RT Article
T1 How fear drives us apart: explaining the relationship between terrorism and social trust
JF Terrorism and political violence
VO 32
IS 7
SP 1482
OP 1505
A1 Godefroidt, Amélie
A1 Langer, Arnim
A2 Langer, Arnim
LA English
YR 2018
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1740259343
AB A central aim of terrorism is to drive people apart and destroy social trust. Still, there is little empirical research which has systematically investigated the relationship between terrorist attacks, fear of terrorism, and social trust. In addition, the impact of terrorism is usually assumed to be uniform across different individuals and societies. In order to investigate the impact of terrorism as well as the fear of future terrorism on trust levels of different types of individuals and societies, we combine individual-level survey data of the most recent World Values Survey (WVS, Round 6, 2010-2014) with several indicators at the country-level. Our findings show that social trust is principally damaged by the fear of future terrorist attacks, more so than by past terrorist attacks. Moreover, this deleterious impact of the fear of terrorism on social trust is most prevalent in more democratic countries and among individuals who are more frequently exposed to television news. Hence, with relatively limited capabilities and resources, terrorists may therefore evoke disproportionate fear effects within democratic societies which are, at least partially, fueled by media exposure.
NO Gesehen am 20.11.2020
NO Published online: 13 Aug 2018
K1 Democratization
K1 generalized trust
K1 multilevel path analysis
K1 news consumption
K1 Terrorism
K1 World Values Survey
DO 10.1080/09546553.2018.1482829