Anger, Anxiety, and Selective Exposure to Terrorist Violence

• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Author: Arie Perliger,Keren L. G. Snider,Leonie Huddy,Oleg Smirnov
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211014937
• Subject Matter: Articles

2021, Vol. 65(10) 1764 –1790

Article

Anger, Anxiety,

and Selective Exposure

to Terrorist Violence

Leonie Huddy

1

, Oleg Smirnov

1

,

Keren L. G. Snider

2

, and Arie Perliger

3

Abstract

We examine the political consequence of exposure to widely available video content

of terror violence. In a two-wave survey of Americans, we assess who is exposed to,

and seeks out, terror-related video content in the first wave and then observe

who decides to watchraw video footage of the Boston marathon terror attack in the

second. We focus centrally on anxiety and anger as differing emotional reactions to

the threat of terrorismand document their influence on exposureto terror violence.

Anxiety generates avoidance of violent terror content whereas anger increases its

consumption. Moreover, we find that anger increases exposure to violent terror

content and in addition enhances support for punitive and retaliatory anti-terrorism

policy. We discuss the implications of our findings for the broader dynamics of ter-

rorist violence and the emotional basis of selective news exposure.

Keywords

terrorism, political emotion, selective news exposure, public opinion

By design, the effects of terrorism extend well beyond its immediate victims and

physical destruction to include a much broader target population (Crenshaw 1986;

Perliger 2012; Wardlaw 1989). Acts of terrorism may have even greater influence

1

Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University, NY, USA

2

School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel

3

School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Leonie Huddy, Stony Brook University, Nichols Road, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA.

Email: leonie.huddy@stonybrook.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

ªThe Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211014937

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Huddy et al. 1765

now than in the past because the internet, mobile devices, and social media platforms

allow for the rapid dissemination of highly arousing and potentially disturbing video

content of events as they occur (Greenmeier 2017). Th is fact is not lost on the

perpetrators of terrorism. Far-right attacks such as the 2019 Christchurch mosque

massacre and the 2019 Halle synagogue shooting were live-streamed by the attacker

(Cai and Landon 2019). Content recorded by a perpetrator has been quickly removed

from online sites in these instances. But even if perpetrators do not live-stream an

attack, witnesses visually record events, and this video footage is included in news

segments that are often uploaded to online sites such as YouTube, as well as to social

media platforms such as WhatsApp and Snapchat. This raw, graphic video content is

readily accessible (sometimes accompanied by a gratuitous warning) and has the

potential to arouse strong emotions among viewers, potentially amplifying public

reactions to an act of terror.

There have been concerted international efforts to remove violent online video

content. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emma-

nuel Macron initiated the Christchurch call, a pledge to eliminate online terrorist and

violent extremist content, following the 2019 Christchurch attack. To date, the

pledge has been signed by 48 countries (Uberti 2019). The practical success of this

effort remains unclear, however. YouTube currently hosts live footage from events

surrounding the 2019 El Paso shooting, the 2016 Nice attack, the 2017 London

Bridge attack, and many others.

1

Most are news segments depicting chaos at sites

of attacks or the police killing or attacking the perpetrators. The footage typically

omits real-time images of people being killed but does include images of medical

and other first responders’ operations. Thus, the existing footage has the potential to

trigger a strong emotional response in viewers which allows terrorists to enhance the

psychological and symbolic impact of an attack by conveying to a broader audience

the fear and panic experienced by victims.

In this research, we examine the political consequence of widely available video

content of terror violence. First, we examine the degree to which members of the

public are exposed to, and seek out, video content of terror events. In so doing, we

contribute to a broader discussion on selective news exposure—the decision to

watch some and avoid other types of news content. Cognitive goals, such as the

decision to consume politically agreeable news, have been widely examined as the

basis for news selection. But terrorism arouses strong emotions and activates emo-

tional goals that also shape news exposure through the avoidance of negative emo-

tion or the enhancement of positive states. In this study, we find that anxiety about

terrorism generates avoidance of violent terror content whereas anger increases its

consumption.

Second, we explore the political consequences of emotionally driven consump-

tion or avoidance of terror violence. Terrorists’ actions are often designed to provoke

a governmental reaction such as territorial concessions or political and policy

reforms through acts of attrition or intimidation which exhaust the opposing gov-

ernment’s resolve or underscore its ineffectiveness (Kydd and Walters 2006). The

2Journal of Conflict Resolution XX(X)