Seventeen years have already passed since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, but interest in terrorism remains high. The terrorist attacks in developed countries, such as those in France, the Christmas market in Germany, and the concert hall in England, have attracted a great deal of attention, and "terrorists have terrorized the world," as will be fresh in our minds. What about armed conflicts, then, which are far more destructive than terrorism? Compared to the fear of when one might find oneself caught up in the "one after another" terrorist attacks that occur in developed countries, does conflict ever seem like an event in some distant country? Is news coverage related to this tendency? We will analyze how information on conflict and terrorism is delivered to Japanese readers by newspapers.

Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, being bombed by Saudi Arabia (Photo: fahd sadi /Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 3.0])

Conflict and Terrorism in the Amount of Press Coverage

We will now use two graphs to analyze the level of attention given to conflicts and terrorism by the amount of coverage. The first one shows the amount of conflict and terrorism coverage in each country reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun during the year 2016, measured by the number of words, and arranged in a ranking format. Attached on the left is the total number of deaths for each conflict and terrorism during the year 2016.

This shows that terrorism occupies the top spot, with the exception of Syria, which is in first place; Belgium, in second place, is mostly related to the March 2016 terrorist attack in Brussels. While "Terrorism in the U.S." is ranked third, most of the topics covered are not related to actual terrorist attacks, but to the U.S.'s stated policy against terrorism. French terrorism, in fourth place, still received a lot of coverage, not only for the Nice attacks that occurred in 2016, but also for the Paris attacks that occurred the previous year in 2015.

This time, the graph shows the opposite, ranking the conflicts and terrorist attacks that resulted in the highest number of deaths. The amount of coverage is attached on the right, so please compare it with the previous graph.

What you will notice by comparing the two graphs is that, with the exception of Syria, terrorism received more extensive coverage than conflicts, which had by far the largest scale of damage. For example, Belgium, the most high-profile of the terrorist attacks, received 36,000 words of coverage with 35 deaths, while Mexico, where 39,000 people died, or 1,200 times the number of deaths in this attack, in the fight against drug cartel forces and gangs, andNorthern region of Central America (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala)conflict in the United States and the conflict in Sudan, where 3,500 people have died, have not been reported just once in a year.

Furthermore, when looking at the timing of coverage, terrorism is reported in tens of thousands of words in just a few days after its occurrence, whereas conflicts are reported only this amount throughout the year. In addition to the graph, we also found that if an attempted terrorist attack occurs in a country geographically close to Japan, such as Indonesia or Malaysia, it often appears in the paper as a noteworthy incident. In other words, even when a terrorist attack ends in an attempt and no real damage is done, the mere fact that it is a terrorist attack tends to make it more likely to be reported in the news.

The Invisible Dead

As one can easily imagine from the contrast in the number of deaths in the graph, conflict is overwhelmingly more damaging to a country than terrorism. While terrorism destroys only a very small number of buildings and facilities and causes far fewer deaths than conflict, conflict destroys everything, including a country's politics, economy, and infrastructure, and needless to say, causes hundreds or thousands of times more deaths than terrorism. The reason why only the number of deaths in conflict is approximated in the previous graph is because there are too many deaths to count, and there are not even enough accurate records of the number of deaths in conflict areas that are not monitored by the media.

Although this graph counts only direct deaths from violence, the number increases further when deaths from various other problems caused by conflict are included. For example, many people die not only from violence against civilians by armed groups such as the rebel group Al-Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, but also from indirect causes such as infectious diseases spread by the cessation of health and sanitation functions,This indirect death is the cause of death for most people who die in conflictIt is. For example,YemenIn the "Mega-Country," the destruction of water, sewage, and other infrastructural facilities has led to the deterioration of sanitary conditions, and a million people have been infected with cholera, the largest number since the end of World War II. Furthermore, conflicts affect the societies and economies of other countries as refugees who have been forced to flee their countries flow into neighboring countries as well.Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire)For example, the people who were displaced from their homes in the year 2016 wereApprox. 2.68 millionOf these, the refugees who were forced to flee the country wereApproximately 450,000 peopleThese people often drift into refugee camps set up on the borders of neighboring countries, where they live for years.

Refugee children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, living in a refugee camp (Photo: Elisa Finocchiaro /flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0 ])

High-profile terrorism, low-profile conflicts

So why is it that conflicts, which can change a country and its people so drastically, receive so little attention compared to terrorism? Here are some possible mechanisms for such coverage. First, it should be noted that many of the countries in the first graph where terrorist attacks received the most media coverage were developed countries such as Belgium, Germany, and France. These countries are very similar to Japan today in terms of their high standard of living and the fact that terrorism is more likely to occur than conflict within their borders. They would also be familiar as trading partners and tourism destinations. Japanese audiences are more likely to imagine events occurring in these familiar, developed countries than in the poorest countries. In other words, they are more likely to empathize with the horrors of terrorism occurring in developed countries than with the tragedy of conflict in the poorest countries. The first graph shows that along with these developed countries, terrorism in Bangladesh, a developing country, has received considerable media coverage, probably because there have been direct casualties among Japanese people in these attacks.

Along with the high standard of living, trade, tourism, and other connections, the deployment of foreign correspondents in the press is a major factor in reducing the amount of coverage of the conflict. For more on this issue, see.Past ArticlesAs dealt with in detail in the following section, first of all, few bureaus are set up in Africa, and the few African bureaus are geographically distant from the sites of conflict and lack adequate infrastructure, making it more difficult for correspondents to reach the sites of terrorism compared to those in Europe and other urban areas. This is another reason why the amount of coverage of conflicts is lower than that of terrorism. For the same reason, there is also the problem that terrorism occurring in developed countries is more likely to be reported than terrorism occurring in developing countries, but we will discuss that one in more detail inPast Articlesfor more information.

The remains of a car used as a bomb in Baghdad, Iraq (Photo: Jim Gordon /Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 2.0])

Is terrorism "rare"?

A final reason why terrorism occurring in developed countries has received significant attention is the media's preference for "surprising events. As we have seen in the graphs so far, terrorist attacks that have occurred in developed countries have received a great deal of attention. However, is terrorism really that rare? Looking only at news reports, it seems as if terrorism is occurring "one after another" only in developed countries, but in reality, terrorism is an everyday occurrence in all conflict zones. Whether in Syria, Somalia, Iraq, or Nigeria, bombings are common. In drug-related conflicts in Mexico and Latin America, it is also a means of intimidation for show, and terrorism and conflict are inextricably linked. However, because the media touts the "unexpected," when an explosion occurs in a place where explosions do not usually occur, such as in developed countries, the amount of media coverage increases dramatically.

Media is the "oxygen" of terrorism

Terrorism, as a type of violence, is intended to incite public fear and demonstrate its presence in society by attracting public attention through the media, as the insurgents who suddenly cause a sensational event. On the flip side, the media is quick to rush to the scene of a terrorist attack and sensationalize the tragedy of the scene to the public, making the relatively small damage actually appear larger and making the weak perpetrators appear more frightening and "terrorizing the world" than necessary. Such current media coverage is unfortunately at the mercy of terrorists who want to "look our way" by causing terrorist attacks, and it can be said that the media has become the "oxygen" of terrorism, providing the terrorists with a means of survival. The more coverage after a terrorist attack occurs, the more likely it is that additional attacks will occur.findingsIt may even be said that media coverage encourages terrorists to commit crimes.

Mass media rush to the scene of an attack in Brussels, Belgium (Photo: LeMecChat77 /Wikimedia Commons [CC BY SA 4.0])

This is not to say that terrorism should not be reported. Rather, I would like to point out the imbalance in the media coverage, which, depending on the topic, either exaggerates certain events to make them seem bigger than they need to be or, conversely, does not cover them to the extent that they seem indifferent to the issue. It is difficult to say that the current reporting is commensurate with the magnitude of the damage caused by the conflict. Terrorism in a country similar to Japan is certainly a threat, but that does not mean that conflicts in distant countries should be treated as if they were someone else's problem, and with globalization accelerating, it cannot be said that Japan is completely unaffected by conflicts in distant countries. Just looking at the news in everyday life with an awareness of this bias in the world as seen through the media may help us see the world in a different light.

Writer: Yuka Komai

Graphic: Yuka Komai