If It Bleeds, It Leads: Accessing the Impact of Media Coverage of Human Rights Violations on Future Terrorism.

Abstract

Previous studies of terrorism have addressed the impact of human rights abuses on future terrorist activity and the role of mass media has played shaping public perceptions of terrorism and terrorist activity, yet little research has examined the relationship between the media’s publicity of human rights abuses that occurred due to a state’s counterterrorism policy and future terrorist attacks. This dissertation sought to close this gap. Focusing on the media’s publicity of the U.S.’s usage of torture, extraordinary rendition, extra-judicial killings (drone strikes) and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists during its post-9/11 “War on Terror”, it aims to answer the following question: What impact does media coverage of human rights abuses that occur due to a state’s counterterrorism policies and how they frame them in published articles have on the propensity for future terrorist activity? This dissertation examined the conceptual literature on terrorist mobilization at the micro and macro levels. In addition, personal and informational frames and their locations were identified from published articles that concerned the U.S.’s ‘War on Terror’ from Nexis Uni and ProQuest and their frequency of usage was combined with data from the Global Terrorism Database to analyze both quantitatively and qualitatively to determine if their usage positively influenced future terrorist actions. The quantitative results of the research indicate that media reports on the human right issues of America’s use of torture and extrajudicial killings had the most positive influence on future terrorist actions and that these influences did not significantly change when the data was delineated between Muslim and non-Muslim states. Personal frames located in the headline and the lead were more influential than informational frames. Personal frames located in the headline and lead locations in Muslim states are twice as influential on future terrorism as in non-Muslim states. Qualitatively, anecdotal evidence tying media framing of human rights abuses to future terrorism was plentiful because most of the ‘lone-wolf’ terrorists at some point attempted to defend their actions as a justifiable response to America’s ‘War on Terror.’ However, actual cause and effect evidence of trends of media reporting on these abuses directly leading to terrorism generally lacks concrete support.