Biased Social Media Debates About Terrorism? A Content Analysis of Journalistic Coverage of and Audience Reactions to Terrorist Attacks on YouTube

Abstract

Social media are an important source of news during crises such as terrorist attacks. However, how news media and their audiences make sense of terrorism on social media is subject to bias, for example, given their differential treatment of terrorism by right-wing versus Islamist extremist perpetrators. In this study, we analyze how incident- and perpetrator-related characteristics of terrorist attacks are associated with bias in public debates about terrorism on YouTube. We focus on selectiveness in which attacks are covered (gatekeeping bias), how attacks are covered (presentation bias), and how audiences react to coverage (audience bias). Methodologically, we employ a manual and an automated content analysis of terrorism coverage by five international broadcasters on YouTube ( N = 643, 2018–2020) and related user comments ( N = 193,721). Our findings illustrate how sociocultural contexts shape news bias in terrorism coverage, both in the form of gatekeeping bias and presentation bias—but we conclude with less evidence for audience bias in public reactions to terrorism, at least on social media. Consequently, journalists should critically question working routines in covering crises to avoid reinforcing power imbalances, especially those from Western contexts.