RT Article
T1 The Politics of Perception: Political Preference Strongly Associated with Different Perceptions of Islamist and Right-Wing Terrorism Risk
JF Terrorism and political violence
VO 36
IS 1
SP 127
OP 144
A1 Snook, Daniel W.
A2 Fodeman, Ari D.
A2 Meredith, Katharina 1982-
A2 Horgan, John 1974-
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/187732812X
AB Islamist and extreme right-wing (XRW) terrorism represent about equal levels of risk in terms of casualties in the U.S. over the past decade, yet Islamist terrorists receive far more news coverage, have more serious charges filed against them, are considered more deserving of torture and detainment, and receive harsher prison sentences than XRW terrorists. That Islamist and XRW terrorism elicit such different responses raises the question: Do Americans perceive the risk of Islamist and XRW terrorism differently? To investigate, we measured risk perceptions for Islamist and XRW terrorism in a nationally representative sample of 405 U.S. residents. How Americans perceived the risk of terrorism was strongly associated with their political preferences, such that conservatives perceived Islamist terrorism as the greater risk and liberals perceived XRW terrorism as the greater risk. The political orientation of the news media participants consumed was also significantly related to which type of terrorism they perceived to be a greater risk, in the same pattern. Our results indicate that perceived risk for these types of terrorism tends to be polarized along political fault lines, with implications for risk communication regarding terrorism.
K1 Islamist terrorism
K1 extreme right-wing terrorism
K1 political preference
K1 Risk perception
K1 Terrorism
DO 10.1080/09546553.2022.2122815