Counter-Terrorism Bias in News Media
The world has adopted the application of television and online media as a tool of communication, which conveys information to the whole world. Besides, the majority of the news outlets stream news on online platforms. Internet media does not restrict the registration of individuals based on their good or evil morality notion or their intentions. As a result, all kinds of people in the world continue to register as users of internet media tools. The terrorist groups view internet media tools as platforms to recruit homegrown jihadists to orchestrate attacks in the United States. The continued media coverage, which gets aired via media tools from various News outlets, has led to increased cases of terrorist attacks in countries covered.
The increased media attention has a causal connection with attacks, which occur after devoted media coverage and attention. Jetter (2017) investigates some 61132 attack days, which occurred after increased coverage of terrorist activities by the New York Times (p. 1). The media coverage increases the attacks in that specific country. Further, the author applies natural disasters that occurred in the United States as an exogenous variation reducing media attention, and the correlation seems causal (Jetter, 2017, p. 1). On average, the addition of an article covering the terrorist activities leads to approximately 1.3 attacks during the following week, which has an equivalent of an average of three casualties. The News media outlets must minimize the rate in which they cover the activities from the terrorist groups.
I have learned about the effect of increased media coverage of terrorist activities. Intensified media coverage leads to an increase in attacks, which translates into more casualties. As a result, reduced media attention might reduce the occurrence of attacks from extremist groups.
References
Jetter, M. (2017). The effect of media attention on terrorism. Journal of Public Economics, 153, 32-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.07.008