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TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Viewing images of terrorism can have a powerful impact on individuals' emotional and political responses, yet little is known about the psychological processes underlying these effects. We hypothesized that the content of terrorism images will shape viewers' appraisals of the event, which will elicit specific emotions and political attitudes. Acts of terrorism deliver political messages in a dramatic fashion-a goal that is increasingly facilitated in the era of 24-hour news reporting. In an era of saturation coverage in the print, television, and Internet media, people around the world are regularly exposed to graphic images of terrorist acts. As a result, even those who are far removed from the physical sites of terrorism can experience the powerful impact of these attacks.Individuals who do not directly witness a terrorist attack tend to rely on the media to provide information about such events (Chermak & Gruenwald, 2006;Nacos, 2003 Images are capable of communicating the details of an event in succinct and captivating ways, so much so that they have been termed "visual quotations" (Sontag, 2003). A photograph is especially likely to communicate a particular frame or perspective, as any twodimensional still image is constrained in its ability to represent the individuals and objects
The Impact of Media Coverage on Viewers' Understandings of TerrorismThe different terrorism frames that are presented in the media have the capacity to shape the parameters of public debate (see Picard, 1993). For instance, news coverage can bestow legitimacy upon a particular view and ensure widespread dissemination of its ideas; such publicity and status then serves to attract additional support and resources to its cause (Chermak & Gruenewald, 2006;Weimann & Winn, 1994). Given the broad reach of the media, various theoretical accounts propose that media reports should influence the viewing public's views towards the event in question (e.g., Deprez & Raeymaeckers, 2010;McLaughlin & Baker, 2010). Research has shown that exposure to media coverage of terrorism increases anxiety and fear (Gadarian, 2010;Slone, 2000), and that these emotions at least partly determine viewers' attitudes toward terrorism (Gadarian, 20...