Responsible Terrorism Coverage - Part 2 (ResTeCo-2)

Description of the project

The ResTeCo project is based on the realization that after terrorist attacks, journalists are faced with the dilemma of serving the high level of news interest on the one hand and not becoming a media stage for terrorists on the other. ResTeCo Part 2 builds on the derivation of normative criteria for responsible terrorism reporting and the analysis of textual reporting in the first phase and pursues four objectives. First, the conceptualization of criteria for responsible multimodal terrorism reporting. Second, to analyze how responsible multimodal reporting has been in traditional and alternative media over a 10-year period. Third, to compare the effects of responsible reporting with the effects of non-responsible reporting, focusing on emotional effects, assessments of the legitimacy of the perpetrators, and the evaluation of social outgroups. Fourthly, the identification and empirical testing of the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. Allowing to derive evidence-based communication strategies for politics and security authorities as well as reporting guidelines in relation to terrorist attacks. Methodologically, the project combines an automated multimodal content analysis with two questionnaire experiments. ResTeCo Part 2 enables the systematic examination and analysis of normative reporting criteria for multimodal terrorism reporting. Thus, insights into the normative quality and actual impact of responsible reporting are generated.

Keywords

Terrorism covergae | Political communication | Journalism

External partners

• Hartmut Wessler (University of Mannheim)
• Chung-Hong Chan (GESIS)