Creation of Meaning About Terrorism in the United States

Since the September 11 attacks against the United States in 2001, several studies have examined the US media’s disproportionate reporting biases of Muslim terrorists compared to other terrorist demographics; however, a thorough comparison of reporting trends predating the 9/11 attacks to those occurring after 9/11 remains to be accomplished. Via a content analysis of 103 US news publications from 1996 to 2006, the current study concludes that 9/11 had an exclusive and substantial effect on publishers’ portrayal of terrorism in the US. Indeed, reports shifted from depicting terrorism as a political tool used by diverse populations before 9/11, to depicting it as a fundamentally Muslim ideological venture after 9/11. Reports on right-wing terrorists in the US had decreased by 75.0 percent after the attacks while reports on Muslim terrorists increased by 63.8 percent, despite statistically insignificant differences in the number of attacks and resulting casualties from both groups. This phenomenon had a profound social effect in the US, including the justification of the War on Terror and a domestic increase in hate crimes after 2001, whereas right-wing terror groups were collectively unknown to the public.