media in terrorism

Description

What do you believe is the role of media in terrorism? Explain. After viewing the Week Three video (if you haven’t already had the chance to watch it), discuss your views on media bias. Also, discuss whether there is media bias in the portrayal of terrorism and homeland security in the media. Students are first required to make an original post in response to the Discussion Board topic. Original posts should be a minimum of 600 words (roughly one page of single spaced, typed text) and should be substantive in nature. Students are then required to post a minimum of two comments in response to other student posts. Currently, there is no minimum wordage required of responsive posts. Rather, said posts are judged on whether or not they contribute in a meaningful way toward the overall discussion. Hence, simply agreeing or disagreeing with someone else’s post, without providing an intelligent justification as to why, does not satisfy the responsive posting requirement. In formulating both original and responsive posts, students should primarily discuss their own ideas. These ideas, of course, should be informed by material within the text, as well as other academic sources. Hence, when developing original posts, it is necessary that students cite (using APA format) at least three sources of information. (Please use both in-text citations and reference listings for each source.) The use of properly cited quotes within any post is perfectly acceptable; however, the use of excessive quotes may distract from the originality of your post and result in a lower overall grade. Plagiarism, of course, nets absolutely no grade at all. Chapter 8 of book (Slide 1) Hello and welcome to this week’s lecture on terrorism and the media. (Slide 2) To start, I like to point out that television and other media shape the way we view terrorism. This is to be expected since the media greatly influences our social construction of situations and reality. Most of us have never witnessed a terrorist attack, thus we form our views and beliefs about terrorism largely from media sources. Because the media can wield so much power in shaping public thought and opinion, there is some controversy about the role of the media in reporting terrorism. First of all, media can exaggerate a threat and create hysteria and fear. The media can also create biases by focusing on certain topics to cover while ignoring others and thus most of the public will never know about them. The media can also frequently pit reporters against security forces because media social constructions often run counter to governmental objectives and policies. Furthermore, the police and military usually think that reporters are only trying to gather sensationalistic stories. (Slide 3) Because the media can be so powerful, terrorists recognize the benefits that publicity can bring them. Some examples of the benefits to terrorists are using the media to seek legitimacy for their movement, spread their message and garner sympathy for their militant views, and target their opponents for intimidation. Using the media as a benefit to their cause is even more pronounced now that we the internet and social media where information can be immediately sent around the world. (Slide 4) To develop a critical appreciation of the role of media, we move to examine the notion of news frames. Basically, news frames assemble words and pictures to create a pattern around an event. News frames shapes the way an event is communicated to the public. The reporting frame is the classic type and it is usually short and designed to provide the latest information about an event, topic, or issue. However, there are many other types of frames. Please refer to the list of the various types of news frames listed at the bottom of page 91 in your textbook. (Slide 5) I’m sure most, if not all of us, watch television pretty regularly. There exist some special relationships between terrorism and television. We have all likely watched or flipped through those 24 hour news channels. Benjamin Barber refers to these news channels as the infotainment telesector because the overarching goal for these 24 hour news channels is simply entertainment and revenue. This may have a negative effect on homeland security because important topics are not identified and presented to the public. (Slide 6) Another interesting development is that the Western news media no longer have a monopoly on the construction of news. A Western perspective has dominated the media for most of the 20th century. However, the emergence of Al Jazeera and major media organizations in Latin America and China provide alternate views that are readily available to American audiences. For example, current analyses of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be drawn from Al-Jazeera. Telemundo can be used to illustrate alternative perspectives on border security issues. (Slide 7) Besides television, the internet is a widely used tool today, not only for us, but also for terrorists. The internet provides a source of unedited information to a vast amount of people all over the world. Capitalizing on this, terrorists use the internet to communicate, develop and maintain their own websites, post videos to reinforce their message and cause, and conduct recruitment and training. An example of terrorists using the internet is al Qaeda’s internet magazine named Inspire, which can be found at a number of internet sites. An interesting possible use of the internet by terrorists is a practice of embedding hidden, encoded messages on an internet site. This is called steganography, and is done to communicate with each other and launch attacks. However, researchers have doubts as to the threat of this practice. (Slide 8) A negative effect of portraying terrorism in the media is the contagion effect. That is, some researchers believe that media coverage of terrorism may actually inspire more terrorism and thus spread terrorist violence. This hypothesis is largely derived from studies in crime where media coverage of crime may generate copycats. While this is concerning, we do not have a solid answer as to whether this occurs following media coverage of terrorism. Thus more research is needed in this important area. (Slide 9) An important debate surrounding terrorism and the media is censorship. Involved in this debate are the issues of freedom of the press and national security in combating terrorism and protecting lives. On the one hand, it is argued that censorship goes against our democratic ideals and can do more damage than the terrorist attack themselves. On the other hand, it’s argued that America is fighting a new type of war (the War on Terror) and some form of censorship may be required. In any event, this debate has reached new heights given the recent leaks of important government documents, such as Wikileaks and Edward Snowden. Please make sure to complete your readings and discussions and the remainder of the to-do items for this week.