Media and Terrorism

In one of the many insightful comments produced in this volume, Lena Jayyusi cites remarks by an Israeli military spokesperson that illustrate how the term ‘terror’ has come to be used as both a personified and a disembodied concept. Like the ‘devil’, ‘terror’ is depicted as ‘a creature lurking in all kind of normal spaces, inhabiting every place of ordinariness’. The Israeli statement in question, made during the attack on Gaza in 2008–9 warned the Palestinians under attack that ‘anyone sponsoring terror, hosting terror in his house, housing terror in his basement and sending his wives and children to serve as human shields is considered a terrorist’! The fact that the term ‘terror’ lends itself to such elastic uses makes writing about it rather challenging, especially when the discussion is focused on this very elasticity and elusiveness. This book engages directly with this challenge, seeking to explore the uses and abuses of this elusive concept, to ‘draw attention to the way in which existing definitions of or approaches to terrorism are naturalized through a range of institutions including, most centrally for us, the media.’ And no matter how you define it, terrorism has a very close link to the media. It is seen as essentially a ‘communication strategy’, since it only works if the threats it poses are conveyed to the intended audience.