The Role of the Media in the Propagation of the Terrorist Agenda

Abstract

The name, Attila the Hun, was synonymous with terror after he defeated a Roman army in 378 (Mark, 2014). 1 Genghis Khan and his hordes were the barbarians that conquered China by 1279. 2 No doubt, just the names of these two men made brave men quake and women fear for their children. Historian Joshua J. Mark could have be writing about both men in his reference to Attila: "This name was synonymous with terror among his enemies and the general populace of the territories that his armies swept through." In short, the propaganda value of creating terror in the minds of the enemy is a long and established method of warfare. In this paper, we argue that terrorist organizations in the 21 st Century use terror as a propaganda weapon to create a sense of terror out of proportion to the reality of the threat.Our contribution to this discussion is to conduct a Burkean analysis of media coverage in the immediate aftermath of nine major terrorists attacks. We expand on Kenneth Burke's analysis of propaganda from the invocation of god terms and devil terms.We evaluate news media coverage of terrorism events, including statements by world leaders, in terms of how they utilized god terms and devil terms, and our addition: chaos terms. Our work indicates that the news media contributes to the terror created by terrorist attacks by using words that connote evil and chaos. Our work suggests that changes in how the media discusses terrorism could impact public perception of how chaotic and how terrifying the attacks actually are.We begin by explaining what we perceive of as a change in the nature of terrorism, beginning with an attack on Mumbai. We review the nature of propaganda and its historical goals and objectives. This sets up the argument that terrorist organizations are using terror in new ways to achieve different propaganda effects than those usually associated with state generated propaganda. We proceed with our discussion of how the electronic media covered those terrorists' attacks, enhancing the propaganda value to the jihadists.