More bang for the buck: media coverage of suicide attacks
This paper provides empirical evidence that suicide attacks systematically draw more media attention than non-suicide terrorist attacks. Analyzing 60,341 terrorist attack days in 189 countries from 1970 to 2012, I introduce a methodology to proxy for the media coverage each one of these attack days...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2019
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| In: |
Terrorism and political violence
Year: 2019, Volume: 31, Issue: 4, Pages: 779-799 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (Verlag) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | This paper provides empirical evidence that suicide attacks systematically draw more media attention than non-suicide terrorist attacks. Analyzing 60,341 terrorist attack days in 189 countries from 1970 to 2012, I introduce a methodology to proxy for the media coverage each one of these attack days receives in the New York Times. Suicide attacks are associated with significantly more coverage. In the most complete regression, one suicide attack produces an additional 0.6 articles—a magnitude equivalent to the effect of 95 terrorism casualties. This link remains robust to including a comprehensive list of potentially confounding factors, fixed effects, and country-specific time trends. The effect is reproduced for alternative print and television outlets (BBC, Reuters, CNN, NBC, CBS), but remains weak for Google Trends (worldwide and in the U.S.), a more direct proxy for people’s interests, and is non-existent for C-SPAN, a television station dedicated to broadcasting political discussions directly. Thus, the media appears to cover suicide missions in an extraordinary fashion, which may in turn explain their prominence among terrorist organizations. |
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| Item Description: | Gesehen am 14.06.2023 Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 19-20 Published online: 01 Mar 2017 |
| Physical Description: | Illustrationen |
| ISSN: | 1556-1836 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09546553.2017.1288112 |