Media and Journalism in an Age of Terrorism

• This book is not a litany of the many terrorist attacks that have occurred over the last five years, nor is it a value judgement on how the media have reported on these events. Its ambition is to question the issues at stake in emerging journalistic practices and to raise a number of subsequent ethical questions. In 2017 Linnaeus University took the initiative to organize an international conference focusing on journalism in a world of terrorism – terrorism in the world of journalism. Our aim was to understand what it means in 2018 to report on terrorism in different national contexts. The conference (held 9-10 May, Kalmar) offered a unique opportunity for academics and journalists to come together in order to share experiences, discuss and reflect on the numerous dilemmas journalism in the world of terrorism has to cope with. Accordingly, this book depicts the wide diversity of approaches as well as reports the richness of the dialogue between practitioners and researchers – which constitutes the overall originality of this joint venture project between the Department of Media and Journalism and the Media Institute Fojo. Indeed, conflicts and terrorism nowadays constitute a field of study particularly conducive to assessing the role of media in contemporary democratic societies. The same also applies for societies engaged in transition and democratic consolidation processes, which are simultaneously facing the threat of terrorism (as is, for example, the case of Tunisia, Niger, Algeria and Morocco – countries from which some of the participants came). Some key issues were particularly under scrutiny: How does terrorism affect the media and their coverage of these events? Are the media an integral part of the strategy of terror deployed by the main actors (lately almost exclusively from Islamist extremist groups)? To answer these crucial questions, academics and professionals certainly had to examine all facets of the existing links and interrelations between the terrorist phenomenon and the media. A common experience articulated by researchers and journalists alike is that conflicting crises, as well as terrorist attacks, will necessarily affect reporting because of their sensational manifestations – it is impossible to not tell the story even if it might add to the pain of victim countries.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Medievetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Media Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

media; terrorism: journalism

Journalistik

Journalism

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

sam (subject category)