Post-9/11 Terrorism Threats, News Coverage, and Public Perceptions in the United States

Authors

  • Brigitte L. Nacos
  • Yaeli Bloch-Elkon
  • Robert Y. Shapiro,

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4119/ijcv-2748

Abstract

Terrorists, policy-makers, and terrorism scholars have long assumed that the mere threat of terrorist strikes affects societies that have experienced actual acts of terrorism. For this reason, most definitions of terrorism include the threat of violent political acts against civilians. But so far research has neither validated this conventional wisdom nor demonstrated how actual and mass-mediated threat messages by terrorists and terror alerts and threat assessments by government officials affect the public in targeted states. This paper fills the gap providing evidence that who conveys such messages matters and that mass-mediated threat messages by al Qaeda leaders and announced alerts and threat assessments by U.S. administration officials had a significant impact on the American public’s threat perceptions in the post-9/11 years.

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Further information

Published

2007-11-08

How to Cite

Nacos, B. L., Bloch-Elkon, Y., & Shapiro, R. Y. (2007). Post-9/11 Terrorism Threats, News Coverage, and Public Perceptions in the United States. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 1(2), 105–126. https://doi.org/10.4119/ijcv-2748

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Section

Focus Section