Duration of the Public Attention to Terrorist Attacks in the United States: Does It Depend on Political Opinion?

Abstract

The paper examines the dynamics of public attention to the terrorist acts that took place in the United States in 2012–2020, depending on the political preferences of the population of the state. Of the 7 terrorist attacks included in the review, 5 were committed by radical Islamists, one by a right-wing extremist, and one had no political orientation. The independent variable is the percentage of votes received by a Republican candidate in a given state in the elections closest to the date of the event (2020, 2016, and 2012 elections are considered). The author studies the dynamics of the number of online requests made on the topic of a particular terrorist attack by users from a given state in the Google search engine. The data was collected using the Google Trends service. The ratio of the number of requests on the first two days after the event to the number of requests on the fourth and fifth days is used as a measure of the decline in interest in the event. The initial hypothesis of the study is that a terrorist attack by a right-wing extremist will hold public attention longer in Democratic states, and a terrorist attack by radical Islamists in Republican states. The results confirmed the first part of the hypothesis, but were ambiguous with respect to the second part. Attention to Islamist attacks lingered longer in democratic states (to a lesser extent than for a terrorist attack by a right-wing extremist), but for four of the terrorist attacks considered in the work, the correlation of attention with the political position of the state turned out to be statistically insignificant. The attack, which had no political orientation, held public attention in the Republican states much longer. Thus, according to the decline in public attention, terrorist attacks are differentiated primarily not along the line «Islamist — racist», but along the line «politically motivated — not politically motivated». A possible explanation is that Democrats are generally more inclined to discuss political issues.

Acknowledgments. This research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant No. 20-11-20059 carried out at the Keldysh Institute for Applied Mathematics of RAS.