Research Objective
In the modern global scenario, one of the issues of primary concerns among the governing authorities of almost all the countries as well as the international organizations is the ever-increasing threats of terrorism across the world. In the current periods, the act of terrorism has gained more strength in terms of both the numbers as well as magnitude and impact. The number of countries suffering from the same has also increased considerably (Taylor, Fritsch and Liederbach 2014). Much of these terrorist attacks have been stemming out of political and economic conflicts across the world and the numbers of terrorism related deaths have shockingly increased to as high as 25,673 (in official records) as in the year 2016.
Given this situation, the media plays a crucial role in the aspect of reporting and speculating terrorisms across the world. With the increasing domain of operations of the media (including paper, television, radio and other means), especially with the widespread usage of internet across the globe, it has become immensely easy for people sitting in one corner of the world to know about the phenomena and happenings all over the world. Thus, the reporting and interpretation of the terrorist activities and how they are done have immense implications on the overall global social and political environment (Wellner 2015).
Taking into account from the above discussion, the implications which media can have on the social, political and overall environments of different countries across the globe, the research primarily tries to analyze how media represents and interprets terrorism across the world. It is evident that, with the continually expanding domain of operations and reach to people by the media, any false or biased interpretation of any such terrorist issues, which are by nature highly sensitive ones, can lead to immense negative reflections and social turmoil among the people all over the world. Thus, the research aims towards discussing about the issue of representation of terrorism by media in general, taking into account primarily the following research questions (O’Donnell and Gray 2012).
Based on the above discussions and the primary objectives of the concerned research to analyze the representation of terrorism by the media, the research tries to find feasible answers to the following questions:
- a) What are the roles played by media in general, in reporting and representing terrorism across the world?
- b) What are the positive implications of reporting of such incidents by the media?
- c) What are the negative implications of reporting of terrorism across the world by the media?
- d) Are the representations of terrorist incidents by the media biased?
- e) What will happen if the media stops reporting and interpreting terrorism?
To address to the above research questions, it is required for the concerned research to take into account the works, which have already been done in this aspect. Considering this, the report takes into account an extensive review of the existing extensive scholarly literatures and empirical evidences, which have been existing in this aspect.
Research Questions
Over the years, both the extent and magnitude of terrorism as well as the role of media in this aspect have changed considerably. As suggested by Hoffman (2006), terrorism is nothing but a form of fear based oppression, evolving and changing dynamics over the years and has currently reached to limitless extent in the current period. According to the author, the media also plays a significant roles in determining how the news of these oppression acts reach to the outer world and how the same is interpreted by those who are not directly affected by these terroristic acts. However, the author does not emphasize on explaining whether the implications of media on the representation of the terrorism are negative or positive for the global environment.
Many of the speculators have suggested that the current age media have contributed highly in spreading awareness regarding the terrorist activities across the world. Archetti (2012), in his extensive work, suggests that media plays a commendable role, especially in spreading the news of any activity in any part of the world, to all the people across the world. This, in turn, helps the people to understand what people in other parts of the world are going through, take inspirations from the positive incidents and lessons from the negative ones. According to the author, in the aspect of reporting terrorism also, media plays the same role. His views are supported by some of the eminent scholars, including Jetter (2014), who in his works asserted on the fact that, due to the presence of a fast and widespread network of different media of communication with the outer worlds, news of any terrorist activities reach out abruptly to every person related and non-related to the incidents. This in turn helps the relevant people in lending support and helps on time, knows about their near and dear ones staying in close proximities and also helps the governing authorities to take precautionary steps.
However, these views, though relevant, have their counter opinions, which are surprisingly greater in number. In his article, published in The Guardian, Doward (2017), suggests that one of the factors which actually contributed to the increase in the terrorism related activities in the contemporary world, is the over exposure of all the incidents to the attention of the global media. As per the assertions of the author, the main problem with the excessive media coverage of such hate triggered incidents is the wrong and distorted information which are often fabricated to target or trigger specific sections of the society. Though it sounds to be highly unethical, many media channels often do distortions and over-exaggerations of the actual occurrence in order to gain publicity and economic profits, at the expense of disturbing the global peace and stability. The author, with the support of other eminent persons in this aspect, including Korstanje (2012), shows, with the help of empirical evidences, that increasing media attention directly contributes to the increase in the terrorist attacks across the world (Dean, Bell and Newman 2012).
Literature Review
As the empirical evidences put forward suggest, though the purpose of the media in this aspect is primarily create awareness and provide warnings about the potential attacks in different countries and thereby reduce the occurrence of such incidents, in reality, the occurrences of such incidents usually tend to increase under the light of excessive media attention. According to the studies conducted taking into consideration countries like Bonn and Germany and 60,000 incidents of terrorism, which were reported in the New York Times, the incidents have seen to actually increased in those which gets greater media attention.
Another negative implication of the coverage of media attention, as put forward by Nacos (2016), is the problem of attention giving to the terrorists. The author suggest that the fact that any act of terrorism in any part of the world gains huge public attention and instigates the feeling of fear and anticipation among the population of the world, is also known to the terrorist and extremist group. Often, the terrorist groups actually try to grab the media attention to spread the fear of their name across the world, thereby strengthening their positions in the global framework. This is based on the notion that negative publicity is in fact a bigger publicity. The author designates this unwanted phenomena as a negative and unwanted by-product of the expansion of media, post Globalization. The media, being more integrated than ever, is nowadays used by the terrorists to spread fear and terror more efficiently in a more widespread domain across the world.
Apart from the above negative implications of the global media on the representation of the terrorist activities across the world, there is also another issue of concern, which has been highlighted by many in the contemporary period. This is the issue of biased, under and over-reporting of these incidents by different media channels, as per their perceptions and conveniences. Often the media channels (both paper and television) are privately owned, with their own patrons and revenue maximizing intentions. Therefore, they have to abide by the demands of their patrons, who in turn may have vested interests. Thus, the reporting of the different issues by these channels may not be always perfectly unbiased. This is sadly, according to Kellner (2015), true in many cases, especially in the aspect of reporting the terrorisms and terrorist activities across the world.
Supporting the assertions of Kellner, many scholars have tried to show the discrepancies and partial approach of the media in reporting the incidents taking place in different places. Many articles published in the reputed newspapers across the world (Independent.co.uk, 2017), have shed light on the different such discrete incidents. According to this article, there is a striking presence of media coverage of Muslim perpetrated acts of terror whereas there remains a lack of such reporting in case of the acts of terror, which are Non-Muslim in nature. The article also puts forward robust empirical evidences, which shows that the reporting of such acts by Muslims, especially by Muslims who are foreign-born, is 4.5 times higher by the print media, than that of the reporting of the incidents committed by Non- Muslim offenders.
However, according to different academic studies, including those by Altheide (2007), only 12.4% of 89 attacks, which were officially recorded between 2011 and 2015 were done y Muslim extremist groups. However, these activities got almost 44% of the coverage of media. This is more prominent in the case of the reporting done by the USA media, thereby instigating fear and hatred for the Muslim community in general.
Farwell (2014) in his article, discussed about the role of social media in this aspect. With the increase in the expanse and usage of the different platforms globally, global news and communication with any part of the world is just a click away. However, the author argues, that this privilege of easy and fast communication, on part of the social media, actually creates vulnerabilities for many, especially for the youth population, as they become highly exposed to the anti-social activities. According to the author, different terrorist groups actually use these media platforms as forum for recruitment of teenagers and youth by brainwashing them.
Thus, from the above review of literatures it is implied that though there are several positive implications of the media in terms of creating awareness and generating precautionary warnings for future terrorist attacks, there are several crucial and unavoidable negative implications of overt media coverage of such incidents. Keeping this into consideration, the research aims of answering the above-mentioned crucial questions of concern.
For conducting any research, it is of utmost importance to use a proper and relevant methodological framework. In this context, the methods taken can either be quantitative or qualitative. However, in this context, the quantitative methods may fail to capture the minute and intricate details as the same only concerned with the analysis of cardinal attributes and numerical data (Sgier 2012). Qualitative methods, on the other hand, tend to explore the matters of concern on an in depth basis, taking into account the non-numerical aspects which are most of the times expressed in terms of parts of speech, expressions, thoughts and dialogues. Keeping this into consideration, the research aims to analyze the issues in concern with the help of qualitative approach, without ignoring the numerical as well as statistical evidences. In depth interviews, focused group discussions, article and report analysis can be taken into account under this domain (Liamputtong 2013).
In conducting the concerned research, the primary problem, which is expected to be faced is that of the problem of personal bias. Therefore, it is immensely important to rule out any type of personal religious and social construct from the mind. Another problem with respect to the research is the collection and interpretation of qualitative data, as the processes are both time taking as well as costly.
One of the primary concerns in carrying out any research, in the contemporary global framework, is the ethical problems and ethical dilemmas, which have to e taken into consideration. Keeping this into consideration, the paper proposes to conduct any research only after seeking permission from the relevant ethical board. The research proposes to conduct all the interviews and discussions only after seeking consent from the participants and aims to keep their personal details confidential, thereby following the ethical norms (Greenfield 2016).
References
Altheide, D.L., 2007. The mass media and terrorism. Discourse & Communication, 1(3), pp.287-308.
Archetti, C., 2012. Understanding terrorism in the age of global media: A Communication Approach. Springer.
Dean, G., Bell, P. and Newman, J., 2012. The dark side of social media: review of online terrorism. Pakistan Journal of Criminology, 3(3), pp.103-122.
Doward, J. (2017). Media coverage of terrorism ‘leads to further violence’. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/01/media-coverage-terrorism-further-violence [Accessed 30 Dec. 2017].
Farwell, J.P., 2014. The media strategy of ISIS. Survival, 56(6), pp.49-55.
Greenfield, T., 2016. Ethics of research. Research Methods for Postgraduates, p.46.
Hoffman, B., 2006. Inside Terrorism. 1998. New York: Columbia UP.
Independent.co.uk, C. (2017). The media do under-report some terrorist attacks. Just not the ones most people think of.. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/news-media-under-report-terror-attacks-islamist-extremists-muslims-donald-trump-fake-sweden-a7627601.html [Accessed 30 Dec. 2017].
Jetter, M., 2014. Terrorism and the Media. Browser Download This Paper.
Kellner, D., 2015. Media spectacle and the crisis of democracy: Terrorism, war, and election battles. Routledge.
Korstanje, M.E., 2013. Preemption and terrorism. When the future governs. Cultura, 10(1), pp.167-184.
Liamputtong, P., 2013. Qualitative research methods.
Nacos, B., 2016. Mass-mediated terrorism: Mainstream and digital media in terrorism and counterterrorism. Rowman & Littlefield.
O’Donnell, B. and Gray, D.H., 2012. Media and State Sponsored Terrorism. Global Security Studies, 3(2).
Sgier, L., 2012. Qualitative data analysis.
Taylor, R.W., Fritsch, E.J. and Liederbach, J., 2014. Digital crime and digital terrorism. Prentice Hall Press.
Wellner, K., 2015. Introduction. In User Innovators in the Silver Market (pp. 1-8). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
