Article: Terrorist or Freedom Fighter ? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Mass Media and Conflict: One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter
Description Have you ever asked wondered why some news outlets translate "the Syrian rebels" as "terrorists" or "Israel" as the "Zionist entity"? For the last six years, the Middle East and North Africa (commonly known as the MENA) have been shaken by a political tsunami. As a consequence, we are witnessing a growing politicization of translators/interpreters and an instrumentalization of translated texts for political or ideological purposes. This lecture aims at uncovering the role of translation in the construction and manipulation of realities in/from the Middle East. In other words, how does the mass media represent conflicts through translations? On the Edge is a speaker series featuring cutting edge research presented by scholars and researchers from Edmonton's academic community. This presentation is presented with the University of Alberta's Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.
Media and Journalism in an Age of Terrorism
Media and Journalism in an Age of Terrorism, 2019
This book is not a litany of the many terrorist attacks that have occurred over the last five years, nor is it a value judgement on how the media have reported on these events. Its ambition is to question the issues at stake in emerging journalistic practices and to raise a number of subsequent ethical questions. In 2017 Linnaeus University took the initiative to organize an international conference focusing on journalism in a world of terrorism – terrorism in the world of journalism. Our aim was to understand what it means in 2018 to report on terrorism in different national contexts. The conference (held 9-10 May, Kalmar) offered a unique opportunity for academics and journalists to come together in order to share experiences, discuss and reflect on the numerous dilemmas journalism in the world of terrorism has to cope with. Accordingly, this book depicts the wide diversity of approaches as well as reports the richness of the dialogue between practitioners and researchers – which constitutes the overall originality of this joint venture project between the Department of Media and Journalism and the Media Institute Fojo. Indeed, conflicts and terrorism nowadays constitute a field of study particularly conducive to assessing the role of media in contemporary democratic societies. The same also applies for societies engaged in transition and democratic consolidation processes, which are simultaneously facing the threat of terrorism (as is, for example, the case of Tunisia, Niger, Algeria and Morocco – countries from which some of the participants came). Some key issues were particularly under scrutiny: How does terrorism affect the media and their coverage of these events? Are the media an integral part of the strategy of terror deployed by the main actors (lately almost exclusively from Islamist extremist groups)? To answer these crucial questions, academics and professionals certainly had to examine all facets of the existing links and interrelations between the terrorist phenomenon and the media. A common experience articulated by researchers and journalists alike is that conflicting crises, as well as terrorist attacks, will necessarily affect reporting because of their sensational manifestations – it is impossible to not tell the story even if it might add to the pain of victim countries.
Media and its portrayal of terrorism
2016
The power of media in the formation of opinion is well documented. We use the information that surrounds us to form our own opinion, but how is it that opinion can become “public”? How susceptible are we to influences of prejudice and preconstructed elements in media? The principle interest of this study is to examine how media coverage can differ between news outlets; are there, in fact, traces of opinion altering the content in mass media? By using a methodological framework based on the theories of Critical Discourse Analysis, this thesis sets out to determine the difference in the broadcasting of opinion between two British newspapers. By looking at differences in how Muslims and Islam are portrayed in the media, in connection with acts of terrorism on European soil, the thesis will draw conclusions concerning both how perpetrators and innocent are depicted and also how concepts as fear and dread are incorporated into the news.
Journalism
We examined how Muslims are depicted in connection with Islamist terrorism and to what extent journalists use undifferentiated coverage – that actively links Muslims to terrorism – and differentiated coverage that actively differentiates Muslims from terrorism. Drawing from research in journalism studies and from terror management theory, we examined media-specific and event-specific predictors using a quantitative content analysis (12 quality/tabloid newspapers from three countries, N = 1071 articles). Results reveal that undifferentiated coverage occurs in almost every other article. Differentiation occurs much less. Tabloids use undifferentiated and differentiated coverage in fact-oriented and opinion-oriented articles. Quality news only do so in opinion-oriented articles. Proximity of a terror event resulted in more undifferentiated and less differentiated coverage. Results have important implications for journalism practice, terrorism research and intergroup relations.
2016
Since the start of the 21 st century, and with the 9/11 events, terrorism has been in the focus of media more than ever. The aim of this study is to analyze the behavior of a Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, and its coverage of terrorist acts that happened through the world in 2015. Through a post-colonialist angle, the study will follow the how the "Us-Versus-Them" is constructed in Aftonbladet's coverage. This will be done by comparing differences in articles related to various events that have happened in 2015, depending on their specificities. Following the descriptive statistics and discourse analysis methods, the study will be concluded with the fact that there was a difference of treatment of terrorist attacks from Aftonbladet, depending if the events regard "Us" or "Them".
News-Media and Terrorism: Changing Relationship, Changing Definitions
Kampf, Z. (2014), News-Media and Terrorism: Changing Relationship, Changing Definitions. Sociology Compass, 8: 1–9. doi: 10.1111/soc4.12099
This article discusses two aspects that are important for understanding the relationship between Western news media and terrorism: the changing representation of terrorists and terrorist attacks in the media and, with it, the changing definition of terrorism. By calling attention to evolving news media practices in times of terrorism, I argue that advanced communication technologies and the emergence of global media ecology since the 1990s has made terrorism more visible in both national and international media landscapes. One result is that the more the news media expose terrorism to global audiences via the “front door,” the more controversial the use of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” become in social, political, and scholarly discourses. The paper addresses the evolving journalistic practices and their consequences as documented in previous studies on media reporting of terrorism in several national contexts, mostly the UK, the United States, and Israel.