Media effects: Do terrorist organizations launch foreign attacks in response to levels of press freedom or press attention?

Victor Asal and Aaron M. Hoffman
Additional contact information
Victor Asal: Department of Political Science, SUNY Albany, USA
Aaron M. Hoffman: Department of Political Science, Purdue University, USA

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2016, vol. 33, issue 4, 381-399

Abstract: Terrorists are supposed to be influenced by opportunities for news coverage, but does this mean that groups initiate foreign attacks in response to the absence of press freedom in their country or inattention to that state by foreign media organizations? Using Asal and Rethmeyer’s BAAD1 data on terrorist organizations, we find that increasing levels of attention by the international press reduce the odds of groups launching cross-border attacks. The propensity of groups to launch foreign attacks appears unrelated to press freedom. These results suggest that the protections that states provide for the press motivate foreign terrorism less than the way the media determines newsworthiness.

Keywords: Media; press freedom; terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0738894215579622 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:compsc:v:33:y:2016:i:4:p:381-399

DOI: 10.1177/0738894215579622

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().