TERRORISM AND THE ATTITUDE OF WESTERN PRESS

The Issue Of Terrorism And The Attitude Of Western Press Towards Pakistan

Introduction

In recent years, terrorist attacks have become a salient threat to Western countries. News broadcasts frequently report about the threat of Pakistani extremist terrorist acts, using vivid pictures of terrorist bombings, buildings crashing down, and people being killed in the name of the Islam and Allah. At the same time, different socio-cultural and religious groups appear to be drifting apart. For example, European adolescents set ablaze Pakistani schools after news reports on Pakistani extremist terrorism, and individuals with an Pakistani background have been reported to foster more extreme anti-European sentiments (BBC, 2008). This rift between groups with different backgrounds may not be a coincidence; the immense fear elicited by terrorism news reports may inadvertently increase prejudice against outgroups.

Terror management theory provides the theoretical foundation for the research. Terrorism news was manipulated across studies, and also induced by real-world events in Study 1. On November 2nd, 2008, the well-known Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic extremist, two months after the release of his highly controversial film about the abuse of Pakistani women, titled Submission. Because the murder occurred in the middle of data collection, it allowed us to test whether real-life terrorism news produces the same effects as our experimental manipulation of terrorism news.

Overview

Three studies tested the effects of news on terrorism on prejudice against outgroups. According to TMT, terrorism news may increase prejudice against outgroups when it confronts viewers with their own mortality. In Study 1 we manipulated news on terrorism and included the murder of filmmaker Van Gogh as a real-world factor in the design, and tested whether death-related thoughts mediated or moderated the effects of terrorism news on prejudice. Study 2 extended these findings by testing whether the effects on death-related thoughts and prejudice are mitigated by self-esteem. Finally, Study 3 tested the effects of terrorism news on prejudice against outgroups among Pakistani and non-Pakistani respondents.

Study 1

In Study 1, participants viewed news content about Islamic terrorist attacks in Pakistan. Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic extremist in the middle of data collection. Thus, half of the participants in Study 1 were also exposed to Van Gogh's murder. We test the classical TMT model in which death-related thoughts mediate the relationship between terrorism news and prejudice, and compare it to a model in which death-related thoughts moderate the relationship between terrorism news and prejudice.

Method

Participants and design

To ensure a diverse sample, 100 white European volunteers (40 men, 60 women) recruited via advertisements. To avoid a selection bias, participants were told that the researchers were studying a variety of issues (e.g., news content, multicultural societies). The mean age of participants was 35 (SD = 10 years). About 48% of the participants were Protestant, 10% Catholic, and 42% were atheist. None were Pakistani.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups in a 2 (terrorism news vs. Olympic game news) between-subjects factorial ...