When the Messengers Are Targets of Terrorism: Restricted Media, State and Domestic Terrorism

Abstract

Terrorist organizations are argued to have a symbiotic relationship with media. Despite the mutually beneficial relationship, media personnel and media outlets are frequently targeted by terrorist organizations across the world. This study explores this puzzle by arguing that the symbiotic relationship between media and terrorism is conditioned by the level of restrictions a state exercises on the media. State restrictions diminish media's utility to the terrorists who would view the restricted media as a proxy for the state, prompting the groups would attack the media targets and deliver a political message to the state. This conjecture is tested on a global cross-national dataset of domestic terrorism between 1970 and 2012, showing strong support for the hypothesized positive relation between media restrictions and terrorist attacks on media targets.