Mass Media as an Instrument in Educational Counter-Terrorism Programs

Abstract

There has long been discussion over the relation between mass media and terrorism and much of it concerned the ways terrorists make use of media institutions as instruments for their cause. One solid argument is that all recent terrorist acts have been widely presented to the public and this contributed to an increase of fear and panic among the population but also disseminated the terrorists’ ideas.

In this paper, we propose an inverse perspective: how to imply mass media in counteracting one of the main global threats of this century, terrorism? We consider that mass media have the capacity to provide a significant amount of information in an unforeseen situation, while radio and television have the capacity to directly keep the public in touch to the victims and their families. Equally, the mass media may provide information referring on developments and make recommendations concerning the protection of the civil population.