Authoritarian discourses and counter-discources : A discourse analysis of the French news media's coverage of the terrorist attacks 2015 - 2016

Media and terrorism is said to have a symbiotic relationship: terrorists want publicity whilst media wants to publish. There is a consensus that threat such as terrorism increases authoritarian attitudes in societies – but studies on how the media reports on terrorism is still a relatively unexplored area of research, at least outside of the US. The events of 9/11 has contributed heavily to the research on media and terrorism, suggesting that terrorism-related reporting is dominated by an authoritarian discourse, namely George Bush’s War on Terror. However, questions on whether this trend is transferable to other countries or if there are alternative discourses remain unclear. Using critical discourse analysis on French editorials after the three major terrorist attacks 2015-2016 (Charlie Hebdo, Paris and Nice), this paper aims to bring new light to the research on media discourses about terrorism. Out of 27 editorials, six discourses were identified: three authoritarian discourses and three counter-discourses. My findings suggest that both authoritarian discourses and counter-discourses occur more or less to an equal extent and propose a framework to analyse them