Executive Summary

Cities like New York, Madrid, London, Paris, and Mumbai have long been home to protests, riots, and wars. As recent terrorist attacks have shown, cities can also turn into theaters of violence and high-profile targets of terrorist actions. These events exert pressure on both the media—who must quickly report on the incidents while providing accuracy, context, and analysis—and politicians, who are bound to enact new laws and security measures. And now, as social media has become pervasive, citizens across the world are active participants in the media when these acts occur, not just a passively consuming audience. The purpose of this paper is to examine how actions taken by politicians and members of the media have shaped recent elections in the wake of acts of terrorism and how the growth of social media platforms and web-based news has become part of the picture.

One disturbing aspect of the current fight against terrorism is the disintegration of previously defined margins separating times of war from times of peace and civilians from combatants. While civilians have previously been frequently killed in wars—the bombing of Dresden in 1945 is just one example—they are usually nominally protected. Terrorism, on the other hand, deliberately exhibits no prohibition against the intentional targeting of civilians. The evolving, real-time nature of a terrorist attack also has an undeniable effect on the media, which finds itself acting as both filter and participant in the face of such violence, especially in an era when social media platforms have become a dominant new source of information for audience and journalist alike—and indeed sometimes even the attackers themselves.  

In the following report, I will examine four key elections—those which took place in Israel in 1996, the United States and Spain in 2004, and India in 2009—to explore the relationship between terrorism and how it is portrayed in the media. Three of these elections took place in the wake of unique terror incidents: the 2008 siege of Mumbai, carried out by terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba; the 2004 Madrid bombings, which bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda; and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, which was conducted by an Israeli extremist disillusioned with the recently signed Oslo Accords. The fourth case, the 2004 election in the United States, was fought around the theme of security—the first American presidential election held since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in the midst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The release of a videotaped statement directed at the American public by Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden—known as an “October surprise” in US political shorthand—left an indelible impression on the election.

As the 2016 US election unfolds amid fears over terrorism and growing public expressions of Islamophobia, especially against American Muslims, it is also important to look at specific institutional responses by the media and politicians. In the four cases outlined below, both governments and media responded to the violence—or the fear of future violence—in unique ways. This report will examine these responses and discuss how those outcomes may have influenced subsequent elections and still resonate today.

Political responses ranged from the creation of new anti-terror legislation, funding for new agencies and, in certain cases, the swift resignation or political defeat of politicians and governments who were criticized for shortcomings in their responses. In the cases researched below, I have also examined instances where the mainstream media either moderated or echoed coverage in line with the prevailing political will of the day.

Typically, media coverage of terror attacks involves comprehensive reporting and often live broadcasting of the incident, even before the advent of social media. Recently, the growing use of social media has also led to considerable innovation: those directly affected by terror attacks are now able to broadcast safety checks, find areas of refuge through updates, and keep abreast of attacks as they unfold. In 2008, at the height of the Mumbai attacks, seventy tweets per second were providing news updates, asking for blood donations and sharing information about official helplines. But, more importantly, the unfiltered nature of social media and the opportunity for citizen journalism has revolutionized news coverage: Tens of thousands of informal correspondents are now reporting from the areas under attack.

The media’s coverage of terrorism, however, has often amplified fears over terrorism instead of analyzing or questioning them. This report will discuss such missteps by the media, such in the case of Spain in 2004, when sections of the media were accused of acting like an echo chamber for the ruling government’s mistaken idea as to who carried out the attacks. During the US election of 2004, parts of the media did not devote enough time to examining individual and important policy differences between incumbent President George W. Bush and John Kerry. The paper will also note instances where terrorism was given an outsized role in the media due to political partisanship.

For this report, I conducted over fifty interviews with journalists, academics, and politicians to determine why each instance of terrorism solicits unique responses, which play an unconventional and often long-lasting role in framing our democracies. My paper seeks to illustrate the evolving nature of news in the hopes of advancing a dialogue whereby politicians and the media discuss how institutional responses can avoid being manipulated by acts of terrorism.

We live in an era where the reactions to terrorist attacks are increasingly shaped online. As politicians and the media develop new ways of responding to acts of terrorism, videos released by ISIS exhibit the same multi-disciplinary approach to disseminating information. Recruitment videos posted online have helped to draw around 30,000 fighters from 104 countries to ISIS-held territory and inspired attacks abroad. Footage from the aftermath of ISIS actions has also radicalized new members. During the Mumbai attacks one terrorist called into a local broadcaster, greatly amplifying the sense of crisis and mass participation around the event.

A recent press conference given in Dhaka saw Secretary of State John Kerry speak about the possible impact of wall-to-wall coverage of terrorism. Kerry spoke about the challenges of countering ISIS’s social media strategy. “We have made significant progress,” he said. “More and more now, I’m beginning to read the stories of how Daesh [the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State] is feeling the pressure, people are escaping to get out and go back home or wherever. Now, that helps us solve the problem in Syria and Iraq, but it leaves us with a problem in these other countries where people go back to, or where the social media and propaganda of the group reaches out to.” 

This paper aims to support a wider understanding of how each terrorist event and its aftermath carries a distinctive signature that shapes future events. Terrorism—and the responses it garners—has never placed such extraordinary pressures on both democracies and the media.

Key Findings

• As polls and studies repeatedly show, elections conducted against a backdrop of both terrorism and the fear of terrorism frequently drive voters to elect leaders who are seen to be tough on security. As both the US election of 2004 and the Israeli election of 1996 demonstrate, an election campaign that places the importance of security front and center drowns out other salient issues such as the economy and social welfare. One key effect of terrorism on voters is to persuade voters that moderate political forces are unwilling or unable to stop terrorism.
• Allegations of political and media collusion in the aftermath of a terrorist attack lead to long-lasting and institutional failures whose aftershocks can resonate years later. In the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings in 2004, an unpopular Spanish government sought to blame domestic terrorism to deflect criticism over its involvement in Iraq. Certain sections of the media helped them in this aim. The effect was seismic: The opposition party won a convincing election only days after the attacks, and Spanish troops were withdrawn from Iraq. The Spanish public’s dissatisfaction with both the media and the press in the wake of the incident contributed to a decline in trust in the country’s public institutions.
• A disruptive event, such as the release of Osama bin Laden’s videotaped warning to the American people in 2004, can raise awareness of a leader’s stance on terrorism to potential political benefit. In the wake of bin Laden’s intervention, only days ahead of the election, terrorism command centers throughout America were put on high alert and an initial poll from Newsweek magazine claimed that President George W. Bush jumped to a six-point lead as a result of bin Laden’s message.
• Both the media and social platforms like Facebook and Twitter play an increasingly pivotal role in shaping how the public reacts to terrorism. As I show in my analysis of the Mumbai attacks of 2008, competition between segments of India’s newly liberalized media witnessed a number of institutional failings as journalists raced to cover a multi-location terrorist attack. The wide use of unfiltered social media channels aided the attackers in maximizing media attention.

Recommendations

• The media should work more closely with social media platforms to help build verification filters that correct or place less emphasis on promoting erroneous or deliberately misleading reports. During terrorist emergencies, as members of the public look for updates, it is vital they are the recipients of accurate information. Social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter must also do much more to limit the opportunity given to members of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in broadcasting their messages.
• Media companies should ensure rigorous editorial processes that separate editorial content from the political leanings or financial interests of their owners. Media regulators in both traditional and new, online media should be in regular dialogue with news organizations to ensure the editorial staff are trained in processes to institutionalize accuracy.
• Governments should resist the fear-mongering of groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS; enacting severe anti-terror legislation in the wake of attacks only plays into their aims. Laws such as the PATRIOT Act in the US and legislation passed in India in the wake of Mumbai have been widely criticized by human rights organizations. Anti-terror legislation should not limit the democratic rights of citizens.
• As the 2016 election campaign in the US has shown, media organizations globally have yet to adapt to the major challenges of coverage in the age of mass social media. While many news organizations continue to use social media to gauge and reflect public opinion, more work needs to be done in both acting like an independent filter and combatting errors and propaganda.