Analysing media portrayals of far-right inspired terrorism

人们普遍认为，媒体、学术和政府对恐怖主义的描述夸大了9/11事件后伊斯兰激发的恐怖主义的威胁(鲍威尔，2018年)。因此，极右翼恐怖主义一直未得到充分研究和忽视，直到最近，极右翼话语进入主流，他们的暴力变得更加大胆(Mondon&温特，2020年；Ravndal&Bjorgo，2018年)。该项目旨在研究印刷媒体对极右翼激发的恐怖主义的框架，将其与对伊斯兰激发的恐怖主义的描绘进行比较和对比，在印刷媒体跨政治光谱报道恐怖主义的更广泛背景下。一个多模式和跨部门的社会科学框架将被用来探索自9/11.1以来的过去20年中美国和英国发生的重大极右翼和伊斯兰激发的恐怖主义事件的框架。讨论极右翼恐怖分子/袭击的流行框架、叙事和视觉表现是什么，它们与伊斯兰激发的恐怖分子/袭击有什么不同？2.在平面媒体的恐怖主义报道中，性别、种族、宗教和暴力有什么交集，这些交集如何影响框架/叙事/视觉表现？3.具有不同政治取向的印刷媒体如何将“恐怖分子”或“恐怖主义”一词应用于不同形式的恐怖主义？4.在过去20年里，媒体对极右翼和伊斯兰激发的恐怖主义的报道发生了怎样的变化？将利用比较媒体内容分析(Riffe等人，2019年)和框架方法(ScheuFele，1999)，在印刷媒体报道恐怖主义的更广泛背景下，探索极右翼激发的恐怖主义的多模式(叙事、视觉)和交叉(性别、族裔、宗教、暴力)框架。美国和英国之所以被选中，是因为它们都主要说英语，都有殖民、白人至上主义的历史，而且近年来发生了引人注目的与极右翼有关的暴力事件。这项研究将聚焦于2021年1月11日至6日在美国和英国发生的重大事件，以便研究重大恐怖事件(包括伊斯兰主义和极右翼事件)以及重大社会变革时刻和运动的影响。该项目将采用两阶段顺序混合方法设计。这两个阶段的数据将从印刷品和在线上关于以前被确定为相关的恐怖袭击的开源新闻文章、标题、采访、特写、评论和社论中收集，从设在选定国家和政治派别的各种新闻机构收集。它将采取归纳饱和的方法对恐怖袭击的时间进行抽样，包括媒体对这些事件的报道，这些报道可能会持续一段有限或更长的时间，或者直到媒体报道没有新的或值得注意的方面被披露。该项目产生的新知识可能会对媒体对恐怖主义的框定和研究做出重大贡献，这些研究试图了解支撑意识形态动机、情报和反恐努力的因素。它还将对更充分地理解媒体陈述在理解国家和国际安全问题的公开陈述中所起的作用产生更广泛的影响。

It is widely acknowledged that media, academic and government portrayals of terrorism have over-represented the threat of Islamist-inspired terrorism post-9/11 (Powell, 2018). Consequently, far-right terrorism has been under-researched and overlooked until recently, when far-right discourse entered the mainstream and their violence became more emboldened (Mondon & Winter, 2020; Ravndal & Bjorgo, 2018). The project aims to study the print media's framing of far-right inspired terrorism by comparing and contrasting it with portrayals of Islamist-inspired terrorism, in the wider context of terrorism coverage across the political spectrum in print media. A multimodal and intersectional social science framework will be used to explore the framing of significant far-right and Islamist-inspired terrorism events in the US and UK in the last 20 years, since 9/11.1. What are the prevalent frames, narratives and visual representations used to discuss far-right inspired terrorists/attacks, and how do they differ from Islamist-inspired terrorists/attacks?2. What are the intersections of gender, ethnicity, religion and violence in terrorism coverage in print media, and how do these intersections impact frames/narratives/visual representations?3. How has the term 'terrorist' or 'terrorism' been applied to different forms of terrorism by print media outlets with different political orientations?4. How has media coverage of far-right and Islamist-inspired terrorism changed over the past twenty years? Comparative media content analysis (Riffe et al., 2019) and framing approaches (Scheufele, 1999) will be drawn upon to explore the multimodal (narrative, visual) and intersectional (gender, ethnicity, religion, violence) framing of far-right inspired terrorism in the wider context of terrorism coverage in print media. The US and UK have been selected as they are both primarily English-speaking, have colonial, white supremacist histories, and have had notable far-right related violence in recent years. The study will focus on major events that have occurred in the US and UK from 9/11 to 6th January 2021, so that the impact of major terror events (both Islamist and far-right inspired) as well as significant social change moments and movements, can be examined. The project will employ a two-phase sequential mixed methods design. Data for both phases will be gathered from open-source news articles, headlines, interviews, features, reviews and editorials in print and online about terror attacks previously identified as relevant, from a variety of news outlets based in the selected countries and from across the political spectrum. It will take an inductive saturation approach to the temporal sampling of terrorist attacks by including media coverage of these events that may extend for a limited or extended period of time, or until no new or notable aspects of media coverage are revealed. The new knowledge produced by this project is likely to make a significant contribution to media framing of terrorism and research that seeks to understand the factors underpinning ideological motivations, intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. It will also have wider implications for understanding more fully the part played by media representations to understanding public representations of national and international security issues.