Criminology

Terrorism is a more systematic installation of human behavior in the dogma psychological impact of fear and terror. Terrorist groups are those groups who tend to operate and sustain their mission by hiding and remaining undercover. The anti-terrorist elements are mostly governments because now terrorism has become so extreme and severe in terms of action that it has taken the attributes of war against nations. In this paper we shall be discussing how media is exploited by terrorism or why terrorism cannot conduct its actions and operations without the help of media. We must broadly look at the concepts of terrorism and media that joins them together. In this essay we shall also discuss how media is helping terrorism takes it toll.

Before going in deep elaboration of the term terrorism and its connection with media, we must understand terrorism from different perspectives. Terrorism has been defined differently in broader contexts of international security, media, government etc. As terrorism had attained different dimensions, there is always a heated debate over the concept of terrorism (Pippa  Montague, 2003).

According to Pippa Norris and Montague Kern, Media excludes violent crimes motivated purely by private gain, such as blackmail, murder, or physical assaults directed against individual, groups or companies without any political objectives(Pippa  Montague, 2003, p. 8). Most commonly terrorism is subjected to that type of war that is greatly associated with and directly causes the psychological status-quo of human beings. In this regard media persuades, evokes and psychologically targets the readers and viewers. Terrorism needs a medium to get sustaining attributes while media provides terrorism with different mediums (Pippa  Montague, 2003). 

The question that one might want to ask is how media is providing an enormous heat to the subject of terrorism The reason behind terrorism and its context is that

Information beyond boundaries
Argument
Previously news reporting was totally based upon the stimulation and thus was only factual. There was no addition or concept of interpretation through discussion and social responsibility awareness regarding issues reported in the news reporting. Currently media shows a great deal of information beyond ones imagination where often weakness of nations is revealed resulting in identification of target by terrorist groups (Lockyer, 2003).

Medias Greed to spread terrorists message
Argument
Previously there was no competition among different media channels but nowadays it has become very obvious that every media channel whether magazines, newspaper or television channels, more and more competition is increasing day by day.  Terrorism provides a great deal of cheesy news to these channels that help them winning the competition. On the other hand the agenda of terrorist groups becomes fulfilled because all they want is to spread their message among mass audience.

Spread of Contempt through message
Argument
A single event is interpreted differently by different mediums, for instance any American news would use words such as insurgents or terrorists attempted a suicide bomb attack against causalities while on the other hand any eastern media channel would elaborate the incident as Freedom fighters installed a bomb to attack crusaders.  This is a major difference that the interpretation of a single event at different nations and regions of the world that evokes turmoil situation among the relationships among states as well as international affairs.

Terrorism is everywhere
Argument
Media displaces a great deal of dimension of terrorism in the society by reporting regarding the terrorist attacks and then interpreting them with different perspectives of people and journalistic bodies. The reader or common men as a viewer of such news would definitely stimulate his or her own opinion regarding the definition of terrorism.

Media to be used as a weapon
Argument
In case of hostages, media works as the weapon of terrorist groups because spreading the air of panic is the most important motif of terrorist group that helps them in achieving success in their mission. The governments main role is to safeguard the common citizen. Government cannot take sudden decision when it comes to citizen as hostages of terrorist groups. In that situation, media tries to create a more turmoil situation for the government that helps terrorist groups in particular.

Media, designing battle ground
Argument
Currently in present situation of media competition, it is a view of journalist to fetch the most interesting news as soon as possible. Even a smaller incident is given more and more hype with the addition of extreme dramatic sequence to the news by interpreting it differently on different occasions. The present medium of communication has turned into a battle ground for media of different states. The world has been narrowly divided into two halves as western and eastern. One half is subjected to terrorist region while the other is regarded as the exterminator of terrorism.

Agenda Setting
Argument
News reporting had never been extremely controversial as it had attained the information spectra to become more like a dialogue between a reporter and audience. Live feedback has become a more evident aspect of news reporting now. The contest to broadcast the most interesting news at the first place is now the only focus of media. The terrorist activities have also been put froth through video clips posted to news organizations through anonymous means.

What if media refuse to help Terrorist groups
News organizations print medium channels and most prominently journalistic bodies are under the terror of terrorist groups. Terrorist groups would never accept that its message is being misinterpreted by any news organizations. The most famous and horrific journalist killing attack was done in Pakistan. Daniel Pearl was killed in Pakistan as he was a journalist and wrote his journalistic reports for Wall Street Journal. He was taken under as a hostage and then was constantly tortured for months. His murder was recorded as was posted online. Murder of Daniel Pearl was a great turn in the field of journalism as it became complicated for the journalist to stay safe from the terrorist groups to reach them  (Boafo, Maguire,  Coudray, 2003).

Attained Functions of Terrorism through Media
Terrorism has taken numerous forms of functions through media. Terrorism had become anonymous that actually is an act of terrorism without any demands or cause by terrorist groups. 911 attacks are regarded as the biggest examples of anonymous terrorist attack as there were no demands made by terrorist groups. The fierce debate over media gave great importance to the terrorist attacks that almost devastated global village psychologically (Wilkinson, 1997).

Through the above analysis of a constant increasing toll of the concept of terrorism it can be said that more and more humanistic values can be drawn as null. Previously media provided common citizen to present a more unique perspective to society as a feedback of stimuli so that more and more freedom of speech is observed but now the content of media is greatly dependent upon the measures of terrorists groups. Media is also regarded as a helpless institute in a society because it neither can live without news aid from the terrorist groups nor it can survive as a medium of communication free from hold of terrorist groups as more and more concentration is observed.