If the gunman was Muslim, would we be talking about Las Vegas ‘terrorism’?
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/10/04/if-the-gunman-was-muslim-would-we-be-talking-about-las-vegas-terrori
Tweeting after the attack, Piers Morgan said, “If the shooter was Muslim, we’d call this a terrorist attack.” Our results suggest it’s not that simple: The effect of social identity on terrorism classifications is real (especially among respondents who self-identify as politically conservative) but modest compared to many of the other factors we analyze.
The broader problem is that the media treats Muslim perpetrators differently — they are less likely to be referred to as suffering from histories of mental illness and their actions more likely to be attributed to political motivations.
These results suggest media coverage profoundly shapes how the public comes to understand violent events. Many of the considerations we rely on most heavily when categorizing events as terrorism are relatively subjective — and require information that’s not available for days or weeks after an incident occurs.
This means pundits and policymakers have considerable leeway in how they choose to frame acts of violence — and our results show that what they report may shape public opinion long before the full details are known.