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TopThe media’s portrayal of attacks and the perpetrators behind them have shaped how people react to and formulate opinions about radicalisation and terrorism. Previous research has shown how the lack of or incorrect knowledge about terrorism has led the community to develop negative attitudes towards specific segments of the community (Abdul Rahman, 2019). For example, even before the perpetrator—responsible for the 2011 Norway attacks—was arrested, the media was quick to assume that the attack was motivated by Al-Qaeda. Many mainstream media were drawing this link without any conclusive evidence—e.g., the newspaper “The Sun” carried the headline “Al-Qaeda Massacre: Norway’s 9/11”. Eventually, investigations revealed that the perpetrator was not an Al-Qaeda supporter and instead was a right-wing terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik (Sehgal, 2011). In itself, such media framing risks the likelihood of people associating certain religions with terrorism (von Sikorski et al., 2017) and influences how they would identify terrorist threats.
In the context of jihad attacks, such perceptions may also increase the occurrence of Islamophobia (Abdelkader, 2016) and reinforce unwanted stereotypes of Muslims. These developments can lead to dangerous outcomes where individuals are harmed or traumatised due to their affiliation to certain groups. As Cameron et al. (2013) write:
Beards and rucksacks (as seen in video images of the bombers) became symbols of suspicions; everyday actions, such as taking a seat on the train or going out, could activate potential terrorism stories, reinforced by internalised voices of fearful parents or relations. (p. 9)
Similarly, such stereotypical and biased mindsets may manifest in the cyber domain in the form of verbal abuse and unnecessary reporting of accounts—belonging to specific groups of individuals—to the authorities and social media companies. Hence, this prompts a critical need to rethink how one’s experiences and knowledge on online radicalisation would impact our opinions about what kind of online content is deemed radical and who are considered dangerous.