Mass Media and Insurgent Terrorism: the Case of Belfast, 1916--1986.

This study examines the role of mass media in the evolution of insurgent terrorism in Northern Irel and . The question of how the coverage of media is related to attention-seeking attempts by insurgent terrorists and their subsequent response has been approached primarily within two major traditions in the literature. In the tradition of Media Determinism, media is suggested to have determined the outcome of terrorism either by legitimizing terrorism, which, in turn, results in the prevalence of terrorist violence, or by regressing toward the established norms, which discredits adversaries. The tradition of News Sociology, on the other h and , emphasizes the reality-responsive quality of news and deemphasizes the ideologically-directed nature of the news selection process. This study examines the validity of both allegations with still a third perspective, Social-Cultural, in which mass commmunication is viewed as both the means for stimulating change and contributing to the climate of terrorism reality, and as disseminating information in response to terrorist situations. Additional qualification is made by studying how the media coverage of terrorism as well as the relationship between this coverage and terrorism should be geopolitically defined. Furthermore, the likelihood that terrorist violence is an interlocking behavior also receives attention in an attempt to uncover how else terrorism may persist in addition to the possible contribution of mass media. Content analysis of the Irish Times, Times of London, and the New York Times from 1916 to 1986 provided data for a time series analysis that also included security statistics on IRA terrorism from 1968 to 1985. Based on the results from the quantitative analysis and the qualitative historical anatomy, we conclude that the categories of mass media and the conduct of the Irish oppositional politics appear to converge. The four stages in which this convergence is evident are discussed: pre-media '''violence for revenge", post-press "terrorism as symbolic", post-television "terrorism as utilitarian", and post-publicity "terrorism as indispensible".PhDMass communicationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161598/1/8720350.pd