Collective sense-making in times of crisis: Connecting terror management theory with Twitter user reactions to the Berlin terrorist attack

Abstract

Recent terrorist attacks have increased the need to examine the public's response to such threats. This study focuses on the content of Twitter messages related to the 2016 terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market. We complement the collective sense-making perspective with the terror management theory (TMT) perspective to understand why people used Twitter in the aftermath of the attack. We use structural topic modeling to analyze our dataset of 51,000 tweets. Our results indicate that people used Twitter to make sense of the events and as part of typical reactions in TMT, that is, to validate their own worldviews and maintain their self-esteem. In accordance with TMT, we found that people used Twitter to search for meaning and value, show sympathy for victims and their families, or call for tolerance, but also to express nationalistic sentiment and greater hostility toward values and views other than their own. We further show that topics varied over the course of the attack and in the days that followed. Whereas in the first two days there were many emotion-related tweets and operational updates, subsequent days saw more opinionrelated tweets. Our findings contribute to the literature on collective behavior in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

Virtually in this together – how web-conferencing systems enabled a new virtual togetherness during the COVID-19 crisis

“…Prior work in the field of crisis informatics shows how the use of technology changes in the aftermath of extreme events and how existing tools evolve into something else. For instance, Twitter, which is usually used for communicating and sharing information, emerged as a tool for collective participation and coordination in responding to a natural disaster, that is the Thailand flooding 2011 (Leong et al, 2015) and a tool for collective sensemaking after a terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market (Fischer-Preßler et al, 2019). The increase in the number of users and the release notes of vendors of WCS suggest that WCS have played a unique role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

New perspective? Comparing frame occurrence in online and traditional news media reporting on Europe’s “Migration Crisis”

“…[FIGURE 1] Although the issue was politicized, there were no major events that sparked an increase in media attention until December 2016, right after the Islamist terror attack in Germany with the highest number of casualties up to date (Fischer-Preßler, Schwemmer, and Fischbach, 2019;Schmidt-Catran and Czymara, 2020). A final peak in September 2017 relates to the German parliamentary elections, in which immigration and border policies were among the most dominant topics.…”

A Threat to the Occident? Comparing Human Values of Muslim Immigrants, Christian, and Non-religious Natives in Western Europe

“…The intake of a large number of refugees was connected to some dramatic events. Some acts were committed by refugees such as the sexual assaults taking place on New Year's Eve 2015/16 (Czymara and Schmidt-Catran, 2017 ) or the Islamist terror attack on a Christmas market in Berlin in 2017 (Fischer-Preßler et al, 2019 ; Schmidt-Catran and Czymara, 2020 ). Other acts were committed by German natives, such as personal attacks against refugees or arson attacks on asylum shelters (Jäckle and König, 2018 ).…”