Domestic terrorism on the Nightly News

Abstract

This thesis examines coverage of domestic terror events in the United States on evening network news broadcasts, using both content analysis and qualitative analysis to examine the extent of coverage and differences in coverage over a five-year period. Coders looked for the presence or absence of the term “terror,” “terrorist” and “terrorism” between attacks perpetrated by culprits identified by different ethnic, racial, and religious descriptors. Qualitative analysis examined those stories that used the terms “terror,” “terrorist” and “terrorism” more deeply, looking for context, meaning, identification of culprits and assignment of blame. Analysis of 394 stories (42 events) found a significant association between the use of the word “terrorism” and the identification of culprits as Muslim (x2 = 25.026, df = 1, p < .0001), an absence of discussion of whiteness, and a religious-based application of “terror” terms that served to externalize domestic terrorism.