Blowing Things Up: The Efect Of Media Attention On Terrorism

This paper analyses the causal link between media attention devoted to 60,281 terrorist attack days and future attacks. Using natural disasters in the US as an exogenous variation crowding out international media coverage of terrorist attacks in the rest of the world, the number of New York Times articles devoted to terrorist attacks appears to cause further terrorism. On average, one additional article is suggested to increase the number of ensuing attacks by 11 to 15 percent, equivalent to 1-2 casualties. This result is robust to a number of robustness checks and alternative estimations, advising against sensationalism in covering terrorism.