Terrorism and the Media: The Effect of US Television Coverage on Al-Qaeda Attacks

Michael Jetter

No 10708, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Can media coverage of a terrorist organization encourage their execution of further attacks? This paper analyzes the day-to-day news coverage of Al-Qaeda on US television since 9/11 and the group's terrorist strikes. To isolate causality, I use disaster deaths worldwide as an exogenous variation that crowds out Al-Qaeda coverage in an instrumental variable framework. The results suggest a positive and statistically powerful effect of CNN, NBC, CBS, and Fox News coverage on subsequent Al-Qaeda attacks. This result is robust to a battery of alternative estimations, extensions, and placebo regressions. One minute of Al-Qaeda coverage in a 30-minute news segment causes approximately one attack in the upcoming week, equivalent to 4.9 casualties, on average.

Keywords: media effects; media attention; Al-Qaeda; terrorism; 9/11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 D74 F52 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-ict and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published as 'The inadvertent consequences of al-Qaeda news coverage' in: European Economic Review, 2019, 119, 391-410

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