This essay will discuss and examine what role the media plays in international terrorism. The essay will begin with describing what terrorism is. Subsequently, it will discuss how international and domestic terrorist organizations use media, social media, and the internet to convey messages to the public promoting religious or political agendas. Media over-all has a lot of influence on how people view and interpret the world. Extremism has remained a problematic issue throughout centuries and continue to occur till date. Terrorism which are telecasted on the media catches several individual’s attention and they are unable to turn away from such destruction taking place. Media and terrorism go hand in hand as they encourage each other, by broadcasting terrorism they also send out a message to the public which is the intention of the extremists. The media accommodates terrorist and terrorism acts by providing them encouragement and allowing the horrendous events such as bombings, hijacking, shootings, executions to be telecasted on air repetitively. By broadcasting such events the terrorist begin to plot their following attacks bearing in mind the media attention they grasp. While viewing such newscast only creates fear in the community. Therefore, gaining the attentiveness of the media is highly important for the terrorist. Terrorism will mostly decline to an extent if there were certain limitations on media as to what it can publically televise. For example, Hoffman states that “without the media’s coverage, the acts impact is arguably wasted, remaining narrowly confined to the immediate victims of the attack, rather than reaching the wider ‘target audience’ at whom the terrorist’ violence is actually aimed.” (Hoffman, 2008) The terrorist mainly focus on the media attention and acknowledgement it has received from the attack, not about the victims that were attacked in the events. The media plays a huge part in broadcasting such alarming incidents to the public which causes fearfulness. The core responsibility of the media when it comes to reporting terrorism is to convey the news, update and educate the public on what is happening.
There are several definitions as to what terrorism is as it is socially constructed. The Human Rights Watch defines terrorism as “Violent acts by non-state group against the general population for political purpose are abhorrent crimes that, when widespread or systematic, can amount to crimes against humanity. (HRW, 2017) Terrorism does not take place for a specific reason. There are various categories of terrorism such as state terrorism, religious terrorism, right wing terrorism, issue oriented terrorism. Each terrorist group have specific motives. With the help of globalization and interconnectedness, media allows the terrorist organizations to spread their principles throughout the world as well as use media to recruit people. “Mass media will continuously inform about terrorism because of great public attention for such events.” (Peresin, 2007) Mass media will constantly highlight news about terrorism such as kidnapping, keeping people as hostage, hijacking flights because people tend to pay more attention to such dramatic events. Reporting these kind of dramatic and negative issues increases the medias viewers which results in additional income. The terrorists gain the attention of the media which allows them to communicate with the public and their followers about their goals. Not only will be able to communicate but also to recruit new members to the terrorist organization by trying to attain sympathy from the public. Terrorism and media are considered to have a symbiotic relationship since they equally benefit from each other. Brigitte Nacos, reasons that “terrorists commit violent acts looking for three universal objectives: to get attention; to gain recognition; and to obtain a certain degree of respect and legitimacy.” (Gray, 2012) The terrorists carefully and sensibly pick places for the attacks. These places and event are most likely to be a place where there is additional media attention. For example, one of the most well-known deadliest terror attack occurred in New York City which is one of the most popular places to visit with foreigners and a high number of population. Not only did they choose a very popular place with a high number of people but also choose a symbolic building, the twin tower in the United States. Where the terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center killing thousands of people. The terrorists tend to refrain from choosing a place that is not popular, with less population and does not have media attention.
The motive of the terrorists that attacked on September, 11 was to massacre people from one of the most powerful country also known as the super power and destroying the World Trade Center to gain respect and legitimacy from people and other terrorist organizations across the world. Terrorism has been a huge concern since 9/11, and it is also considered as one of the deadliest terror attack in the United States of America. “The 9/11 attack was telecasted all over the world to the point where “In a national survey of U.S. adults, 3-5 days after the September 11th, 2001 attacks, people reported watching an average of 8 hours of television related to the attacks.” (Hamblen) The survey shows that people watched 8 hours of television just on this terrorist attack alone. Terrorists tend not to plan attacks in a state where there is no freedom of press. The purpose behind this is because if the attack is censored to the people and if it does not grasp their attention then it is considered a wasted attack. Since the attack caused by the terrorists only effect the ones that are attacked and not being broadcasted by the media due to lack of freedom of press, the attack is a waste. The terrorists tend to gain recognition by appearing on television continuously. What the media choose to label the terrorists likewise has a massive influence on what the public considers and feel about the attack. For instance, “terrorists are sometimes referred to as “killers”, “fighters for independence” or other labels as such.” (Shauaibi, 2015) By calling the terrorists “fighters for independence” it gives the viewers several different suggestions. The suggestions may vary from considering the terrorist as just ordinary individuals fighting for their freedom, which is not the case. The media similarly reports Stockholm syndrome which is “a psychological phenomenon in which hostage’s express empathy and have positive feelings toward their captures. This syndrome is also known as capture bonding.” (Ibid, 2015) The term Stockholm syndrome was coined in 1970’s. A case which took in the 1970’s of a 19-year-old who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) who was allegedly “brainwashed into accepting their ideas and was caught on CCTV helping the group to rob a bank” (BBC, 2013) By broadcasting the victims undergoing Stockholm syndrome during events might trigger to some public who are watching the news, that the terrorist as compassionate. This is a good outcome for the terrorist since people would desire to support the terrorist organizations which results in higher recruitment. Reporting terrorism sometimes turns into a copycat attempt. Just like many individuals who attempt to commit suicide are using other people’s idea. For example, in 2015 there was a copycat terrorist attack which occurred in 2015 was said to be “inspired copycat acts around the Western world including Australia.” (Brien, 2015) Two terrorist attack took place where a terrorist drives a lorry into a crowded people killing 12 people and leaving 50 injured in Berlin. The other copycat incident occurred in Nice, which killed 84 people and 52 people were injured plays. In the article Terrorism/Counterterrorism and Media in the Age of Global Communication by Brigitte L. Nacos, claims that the media is the main communicator among the government and the public. He terms it as the “triangle of political communication” where the “mass media, the public, and governmental decision makers from the three corners.” (Nacos, 2006) The triangle of political communications between the media, public and the government is important to the terrorist since media is the simple way to spread the agenda and motives to the government and the public at the same time.
Additionally, this essay will discuss how social media plays a vast role in international terrorism since globalization. Terrorism existed way before technology was invented, but now that technology exists, and many people rely on technology, the terrorist use it for their benefits. They take advantage of the technology plus internet and started “a large number of terrorist groups moved to cyberspace, establishing thousands of websites that promoted their messages and activities.” (Weimann, 2014) These websites include information varying from why, where, how they should join their organizations and promote their organizations. There is also other several reasons as to why they have a website for example to organise attacks, fund raise, share information to people and for propaganda. Not only do the terrorist use the internet to create new websites to recruit people but also to educate individuals how to construct explosives, shoot people, and just mostly make them a terrorist by teaching them how to build hazardous things and how to use them online. Not only are they posting videos of terrorism taking place but also create “websites which even offer video games in which users as young as seven can pretend to be holy warriors killing U.S. soldiers.” (Kaplan, 2009) The video games which are created by terrorist is made to attract young boys and girls and teach them some tactics and as well as convince the youngsters that being an extremist can be entertaining. Discovering terrorist attacks through social media is now more common than turning on the TV to find out what is taking place around the world. These social media include Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Reddit, YouTube etc. These apps change the methods as to how people find out information. It additionally changes the way individuals respond to reading and seeing such news. Not only can individuals find information on social media but they can additionally find that “Facebook has been hosting online arms bazaars, offering weapons ranging from handguns and grenades to heavy machine guns and guided missiles.” (Cohen-Almagor, 2012) Social media such as Facebook has its own page called “Market place” for people who buy and sell things which makes it easier for terrorist organization to purchase and trade weapons. Recruitment has been easier for terrorist organizations with the help of social media. Recently WhatsApp had upgraded its chat messenger to an end-to-end encryption which allows “Only the recipients, with a private key, are able to decrypt the messages.” (Graham, 2016) This means that the FBI or any other police organization will have access to this messages, the only thing the service source “can still provide the “metadata” to police (who sent messages to whom), but they no longer have access to the content of the messages. (Ibid, 2016) The information given to the police by the provider turn out to be useless since they cannot access to the messages.
This part of the essay will examine the societies response and psychological reaction to the media on terrorism and terrorist attacks. The public is more dreaded by hearing or seeing the news on incident caused by the terrorist and fearful that they could be in the situation of being held hostage, or being in a bomb blast. “A number of studies found that exposure to media coverage of terrorism increases fear and anxiety.” (Walsh, 2010) This can be related to the 9/11 attack where the incident triggered fear and anxiety around the world. The 9/11 attack caused by Osama bin Laden led to War on Terror on Afghanistan and Iraq. Osama reported to the media that the 9/11 attack was a “declared holy war -jihad- on non-Islamic civilization.” (Macnair, 2007) The September, 11 terrorist attack interviews, video footages and pictures have been televised world-wide which caused fear amongst people as to which part of the country was targeted next. Not only has the horrifying event of 9/11 caused fear it has also changed the perspective of Muslim people around the world. “Men with beard, veiled women, turbans, and a Middle Eastern look tend to lead people to think about Islam and terrorism.” (Fitriyani, 2015) According to media extremist are commonly Muslims, this can be noticed by the use of words media uses to describe them, such as “violent, backwards, fundamentalist and a threat to western civilisation.” (Elmasry, 2015) The media is also known for its inconsistent reporting terrorism acts committed by different race and religion such as White, Christians, Greek, and all other races and religion which are not Arab and Muslim. There has been a significant rise in islamophobia to the extent where President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to ban six popular Muslim countries from traveling to the United States to prevent terrorist attacks from taking place.
Overall, media play various roles in international terrorism. It is challenging to distinguish whether media plays a positive or negative role in international terrorism. Media does its job by letting the public be aware of the events taking place, however, terrorism is a socially constructed phenomenon which differs time to time according to people. Although the media does cover what takes place around the world, it should make nonbiased opinions, true, and moral reports of the incidents. Terrorist have made use of globalization and interconnectedness to benefit them in means to help the terrorist organization. Technology has brought people from all over the world together which made it easier for the terrorist to deliver message, recruit people, raise money, and promote their agenda. It is to be noted that media is a very important aspect in the society, it gives us information that the public needs. On the other hand, media has also triggered a lot of controversial outlooks as to how media buildup certain news for publicity like terrorism acts, violence etc. Not only does televised media play a huge role in terrorism but other categories of social media also play a part.