, broad dissemination of messages, and allow for unfettered communication with an audience without the filter or "selectivity" of mainstream news outlets. Also, social media platforms allow terror groups to engage with their networks. Whereas previously terror groups would release messages via intermediaries, social media platforms allow terror groups to release messages directly to their intended audience and converse with their audience in real time: Weimann also mentions in "Theater of Terror", that terrorists use the media to promote the theatrical like nature of the premeditated terror.
Terror groups using social media Al-Qaeda has been noted as being one of the terror groups that uses social media the most extensively. Brian Jenkins, senior advisor for the RAND Corporation, commented on Al-Qaeda's dominant presence on the web: