If It Bleeds, It Leads: Assessing Media Effects on Transnational Terrorism

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Date

2008

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Research Projects

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Abstract

Do mass media make it more likely that terrorists will target democracies? Many scholars argue that yes, terrorists target democracies because democracies have mass media that will cover these acts of violence and therefore spread the terrorists' message. Crenshaw and Jenkins, however, see a flaw in this logic. All the databases that list terrorist acts get their data from the mass media; therefore, these databases count only the acts of terrorism that the media happen to cover. This means that media selection bias could skew the results of any research based on the data. To address this flaw, Crenshaw and Jenkins propose a new way to measure the role of mass media in terrorist attacks.

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Research project funded in academic years 2007-08 and 2008-09
The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.

Keywords

mass media, transnational terrorism, media selection bias

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