Blood and Ink! The Common-Interest-GameBetween Terrorists and the Media

Bruno Frey and Dominic Rohner

No 285, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: It has often been pointed out in the literature that a symbiotic relationship exists between terrorist groups and the media. As yet, however, no formal model has been built based on this issue and only very little empirical research has been done in this field. The present contribution builds a simple game theoretic model, focussing on the social interactions between terrorists and the media. The model has features of a common-interest-game and results in multiple equilibria. After a discussion of the policy implications of the model, an empirical analysis is performed. Using newspaper coverage, terror incidents and terror fatalities data, it is shown that media attention and terrorism do mutually Granger cause each other, as predicted by the model. Moreover, it is explained why terror attacks tend to be �bloodier� in developing countries than in Europe and the United States.

Keywords: Terrorism; media; common-interest-game; coordination; conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D74 H52 H77 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Blood and ink! The common-interest-game between terrorists and the media (2007)
Working Paper: Blood and Ink! The Common-Interest-Game Between Terrorists and the Media (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:285

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