Perceived societal fear and cyberhate after the November 2015 Paris Terrorist Attacks

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ftpv20 Terrorism and Political Violence ISSN: 0954-6553 (Print) 1556-1836 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftpv20 Perceived Societal Fear and Cyberhate after the November 2015 Paris Terrorist Attacks Atte Oksanen, Markus Kaakinen, Jaana Minkkinen, Pekka Räsänen, Bernard Enjolras & Kari Steen-Johnsen To cite this article: Atte Oksanen, Markus Kaakinen, Jaana Minkkinen, Pekka Räsänen, Bernard Enjolras & Kari Steen-Johnsen (2018): Perceived Societal Fear and Cyberhate after the November 2015 Paris Terrorist Attacks, Terrorism and Political Violence, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2018.1442329 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2018.1442329 © 2018 Atte Oksanen, Markus Kaakinen, Jaana Minkkinen, Pekka Räsänen, Bernard Enjolras and Kari Steen-Johnsen. Published with license by Taylor & Francis. Published online: 09 Apr 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1906 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Perceived Societal Fear and Cyberhate after the November 2015 Paris Terrorist Attacks Atte Oksanen a , Markus Kaakinen a , Jaana Minkkinen a , Pekka Räsänen b , Bernard Enjolras c and Kari Steen-Johnsen c a Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland; b Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; c Institute for Social Research, Turku , Norway ABSTRACT Fear is one of the negative outcomes of terrorist attacks. Currently, there is a need to understand how societal fear and fear of terrorism might be shaped and induced by social-media discussions. This study analyzed how exposure to cyberhate was associated with perceived societal fear after the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. Demographically balanced data sets were collected from France, Spain, Finland, Norway, and the United States four weeks after the attacks. Cyberhate exposure was associated with higher perceived societal fear in all countries studied even when adjusting for confounding factors. This was particularly evident in the case of cyberhate related to terrorism. Hateful online communication after disruptive events may contribute to a social climate of fear and escalate societal uncertainty. There are, however, indications that social trust may bolster against perceived societal fear, hence enhancing resilience. KEYWORDS comparative study; fear; hate; Internet; social media; terrorism Hate is among the most powerful emotions, involving intense hostility, aversion, and anger associating to fear and a sense of physical or psychological injury. 1 Cyberhate (i.e., online hate, online hate speech) targets either individuals or groups of people with intensive and hostile statements and content. Cyberhate is a global phenomenon that typically takes the form of harassing, threatening, or insulting messages concerning, for example, sexual orientation, religious conviction, ethnic background, appearance, or gender. 2 Cyberhate can take many forms including cyber racism. 3 Hence, the definition of cyberhate is close to hate speech as described by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance: Hate speech . . . entails the use of one or more particular forms of expression—namely, the advocacy, promotion or incitement of the denigration, hatred or vilification of a person or group of persons, as well any harassment, insult, negative stereotyping, stigmatisation or threat of such person or persons and any justification of all these forms of expression—that is based on a non-exhaustive list of personal characteristics or status that includes “race”, colour, language, religion or belief, nationality or national or ethnic origin, as well as descent, age, disability, sex, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. 4 Examples of cyberhate range from verbal insults to very graphic manifestations of violence, including beheading videos by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on YouTube. During the early 2000s, hateful messages were distributed mostly via extremist white supremacist CONTACT Atte Oksanen atte.oksanen@uta.fiSchool of Social Sciences and Humanities, 33014 University of Tampere, Finland. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2018.1442329 © 2018 Atte Oksanen, Markus Kaakinen, Jaana Minkkinen, Pekka Räsänen, Bernard Enjolras and Kari Steen-Johnsen. Published with license by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. websites, such as Stormfront.org. 5 With the rise of social media, cyberhate became more of an everyday phenomenon. 6 In 2013–2014, the four-country comparative Hate Communities Project found that exposure to cyberhate (i.e., having witnessed hate online) was relatively widespread in the United States (53%), Finland (48%), Germany (31%), and the United Kingdom (39%), though there were some variations. Rates of cyberhate victimization ranged from 4 to 16%, and only a few young people produced hate content. 7 Exposure is higher in countries such as the U.S. that do not control or regulate hate speech or hateful messages online. 8 Efforts to regulate cyberhate and hate speech have been made especially in Europe. 9 The recent body of literature has shown that preventive measures should be applied because cyberhate may carry many negative consequences for those who see it and become victimized by it. 10 Cyberhate may also increase intergroup conflicts within society 11 and it may act as an incentive for hateful acts off-line. 12 Hence, cyberhate does not involve only what occurs on the Internet and social media, but has wider impact on society, public discourse, and public anxieties. 13 Cyberhate is a dynamic phenomenon; it takes different forms, it transforms quickly, and it generally follows societal trends and public discussion. Dramatic and disruptive societal events may also be one cause of cyberhate. Williams and Burnap showed how racial and religious cyberhate were triggered in the UK after religious cyberhate escalated in the wake of a murder by Islamic extremists in the UK. Hence, specific societal events act as trigger events that make certain forms of expression more common. 14 Terrorist attacks are a type of disruptive event that might be assumed to serve as such triggers for cyberhate, 15 and they are known to evoke personal and sociotropic fear. 16 To date, research has shown that both fear and hate are often expressed after these types of events, but there is no evidence whether exposure to cyberhate is associated with increased fear. Furthermore, there is a need to understand whether specific forms of cyberhate might be more harmful than others in some situations. In this five-country study, we investigated how exposure to cyberhate was associated with perceived societal fear directly after the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. On November 13, 2015, ISIS terrorists killed 30 people in Paris. The impacts of the attacks were not limited to France and Paris: They elicited major societal reactions throughout Europe and across the world, which makes it interesting to compare reactions across countries. We expect here that the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks had a triggering effect on cyberhate, and we hypothesize that exposure to cyberhate might instigate societal fear. Psychological vulnerability and cultivation of fear after attacks Disruptive events such as terrorist attacks have many impacts both at the psychosocial and the societal level. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, fear, and anxiety are frequently documented after both terrorist attacks and rampage shootings. 17 Rapid upticks in PTSD and acute stress reaction were recorded in Paris on the days following the attack. 18 Typically, it takes time for the affected communities to recover from the impact. 19 In New York, PTSD prevalence dropped after the September 11 attacks from 7.5% after 1 month to 0.6% after 6 months. 20 Other nationwide studies have indicated that the prevalence of arousal and anxiety and PTSD were high 1 and 2 months after the September 11 attacks but declined in the year following the attacks. 21 Similar findings were found after the London attacks. 22 2A. OKSANEN ET AL. An important lesson of the studies following September 11 was that the negative effects of terrorist attacks are not limited to direct victims and their families. Local people and even people living far away can be psychologically affected. 23 Thus, terrorist attacks have the potential to make fear a more widespread societal phenomenon. Studies show that terrorist attacks may be followed by an increase in both fear of personal victimization and more general societal fear related to the fate of the nation, even though the effects vary. 24 Moreover, there are indications that terrorist attacks create greater cautiousness, as expressed, for example, in lower trust and increased prejudice toward members of out-groups. 25 Media exposure has been shown to be an important factor in shaping people’s emotional responses. For example, studies conducted after September 11 have shown that the number of hours of footage viewed related to the attacks was associated with PTSD symptoms. 26 Besides PTSD and general anxiety, the footage may also have aroused fear of terrorism and more general societal fear. All three—PTSD, anxiety, and fear—partially overlap and involve aversive and activated states focused on threat. 27 According to Nellis and Savage, exposure to television news was associated with fear of terrorism after the September 11 attacks. Their findings support the media cultivation hypothesis from communication studies. 28 Proponents of this hypothesis emphasize that the more people spend time on TV sets, the more TV becomes part of their reality. 29 Terrorism is just one example of media effects and fear of crime. Criminological studies have documented how crime news can intensify fear and public anxiety. 30 Although such media effects were important during the TV era, the current social-media era has changed the ways in which information is distributed. Although there is no doubt that more news and information are now accessible and can spread more rapidly than before, 31 researchers disagree as to whether social media has led to more diversified or segmented news consumption 32 and to the development of filter bubbles. 33 The identity bubble reinforcement (IBR) model by Keipi et al. addresses how current social media develop bubbles of influence around us. The theory considers choices related to routine activities, computer algorithms, and social identity that people make online. Social media bubbles generally bring together like-minded individuals, but they may also involve that people are targeted by cyberhate because of their previous social media likes and preferences. In this sense, social media would intensify the exposure to online hate and possibly the experience of it. In addition, social media is always at least partly personal, and hence being exposed to shocking content on social media is likely to be more intimidating than seeing the same content in regular TV news or in the newspaper. 34 A recent large-scale Facebook experiment by Kramer, Guillory, and Hancock on 689,003 people entailed the manipulation of negative and positive posts. Decreasing the number of positive messages decreased positivity and increased negativity. Decreasing the number of negative messages had an analogous effect. This study concluded that emotions expressed on Facebook can affect people. 35 These results are understandable from the perspective of social contagion theory, which predicts the transference of emotional states within a social network. 36 After terrorist attacks different rumors are often distributed, and they may have an impact on people’s fear. 37 Social media is potentially very powerful compared to traditional media. The social bubbles or “echo chambers”may lead to polarization in public opinions and aggressive commenting between social groups. 38 Such echo chambers are also efficient in spreading fear. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 3 Subsequently, social media differs greatly from traditional media and allows faster potential exposure. It is characterized by rapid interaction going from peer to peer without official control. Social media also involves anonymity in some degree and interaction taking place within differs from face-to-face interaction. 39 This is considered to make different online groups more efficient in drawing people into following their activities and norms, compared to those offline. 40 In sum, impacts of disruptive events range from PTSD and anxiety and fear 41 to social discussions and potential intergroup conflicts. 42 Perceived societal fear is one of the negative outcomes of disruptive events, and it might be more intense when people are constantly exposed to material on terrorism on their social-media networks. The media cultivation hypothesis, the IBR model, and social contagion theory all indicate that when people are exposed to offsetting media or social-media contents, this might lead to increased fear. These all underline how people are being affected by other people’s opinions and the media content around them. Cyberhate especially entails very strong emotions, and it may lead to a negative spiral when expressions of hate foster more hate and more negative emotions. 43 Psychological and societal resilience after attacks Although studies have pointed out that PTSD, anxiety, and fear increase after disruptive events, most people are resilient to these negative effects. 44 Psychological resilience is defined as the ability to maintain stable and healthy levels of psychological and physiological functioning after disruptive events. 45 Analogically, societal resilience refers to the capacity of social communities to respond to and recover from the shock of disruptive events such as terrorism. 46 Both psychological and societal resilience are important in understanding the perceived societal fear after attacks. Resilient individuals and communities are not shaken by disruptive events and are expected to recover better. Previous research has shown that some population groups are more resilient than others to the potentially damaging impact of terrorism. High socioeconomic status, old age, and male gender are associated with resilience. 47 The explanation for these findings is in line with both psychological and sociological mechanisms. Higher socioeconomic position provides assets that facilitate the capacity to tolerate misfortunes during the life course. 48 Besides economic resources, availability of informal social support and strong social ties are assets that buffer against stressors. 49 The adult population has generally better chances of coping compared to children. 50 Girls and women reportedly experience disruptive events more intensively than boys and men. 51 In addition to this, however, women have been found to use coping strategies more actively than men, although they also appraise stressors more than men do. 52 Despite the fact that the concept of resilience is seldom used in criminology, it bears an analogy to fear-of-crime literature, in which females report higher levels of fear. 53 Results of fear-of-crime studies, however, paradoxically show that people who are older have higher fear of crime although they are the least at risk. 54 Also, in some studies conducted after September 11, older age groups showed more fear of terrorism. 55 Perhaps the most coherent view is provided in a 3-year follow-up study on the September 11 attacks by Scott, Poulin, and Silver. They found lower levels of anxiety and PTSD but higher levels of fear among older adults. 56 Scott et al. suspected that “older adults may experience event-specific anxiety or worry but that this does not necessarily spill over into their general emotional life.” 57 4A. OKSANEN ET AL. When it comes to societal resilience, trust in institutions and interpersonal trust are two central elements of functioning societies. 58 Institutional trust indicates how people value the ability of their institutions to protect society from disruptive events and prevent future attacks. Interpersonal trust is also highly important after disruptive events. Although some studies have noted an increase in social solidarity and social cooperation after terrorist attacks and mass murders, 59 disruptive events are also likely to cause societal tensions and intergroup conflict as well as to decrease out-group trust. 60 Uncertainty-identity theory predicts that in times of social uncertainty, people tend to identify more strongly toward in-groups and categorize social reality more rigidly and in a more exclusionary manner to overcome the experienced uncertainty. This may eventually lead to extremism, more conflicts, and less interpersonal trust. 61 Country differences in both vulnerability and societal resilience exist. First, some countries have faced repeated terrorist attacks and threats of terror. 62 This also means that terrorism in these countries may have had a more permanent societal impact, and the attacks might have influenced societal resilience. Studies have investigated, for example, areas subjected to long-term terrorism or civil war 63 and communities that have faced mass-scale shootings. 64 In addition, there are major country differences in social capital and social trust. 65 In line with Norris et al., 66 social capital is a central element of societal resilience; the hypothesis is that high-trust societies are more resilient. Based on these studies, it is reasonable to assume that high-trust societies are more resilient to terrorism and that it is important to investigate the consequences of terrorism from a comparative perspective. Although tragedies have specific outcomes in different countries, at least some of the impacts have been similar across the Western world. 67 Cyberhate is likely to play a significant part in creating tension after disruptive events and thus potentially weakens societal resilience. Discussions after terrorist attacks have involved, for example, Islamophobia and racism. 68 These discussions may also weaken the role of societal resilience as they directly disrupt the social cohesion within the community or society. Public policies may have an impact on these issues and provide material and resources for those spreading and sending hate messages online. After the increasing number of terrorist attacks in Western countries since the early 2000s, the position of Muslims has changed from an ethnic minority to a potential security risk group in many countries, such as the UK. 69 Counterterrorism has promoted fear of the next attack and contributed to a climate of fear. 70 In this sense it is necessary to address cross-national variations in societal fear and cyberhate exposure in Western countries. This study In this study, our aim was to show whether exposure to cyberhate is associated with the perception of societal fear after the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015 in France, Spain, Finland, Norway, and the U.S. The analysis focused on both general and specific forms of cyberhate, and we expected exposure to cyberhate, especially that related to terrorism, to predict perceived societal fear. This hypothesis is based on previous studies showing that people exposed to footage or discussions on terrorism show more distress, anxiety, and fear. 71 The hypothesis is also grounded in the perspective provided by the media cultivation hypothesis, 72 the IBR model, 73 and social contagion theory. 74 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 5 Although our primary focus was on the association between perceived societal fear and exposure to cyberhate, based on our literature review it was important to control for general-media and social-media use. 75 We also adjusted factors related to both psychological and societal resilience, including gender, age, institutional trust, generalized trust, and out-group trust. Based on previous research, we expected women and older age groups to show more fear. 76 We also expected high levels of general-media and social-media use to be associated with societal fear, especially if the content concerned the Paris terrorist attacks. Social trust is seen here as a confounding factor that can level offheightened fear experiences. In general, those who are more trusting of state institutions and other people are expected to report lower levels of societal fear. 77 Five countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were selected for the study on the basis of potential differences in reactions to the recent terrorist events: France, Spain, Finland, Norway, and the U.S. France serves as the starting point for this study, and it is assumed to have the highest levels of perceived societal fear due to the November 2015 attacks. Spain is the closest European comparison to France because of the repeated number of acts of terrorism in past decades. 78 Finland and Norway represent the Nordic welfare states typically characterized by high social trust of other people and state institutions. 79 Norway, however, had a severe terrorist attack in 2011 on a scale not seen in Finland. 80 Nonetheless, Finland has also had several small-scale tragedies, especially two notorious school shootings. 81 Therefore, Finland and Norway are interesting points of comparison in the Nordic regime. The U.S. was selected as an obvious point of comparison for the European countries. In recent years, the country has suffered several domestically and internationally influenced terrorist attacks. Methods Participants and procedure Demographically balanced data sets were collected from France (n=2113), Spain (n= 1661), Finland (n= 1003), Norway (n= 1013), and the U.S. (n= 1420) from December 10–15, 2015, only 4 weeks after the attacks in Paris. Participants were drawn from the panel of respondents who volunteered to participate in survey research. The panel was administered by TNS Gallup, and the sample was stratified to mirror the population of each country in terms of age, gender, and region. The quotas used allowed for small differences from official population statistics. Participants were 16–84 years of age (M FRA =41.61,SD FRA = 15.17; M SPA =41.51, SD SPA = 13.75; M FIN =47.68,SD FIN =17.07;M NOR = 49.63, SD NOR = 17.05; M U.S. =48.10, SD U.S. = 16.72), and approximately half of them were female (53.72% FR, 51.50% SPA ; 51.25% FIN ;48.47% NOR ;54.88% U.S. ). All participants filled out an online survey designed immediately after the Paris terrorist attacks as part of a comparative research project on societal resilience and terrorist attacks. The main survey was designed in English and then translated into French, Spanish, Finnish, and Norwegian by native speakers of these respective languages. The full survey includes attitudinal measures on activities after the events in Paris, social trust, attitudes toward immigrants, and terrorism prevention. The respondents completed the survey online, and the survey was optimized for computers and mobile devices. The survey was 6A. OKSANEN ET AL. tested before the full launch. The median response time was 8 minutes in France, Spain, and the U.S., 9 minutes in Finland, and 10 minutes in Norway. Measures Perceived societal fear was measured with a question: “If you compare the [respondent’s country] today with the situation before the Paris terrorist attacks, would you say that society is more or less characterized by fear?”The scale varied from 1 (a lot less)to7 (much more). See Table 1 for mean scores and standard deviations for each country. Perceived societal fear is used as a dependent variable in the regression models. Exposure to cyberhate was initially measured with a question: “In the past three months, have you seen hateful or degrading writings or speech online that inappropriately attack certain groups of people or individuals?”(yes/no). This question has been widely used in comparative research on cyberhate 82 and national studies on cyberhate. 83 Those who witnessed cyberhate during the past 3 months were asked a follow-up question: “Which of the following did the hateful or degrading material that you came across online relate to?”Participants were allowed to select as many answers as applied from the following list: sexual orientation, sex or gender, physical appearance, disability, ethnicity or nationality, religious conviction or belief, general hatred of people, and terrorism. Table 1. Descriptive statistics. France Spain Finland Norway U.S. M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD Societal fear (1 = low,7=high) 5.48 1.14 5.21 1.12 5.05 .97 4.77 1.06 5.23 1.21 n%n%n%n%n% Cyberhate exposure 777 35.67 852 42.71 552 57.26 661 67.52 712 52.62 Type of cyberhate exposure Sexual orientation 205 9.41 266 13.33 149 15.46 94 9.41 288 21.29 Gender 133 6.11 197 9.87 97 10.06 75 7.51 240 17.74 Physical appearance 161 7.39 179 8.97 97 10.06 95 9.51 188 13.90 Disability 76 3.49 83 4.16 37 3.84 42 4.2 118 8.72 Ethnicity 402 18.46 403 20.20 431 44.71 491 49.15 465 34.37 Political views 274 12.58 417 20.90 234 24.27 287 28.73 410 30.30 Religious conviction 441 20.25 498 24.96 367 38.07 452 45.25 484 35.77 General hatred of people 279 12.81 77 3.86 192 19.92 141 14.11 224 16.56 Terrorism 392 18.00 461 23.11 320 33.20 343 34.33 445 32.89 Control variables n%n%n%n%n% Gender (female) 1135 53.72 1066 51.50 514 51.25 491 48.47 779 54.86 Age 16–25 354 16.75 230 13.85 143 14.26 101 9.97 144 10.14 26–40 691 32.70 622 37.45 224 22.33 254 25.07 355 25.00 41–65 909 43.02 735 44.25 430 42.87 438 43.24 685 48.24 >65 159 7.52 74 4.46 206 20.54 220 21.72 236 16.62 Extensive social-media use related to the Paris attacks (yes) 701 30.11 788 38.05 75 7.48 66 6.39 354 24.93 Social-media use time (sqrt) 3.00 3.70 3.88 3.61 2.37 2.89 3.55 3.40 3.04 3.90 Media use time (sqrt) 5.36 3.45 6.09 3.39 6.50 3.01 7.63 3.15 5.65 4.24 Institutional trust 3.92 1.12 3.70 1.21 4.50 1.08 4.77 1.06 4.01 1.18 Out-group trust 3.87 1.39 3.89 1.27 4.15 1.34 4.39 1.24 4.16 1.30 Generalized trust 2.99 1.62 3.74 1.64 4.95 1.71 5.25 1.52 3.57 1.75 (1 = low,7=high) TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 7 Other variables in this study were treated as controls; they included: a) sociodemographic variables, b) social media and media use, and c) social trust. Gender and age were used as standard controls in the models. Age was categorized into four groups (16–25, 26–40, 41–65, and >65). The distribution of these variables is shown in Table 1. Extensive social-media use related to the Paris terrorist attacks was measured with a set of five questions concerning: a) getting updates or passing along information, b) expressing support and sympathy, c) talking about events and processing grief, d) getting information about marches or ceremonies, and e) discussing reasons for and consequences of the events. Answer options were: a) not at all, b) not very much, c) to some extent, and d) to a large extent. The five questions had good inter item reliability (α FRA = .91; α SPA = .92; α FIN = .90; α NOR = .86; α U.S. = .94). A dummy variable was created to indicate those who used social media related to the Paris terrorist attacks to a large extent (0 = no,1=yes). Daily time spent on news via social media was addressed with the following question: “On an average day, approximately how many minutes do you spend on news via social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.)?”A similar question was used for the time spent on news via media:“On an average day, approximately how many minutes do you spend on news via media such as TV, radio, and online/off-line newspapers?”For both, respondents indicated the amount of time in numbers. Due to the skewed distribution of responses square root transformation was used for both variables. Social trust measures include institutional trust, out-group trust, and generalized trust. All questions on trust were measured with a scale from 1 (not at all)to7(completely), and the measures have been widely used in social sciences. 84 Institutional trust was measured with six questions concerning trust of government, congress, or parliament, politicians, police, military, and courts. Interitem reliability was good (α FRA = .84; α SPA = .87; α FIN = .87; α NOR = .88; α U.S. = .85). For out-group trust, three questions were used to measure trust of people from other religions, other nationalities, and immigrants. The three questions had good interitem reliability (α FRA = .91; α SPA = .89; α FIN = .92; α NOR = .93; α U. S. = .88). Generalized trust was measured with the following widely used test question: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” Statistical analyses Descriptive techniques were applied to provide an overview of the data and key variables. The main analyses were run by ordinary least squares regression to predict perceived societal fear. We first tested how both general and particular cyberhate were associated with societal fear. These models were run separately for each type of cyberhate and for each county. The models were adjusted for age and gender. The second part of analysis focused on the relationship between societal fear and cyberhate related to terrorism. As we were mainly interested in the relationship between perceived societal fear and exposure to cyberhate, we only reported the final models including all covariates. Multicollinearity was not detected, but, because of the heteroscedasticity of residuals, we ran the models using Huber-White standard errors (i.e., robust standard errors). The models were run and reported separately for each country. The coefficients of the regression equations are presented in both nonstandardized (B) and standardized (β) form, and standard errors (SE) and statistical significances (p) are also reported. 8A. OKSANEN ET AL. 593–608; Samuel J. 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Rosenberger, “Media, Gender, and Fear of Crime,”Criminal Justice Review 40, no. 3 (2015): 322–39; Mirka Smolej and Janne Kivivuori, “The Relation between Crime News and Fear of Violence,”Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 7, no. 2 (2006): 211–27. 31. Albert-László Barabási, Linked: The New Science of Networks (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002). 32. Helen Margetts, John Peter, Hale Scott, and Taha Yasseri, Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Cass R. Sunstein, Republic.Com 2.0. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 33. Adiya Abisheva, David Garcia, and Frank Schweitzer, “When the Filter Bubble Bursts: Collective Evaluation Dynamics in Online Communities,”Proceeding of 8th ACM Conference on Web Science (Hannover, Germany, 2016), 307–08; Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (New York, US: Penguin Press, 2011). 34. Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 35. Adam D. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock, “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks,”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 24 (2014): 8788–90. 36. Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, “Social Contagion Theory: Examining Dynamic Social Networks and Human Behavior,”Statistics in Medicine 32, no. 4 (2013): 556–77; Emmanuel Monfort and Mohammad Hassan Afzali, “Traumatic Stress Symptoms after the November 13, 2015 Terrorist Attacks among Young Adults: The Relation to Media and Emotion Regulation,”Comprehensive Psychiatry 75, (2017): 68–74. 37. Innes et al., “Ten ‘Rs’of Social Reaction”(see note 13). 38. Andrei Boutyline and Robb Willer, “The Social Structure of Political Echo Chambers: Variation in Ideological Homophily in Online Networks,”Political Psychology, 38, no. 3 (2017): 551–69; Elanor Colleoni, Alessandro Rozza, and Adam Arvidsson, “Echo Chamber or Public Sphere? Predicting Political Orientation and Measuring Political Homophily in Twitter Using Big Data,”Journal of Communication, 64 no. 2 (2014): 317–32; Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 39. Teo Keipi and Atte Oksanen, “Self-exploration, Anonymity and Risks in the Online Setting,” Journal of Youth Studies 17, no. 8 (2014): 1097–113. 40. I. Awan and Brian Blakemore, eds., Policing Cyber Hate, Cyber Threats and Cyber Terrorism (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016). 41. Bonanno, Galea, Bucciarelli, and Vlahov, “What Predicts Psychological Resilience after Disaster?”(see note 13). 42. Echebarria-Echabe and Fernández-Guede, “Effects of Terrorism on Attitudes and Ideological Orientation”(see note 21); Debra L. Oswald, “Understanding Anti-Arab Reactions Post 9/11: The Role of Threats, Social Categories, and Personal Ideologies,”Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35, no. 9 (2005): 1775–99. 43. Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 44. Bonanno et al., “What Predicts Psychological Resilience after Disaster?”(see note 13). 16 A. OKSANEN ET AL. 45. George A. Bonanno, “Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive after Extremely Aversive Events?,”American Psychologist 59, no. 1 (2004): 20–28. 46. Fran H. Norris, Susan P. Stevens, Betty Pfefferbaum, Karen F. Wyche, and Rose L. Pfefferbaum, “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness,”American Journal of Community Psychology 41, no. 1 (2008): 127–50. 47. Bonanno et al., “What Predicts Psychological Resilience after Disaster?”(see note 13); Sandro Galea, Arijit Nandi, and David Vlahov, “The Epidemiology of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after Disasters,”Epidemiologic Reviews 27, no. 1 (2005): 78–91; Schlenger et al., “Psychological Reactions to Terrorist Attacks”(see note 23); Silver et al., “Nationwide Longitudinal Study of Psychological Responses to September 11”(see note 21). 48. Linda C. Gallo, Laura M. Bogart, Ana-Maria Vranceanu, and Karen A. Matthews, “Socioeconomic Status, Resources, Psychological Experiences, and Emotional Responses: A Test of the Reserve Capacity Model,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88 no. 2 (2005): 386–99; Jane D. McLeod and Ronald C. Kessler, “Socioeconomic Status Differences in Vulnerability to Undesirable Life Events,”Journal of Health and Social Behavior 31 no. 2 (1990): 162–72; Gill Windle, “What Is Resilience? A Review and Concept Analysis,”Reviews in Clinical Gerontology 21 no. 2 (2011): 152–69. 49. Sheldon Cohen and Thomas Ashby Wills, “Stress, Social Support, and the Buffering Hypothesis,”Psychological Bulletin 98 (1985): 310–57; Peggy A. Thoits, “Mechanisms Linking Social Ties and Support to Physical and Mental Health,”Journal of Health and Social Behavior 52, no. 2 (2011): 145–61. 50. Fran H. Norris, Matthew J. Friedman, Patricia J. Watson, Christopher M. Byrne, Eolia Diaz, and Krys Kaniasty, “60,000 Disaster Victims Speak: Part I. An Empirical Review of the Empirical Literature, 1981–2001,”Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 65, no. 3 (2002): 207–39; Fran H. Norris, Matthew J. Friedman, and Patricia J. Watson, “60,000 Disaster Victims Speak: Part II. Summary and Implications of the Disaster Mental Health Research,”Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 65, no. 3 (2002): 240–60. 51. George A. Bonanno, Chris R. Brewin, Krzysztof Kaniasty, and Annette M. La Greca, “Weighing the Costs of Disaster: Consequences, Risks, and Resilience in Individuals, Families, and Communities,”Psychological Science in the Public Interest 11, no. 1 (2010): 1–49. 52. Lisa K. Tamres, Denise Janicki, and Vicki S. Helgeson, ”Sex Differences in Coping Behavior: A Meta-analytic Review and an Examination of Relative Coping,”Personality and Social Psychology Review 6, no. 1 (2002): 2–30. 53. Ronald L. Akers, Anthony J. La Greca, Christine Sellers, and John Cochran, “Fear of Crime and Victimization among the Elderly in Different Types of Communities,”Criminology 25 (1987): 487–505; Callanan and Rosenberger, “Media, Gender, and Fear of Crime”(see note 30); Jonathan Jackson, “A Psychological Perspective on Vulnerability in the Fear of Crime,” Psychology, Crime & Law 15, no. 4 (2009): 365–90. 54. Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson, “The Risk Society in an Age of Anxiety: Situating Fear of Crime,”The British Journal of Sociology 48, no. 2 (1997): 255–66; Jackson, “A Psychological Perspective on Vulnerability in the Fear of Crime”(see note 53). 55. Joseph A. Boscarino, Charles R. Figley, and Richard E. Adams, “Fear of Terrorism in New York after the September 11 Terrorist Attacks: Implications for Emergency Mental Health and Preparedness,”International Journal of Emergency Mental Health 5, no. 4 (2003): 199–209. 56. Scott, Poulin, and Cohen Silver, “A Lifespan Perspective on Terrorism”(see note 21). 57. Ibid., 993. 58. Kenneth Newton, “Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy,”International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale De Science Politique 22, no. 2 (2001): 201–14; Norris et al., “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 17 Strategy for Disaster Readiness”(see note 38); Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 59. James Hawdon and John Ryan, “Social Relations that Generate and Sustain Solidarity after a Mass Tragedy,”Social Forces 89, no. 4 (2011): 1363–84. 60. Echebarria-Echabe and Fernández-Guede, “Effects of Terrorism on Attitudes and Ideological Orientation”(see note 21); Traugott et al., “How Americans Responded”(see note 16). 61. Michael A. Hogg and Janice Adelman, “Uncertainty–Identity Theory: Extreme Groups, Radical Behavior, and Authoritarian Leadership,”Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 3 (2013): 436–54; Michael A. Hogg, Arie Kruglanski, and Kees van den Bos, “Uncertainty and the Roots of Extremism: Uncertainty and Extremism,”Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 3 (2013): 407–18. 62. Gary LaFree, Nancy Morris, and Laura Dugan, “Cross-National Patterns of Terrorism: Comparing Trajectories for Total, Attributed and Fatal Attacks, 1970–2006,”British Journal of Criminology 50, no. 4 (2010): 622–49. 63. Shaul Kimhi and Michal Shamai, “Community Resilience and the Impact of Stress: Adult Response to Israel’s Withdrawal from Lebanon,”Journal of Community Psychology 32, no. 4 (2004): 439–51. 64. Pekka Räsänen, James Hawdon, Matti Näsi, and Atte Oksanen, “Social Solidarity and the Fear of Risk: Examining Worries about the Recurrence of a Mass Tragedy in a Small Community,”Sociological Spectrum 34, no. 4 (2014): 338–53. 65. Juha Kääriäinen and Heikki Lehtonen, “The Variety of Social Capital in Welfare State Regimes—A Comparative Study of 21 Countries,”European Societies 8, no. 1 (2006): 27–57; Newton, “Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy”(see note 58). 66. Norris et al., “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness”(see note 38). 67. Charles DiMaggio and Sandro Galea, “The Behavioral Consequences of Terrorism: A MetaAnalysis,”Academic Emergency Medicine 13, no. 5 (2006): 559–66; LaFree, Morris, and Dugan, “Cross-National Patterns of Terrorism”(see note 62); Dario Páez, Nekane Basabe, Silvia Ubillos, José Luis González-Castro, “Social Sharing, Participation in Demonstrations, Emotional Climate, and Coping with Collective Violence after the March 11th Madrid Bombings,”Journal of Social Issues 63, no. 2 (2007): 323–37; Nellis and Savage, “Does Watching the News Affect Fear of Terrorism?”(see note 24); Traugott et al., “How Americans Responded,”(see note 16). 68. Awan, Islamophobia in Cyberspace (see note 2); Williams and Burnap, “Cyberhate on Social Media in the Aftermath of Woolwich (see note 11). 69. Orla Lynch, “British Muslim Youth: Radicalisation, Terrorism and the Construction of the ‘Other,’” Critical Studies on Terrorism 6, no. 2 (2013): 241–61. 70. Michael C. Frank, “Conjuring Up the Next Attack: The Future-Orientedness of Terror and the Counterterrorist Imagination,”Critical Studies on Terrorism 8, no. 1 (2015): 90–109. 71. Bonanno et al., “Weighing the Costs of Disaster”(see note 51). 72. Gerbner et al., “Growing Up With Television”(see note 25). 73. Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 74. Christakis and Fowler, “Social Contagion Theory”(see note 32). 75. Hawdon, Oksanen, and Räsänen, “Exposure to Online Hate in Four Nations”(see note 5); Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 76. Jackson, “A Psychological Perspective on Vulnerability in the Fear of Crime”(see note 53). 77. Dag Wollebæk, Bernard Enjolras, Kari Steen-Johnsen, and Guro Ødegård, “After Utøya: How a High-Trust Society Reacts to Terror—Trust and Civic Engagement in the Aftermath of July 22,”PS: Political Science and Politics 45, no. 1 (2012): 32–7. 78. LaFree, Morris, and Dugan, “Cross-National Patterns of Terrorism”(see note 62). 79. Jan Delhey and Kenneth Newton, “Predicting Cross-National Levels of Social Trust: Global Pattern or Nordic Exceptionalism?,”European Sociological Review 21, no. 4 (2005): 311–27. 80. See Wollebæk, Enjolras, Steen-Johnsen, and Ødegård (see note 77). 81. Räsänen, Hawdon, Näsi, and Oksanen, “Social Solidarity and the Fear of Risk”(see note 51). 18 A. OKSANEN ET AL. 82. e.g., Hawdon, Oksanen, and Räsänen, “Exposure to Online Hate in Four Nations”(see note 5); Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 83. Matthew Costello, James Hawdon, Thomas Ratliff, and Tyler Grantham, “Who Views Online Extremism? Individual Attributes Leading to Exposure,”Computers in Human Behavior 63, (2016): 311–20; Atte Oksanen, James Hawdon, Emma Holkeri, Matti Näsi, and Pekka Räsänen, “Exposure to Online Hate among Young Social Media Users,”Sociological Studies of Children and Youth 18 (2014): 253–73. 84. e.g., Jan Delhey, Kenneth Newton, and Christian Welzel, “How General Is Trust in ‘Most People’? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem,”American Sociological Review 76, no. 5 (2011): 786–807. 85. Gerbner et al., “Growing Up with Television”(see note 25). 86. Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 87. Christakis and Fowler, “Social Contagion Theory”(see note 32). 88. Kramer, Guillory, and Hancock, “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks”(see note 31). 89. Jackson, “A Psychological Perspective on Vulnerability in the Fear of Crime”(see note 53). 90. Boscarino, Figley, and Adams, “Fear of Terrorism in New York after the September 11 Terrorist Attacks”(see note 42); Scott, Poulin, and Cohen Silver, “A Lifespan Perspective on Terrorism”(see note 21). 91. James Hawdon, Pekka Rasanen, Atte Oksanen, and Miika Vuori, “Social Responses to Collective Crime: Assessing the Relationship between Crime-Related Fears and Collective Sentiments,”European Journal of Criminology 11, no. 1 (2014): 39–56. 92. Schlenger et al., “Psychological Reactions to Terrorist Attacks”(see note 23). 93. Newton, “Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy”(see note 45); Norris et al., “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness”(see note 38). 94. Hogg, Kruglanski, and van den Bos, “Uncertainty and the Roots of Extremism”(see note 48). 95. Boutyline and Willer, “The Social Structure of Political Echo Chambers”(see note 38); Colleoni, Rozza, and Arvidsson, “Echo Chamber or Public Sphere?”(see note 38). 96. Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 97. See Wollebæk et al. (see note 77). 98. Arie Nadler and Ido Liviatan, “Intergroup Reconciliation: Effects of Adversary’s Expressions of Empathy, Responsibility, and Recipients’Trust,“Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32, no. 4 (2006): 459–70. 99. Hawdon, Oksanen, and Räsänen, “Exposure to Online Hate in Four Nations”(see note 5). 100. ECRI (see note 4); Jakubowicz et al., Cyber Racism and Community Resilience (see note 3); Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 101. Jakubowicz et al., Cyber Racism and Community Resilience (see note 3). 102. Frank, “Conjuring Up the Next Attack (see note 70). 103. Keipi et al., Online Hate and Harmful Content (see note 2). 104. Williams and Burnap, “Cyberhate on Social Media in the aftermath of Woolwich”(see note 8). Kaakinen, Oksanen, and Räsänen, “Did the Risk of Exposure to Online Hate Increase after the November 2015 Paris Attacks?”(see note 13). Notes on contributors Atte Oksanen, Dr. Soc. Sci., is professor of social psychology at the University of Tampere, Finland. Oksanen’s research focuses on emerging technologies and social interaction. He has published in a variety of areas including youth studies, drug and alcohol research and criminology. Markus Kaakinen, M. Soc. Sci., is a doctoral researcher at the University of Tampere, Finland. His research focuses on social psychology of information and communication technology with a current emphasis on adolescents’and young adults’social identities and networks in social media. Jaana Minkkinen (Dr.Soc.Sc.) is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Tampere, Finland. Dr. Minkkinen has published in a variety of areas including well-being theory, school well-being, TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 19 adolescents’mental health, health behavior, suicide studies and online hate. Her current research includes work intensification and employee well-being. Pekka Räsänen, PhD, Professor of Economic Sociology, University of Turku, Finland. His current research interests include the sociology of consumption, the use of information and communication technologies, and social science research methodology. Bernard Enjolras, Phd Sociology, Phd Economics, is a Research Professor and Director of the Center for Research on Civil Society and Voluntary Sector. at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo. Kari Steen-Johnsen, PhD., is a Research Professor and a Research Director at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, Norway. Her research interests include political communication, mobilization and participation, with an emphasis on the consequences of digitalization and the emergence of social media. Steen-Johnsen leads a comparative project that examines the societal consequences of terrorism in Norway, France, Spain, the US and Finland, Disruption, Social Capital and Resilience. 20 A. OKSANEN ET AL.