Fear, Sense of Unresponsiveness and Oppositional Reading: Terror in Media through the Eyes of Victims of Terrorism

Abstract

Acts of crime and violence spread to a wide range of people through the mainstream media and can affect those who are not direct victims of crime and violence. Unlike these actions, terrorist acts have emerged as a threat in a much broader social field, especially in recent years, in terms of their occurrence, frequency, and extent of spread. Various studies have argued that the coverage of these terrorist acts in media has given rise to the fear of terror attacks. This study examines the perception of individuals who were directly exposed to terrorism regarding the presentation of terrorism in the media. Research data was collected in 2018, in Ankara, which experienced multiple terrorist attacks. The findings of this research draw on in-depth interviews conducted with 20 people who were directly exposed to at least one terrorist attack in Ankara. The sample group was reached with the snowball sampling technique. The results of the research show that the frequency and the way news of terrorism was presented in the media led to a sense of unresponsiveness and normalization against terrorism, but this also triggers and reproduces fear of terror.