The Terror of Symbols: Individual Responses to Terrorism, Cultural Symbolism, & Media Narratives

I. ABSTRACT

In October 2014, 80 University of Nottingham students took part in an experiment designed upon interpretive cultural theories of terrorism. In the experiment, these students were presented with two scenarios of terrorist attacks upon the United Kingdom: the first target was a non-cultural landmark (Bradford city centre) and the second an important cultural landmark (Buckingham Palace). They were then asked to select from a number of potential responses for the UK government, and which they as citizens would like to see implemented in response to these scenarios. The group was divided into two sub-groups. The second group (“the media group”) was presented with the information about the attacks in the style of a tabloid newspaper, which included deliberate effects such as narrative indicators and action cues expected in media depictions of political events. The first group acted as a control. The study produced valuable empirical findings. Firstly, there was a marked increase in the number of responses to the second scenario, and a marked shift toward more aggressive and radical forms of response. Second, the media group escalated more sharply than the control, indicating a suitability of cultural targets to media attention and effects. A key relationship between perceived ideological bias of the media account and previously-formed political beliefs was also noted: if the media source corresponded with ideological predisposition, reaction would be heightened. If opposed, reaction became more subdued. No significant difference was found between male and female participants, adding to the growing empirical evidence suggesting that men and women do not share divergent views upon international or national affairs, at least in terms of security threats (i.e. terrorist attacks).

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II. Introduction

! The events of September 11th, 2001, catalysed a seismic paradigm-shift in the practice and study of international security. It spawned the infamous ‘War on Terror’ (chief among them the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003) which has cost the US government over $1.283 trillion (Belasco 2011: 2), and the US dedicated over $7.6 trillion on defence and homeland security in the decade after the attacks (Ibid). Given that the US and her allies are even now conducting targeted air strikes against jihadi militants in northern Iraq, this figure seems likely to keep rising for many years. Terrorism has become a much greater concern for average people than before the attacks happened. According to historic polls, in 2001, only 24% of US citizens replied they were ‘Very’ or ‘Somewhat’ worried that they or a family member would be a victim of a terrorist attack. After 9/11, this number peaked at 59% and remained steady between 40 and 50% up to 2013 (Gallup 2013).

! The landscape of intellectual enquiry has also shifted. As Silke notes: “Prior to 9/11, the study of terrorism was carried out on the periphery of academia” (Silke 2008: 46) but 9/11 has changed that reality. In 2000, under 200 publications were released on the subject of terrorism; in 2001 that jumped to over 1000, and close to 1800 in 2002 (Ibid: 29). This trend has not only affected security studies; it has also profoundly affected research in the physical sciences. Since 9/11, science funding directly related to security concerns has increased hugely, up to $7.3 billion annually in the US through federal research grants to areas such as “forensics, biodefense, infectious diseases, public health, cyber security, geology and infrastructure, energy, and nuclear weapons.” (Reich 2011).

! Terrorism is now a part of our everyday lives. The concept of Jihad is well-understood, and is acted out in films, television programmes, and literature on a regular basis. The threat of terrorism is used as justification for the right of governments to monitor the communications and electronic activities of its citizens. The media is full of stories of British men leaving to join fundamental Islamist organisations such as ISIL in Iraq and Syria. If not, there are stories of how another aid worker has been executed by them on

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camera as a warning to others. 9/11, undoubtedly, for better or worse, has profoundly shaped the modern world in which we live.

! However, little work of empirical significance or value has been undertaken to understand why these attacks caused such a profound paradigm shift. There has been much interpretive work written in the years following 2001, and some of these ideas are used in order to shape this study. Otherwise, academics and commentators generally accept that 9/11 “changed the world” and simply move on (Chomsky 2011: 15). This study, though hardly ground-breaking, is an attempt to gain deeper understanding of the effects of terrorism, and how 9/11 still manages to retain such a powerful hold upon our collective consciousness to this day. In order to achieve this goal, we will focus upon two key strands of theory: the effects of media presentation, and the implicit cultural codes that help citizens understand the social reality in which they live.

! By seeking to gain empirical results, we hope to be able to gain a deeper understanding of how terrorism affects individuals within our society, and by abstraction, how to counter the scourge of terrorism in the future.

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III. LITERATURE REVIEW

!

Symbolic Constructions, Social Codes and Cultural Landmarks

! Terrorism is a dramatic act. Not only in the sense of its destructive capabilities, but also in its performative qualities: actors performing acts of violence in order to communicate with a target audience. While drafted statements can help terrorists shape and contextualise their actions, the primary mode of communication is non-verbal: !! “We must consider terrorism as a form of not only political but of symbolic action. ! Terrorism is a particular type of political performance... [and] Performative actions ! have both a manifest and latent symbolic reference. Their explicit messages take ! shape against background structures of immanent meaning.”

(Alexander 2004: 91)

! Matusitz (2013) asserts that terrorism is merely one type of political language - one designed to influence, affect and persuade. As we have already noted, Alexander (2004) suggests that it is the common language of cultural symbolism through which terrorists communicate; destabilising and subverting social symbols to throw a target audience into shock, confusion, and of course terror.

! This is because cultural symbolism is an incredibly important part of how individuals feel connection to society and understand their world and history. Neal (2005) informs us that it is “through... symbolic constructions that we are provided with usable frameworks for shaping our memories and organizing them into coherent systems of meaning.” (Neal 2005: 212) In short, symbols allow us to construct images of the world around us, whether they be personal, or for our purposes, political. Therefore, if these symbols are significantly destabilised, then a public state of shock will ensue, as our shared ideas about our world - for example, power or security - are thrown into doubt:

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! “A state of shock is not just what happens to us when something bad happens... It’s ! what happens to us when we lose our narrative - we lose our story. When we ! become disoriented. What keeps us alert and out of shock is our history.”

(Klein 2009)When we lose our collective connection to our history and our shared narrative, we become shocked, disoriented and susceptible to - and often willing for - radical political action and change (Ibid).

! The question therefore is this: how do terrorists most effectively destabilise these shared social narratives and understandings? These narratives after all, are ethereal, non-solid concepts. However, these narratives and understandings, though implicit, do bear anchors within the real world. To understand these effects more fully, we must analyse what are without a doubt the most significant act of terrorism in the modern era: the September 11th 2001 attacks upon the United States.

! As previously noted, these attacks sparked ‘The War on Terror’ - supposedly a coordinated effort to eliminate terrorism around the globe. In turn it caused a sharp rise in security service capability and funding throughout the world; two controversial and lengthy wars led by the United States and its allies, with costs running into the billions of dollars; and is so iconic that it in the popular public lexicon it is simply known as ‘9/11’. As Noam Chomsky (2011) puts it, 9/11 “commonly held, changed the world.” (Chomsky 2011: 15)

! There is a strong consensus as to what made these attacks so iconic: the partial destruction of the Pentagon, and the total destruction of the famous Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. These were powerful social and cultural symbols, not merely in the United States, but globally. They were and are powerful images of American economic and military dominance and power: “The Pentagon and the World Trade Center are also powerful symbols, of economic and military might. They were targeted... because they are revered symbols around which the psyche of the country is tightly wrapped.” (Trivedi 2001) The destabilisation of these “revered symbols” was a powerful message. The attacks replaced these symbols of security and prosperity with memories of weakness and fear, in an attempt to subvert social narratives of American strength and values.

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! Osama bin Laden himself, a little over a month after the attacks, on October 20th, conducted an interview with the Al Jazeera news network in Afghanistan. When questioned about the attacks, he responded:

! “These young men, for whom God has created a path, have shifted the battle to the ! heart of the United States, and they have destroyed its most outstanding ! landmarks, its economic and military landmarks, by the Grace of God...

! But I mention that there are also other events that took place, bigger, greater, and ! more dangerous than the collapse of the towers. It is that this Western civilization, ! which is backed by America, has lost its values and appeal. The immense ! materialistic towers, which preach Freedom, Human Rights, and Equality, were ! destroyed. These values were revealed as a total mockery...”

(Bin Laden 2001: 107-112)

As we can see, the 9/11 attacks were about far more than just buildings and the number of dead. The attacks were designed to destroy the physical symbols of American (and, by extension, Western) power, to undermine ideas of American leadership and superiority and internal feelings of security within “the heart of the United States”. Alexander notes that “The terrorist-martyr-actors succeeded in destroying polluted icons of modern American capitalism, the Twin Towers... Western viewers witnessed objective destruction and experienced fears of personal annihilation and the center [sic] giving way.” (Alexander: 97)

! Given that the United States went on to lead an international coalition into an invasion of Afghanistan, and into Iraq in 2003, it would be hard to argue that 9/11 had, as Bin Laden suggests, reduced American leadership in the world. What it is more important to understand is that the attacks upon the World Trade Center and Pentagon were designed to destabilise and denigrate these social symbols and social narratives. We cannot speculate as to what the effect on the population would have been if the Towers and Pentagon had not been the targets of the attack. But we can see a marked increase in psychological symptoms and effects in the weeks and months after the attacks.

! Bin Laden, in the same interview, asserts that “American studies and analysis have mentioned that 70 percent of the American people are still suffering from depression and psychological trauma as a result of the incident” (Bin Laden: 112). While Bin Laden wildly

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overstates these figures, it is true there was a marked increase in stress-related illnesses diagnosed in the United States after the attacks. Schmidt (2002) notes that “over 4 million Americans faced exaggerated fears or generalized anxiety disorder” after 9/11(Schmidt and Winters 2002). More particularly, he informs us that:

! “In the weeks immediately after the attacks, a survey of 668 Americans by the ! Institute of Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, reported that 49 percent of ! participants felt their sense of safety and security had been shaken. And some 62 ! percent of respondents said they had difficulty sleeping. In another poll of 1,015 ! Americans conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood ! Johnson Foundation, 57 percent had taken steps to protect themselves—such as ! taking precautions when opening mail and avoiding public events.”

(Schmidt and Winters 2002)

Knudsen et al (2005) demonstrated that the psychological impact of the attacks was felt far further than the local population and those with emotional ties to victims. They discovered that the reporting or displaying of stress symptoms or depressive symptoms rose sharply in the United States in the month after the attacks, even in those areas geographically distant from the North-Eastern United States. Galea et al (2003) meanwhile, noted that 5.3% of New York City residents demonstrated symptoms of sub-syndromal post-traumatic stress disorder over 6 months after the attack.

! These examples clearly suggest two important points. Firstly, that psychological trauma was often long-lasting; and second, that this psychological trauma affected not only those directly linked to the attacks or witness - but the entire American nation. Therefore, there is a clear link between the deliberate attack of cultural symbols (in order to destabilise cultural codes) and significant and wide-ranging negative psychological effects.

! However, these are merely suggestions of the importance of cultural symbols. It is difficult to extricate their importance next to other factors. We must remember that “On September 11, the nation suffered the largest loss of life - 2,973 - on its soil as a result of hostile attack in its history” (9/11 Commission 2004: 311): the sheer numbers and the scale of destruction may be the key factor in the generation of fear experienced by the American people. Similarly, a lack of preparedness for such an atrocity on the executive level may be

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the source of the radical action taken by the United States after those attacks, as well as the psychological effects we have observed. As the 9/11 Commission sets out:

! “September 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the ! history of the United States. The nation was unprepared. How did this happen, and ! how can we avoid such tragedy again?”

(9/11 Commission: xv)

9/11 was a sudden, devastating attack with a level of killing and destruction not previously seen on United States territory. Suddenly, largely accepted ideas of public safety and security were thrown into sharp doubt; this alone could be the answer to the iconic status of the attacks.

The ‘moral asymmetry’ of Al-Qaeda’s attacks are a possible source of their effect upon the psychology of US citizens. Martha Crenshaw (1986) tells us that terrorism is considered as far more morally suspect than other acts of political violence, such as military invasion. An enemy that is at once invisible and seemingly capable of morally unacceptable atrocities increases the paranoia that one might be the next arbitrary victim of an unexpected attack (Williams 1998). The ‘background structures of immanent meaning’ - in this sense, implicit moral codes - are disrupted, undermining feelings of safety or security. The performative act non-verbally communicates that what we may consider as outside the realms of possibility in fact may not be so; Murphy et al (2004) noted that American voters valued feelings of public and state security more highly in the wake of 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’.

! Amidst this quagmire of the mixture of potential causes and effects, much interpretive work has been written about the importance of one effect or another. Little in the form of scientific enquiry has been carried out.

! Sunstein (2003) argues that when an attack is targeted at a particular group or target, we do not feel threatened; but when targets appear random, when any citizen feels like they indeed may be the next victim, then anxiety and fear quickly rise within the population. Given that terrorist attacks occur without warning, and are often directed specifically at crowded, civilian targets, this has important implications. Due to its randomness and destructive nature, individuals are “far more concerned about the risks of

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terrorism than about statistically larger risks they confront in ordinary life” (Sunstein: 121) and results in legal action upon “unjustified fear” (Ibid).

! A significant study carried out by Healy et al (2002) into individual reactions to attacks upon the United States enquired into the importance of cultural landmarks to the escalation of response. When asked to give individual responses to terrorist attacks upon cultural landmarks, their team discovered that subjects responded with lower levels of violence than attacks on military bases. (Healy et al: 455) However, this is by far from conclusive. Attacks upon military bases and targets are far more likely to initiate military responses; they are more overtly acts of war which invite warlike responses. And further, the variable which was being tested was the type of government which carried out the attack: democratic or non-democratic. (Healy et al: 455) Earlier in their findings, they discovered that subjects wished to initiate stronger responses to attacks by terrorist organisations than by governments (Healy et al: 448).

! The experiment described in this dissertation study is close in design to the Healy experiment, corrected to focus upon the importance of cultural landmarks in individual responses to terrorist attacks. However, what is importantly demonstrated by this experiment is that individuals hold certain ‘images’ of their social and political world which affect their decision making and opinions. The actors, and their targets, bear considerable significance in forming opinions and responses to events. Therefore, it is reasonable to hypothesise - based upon the literature - that attacks upon cultural symbols will generate escalated emotional responses from individual citizens. All that remains is to place this hypothesis under proper and precise scientific scrutiny.!

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‘Mass Mediated Terrorism’ & ‘Manufacturing Consent’

! “[Terrorism] has been a remarkably successful means of publicizing a political ! cause and relaying the terrorist threat to a wider audience, particularly in the ! open and pluralistic countries of the West. When one says ‘terrorism’ in a ! democratic society, one also says ‘media’. For terrorism by its very nature is a ! psychological weapon which depends upon communicating a threat to a wider ! society.”

(Wilkinson 2001: 177)

!

! Any discussion of terrorism in the 21st century would be woefully incomplete without in-depth discussion and analysis of the media, and how it affects our interpretation of events and the world around us. With the 24-hours news cycle, as well as constant access to new media via the internet and smartphones, media dominates our lives like never before. As these trends continue, it is only reasonable to assume that the ways in which we are shaped by media coverage will only increase. These are relatively pedestrian assertions, yet it is necessary to make them, if only in order to throw into sharp relief the ways in which our opinions and attitudes are shaped by news coverage, and of course, news coverage of terror attacks.

! Media coverage is about the generation of narrative. Reporters and editors take raw data and information, which “Once selected... are moulded into an engrossing story that offers an enticing mixture of compelling characters, dynamic plot, captivating settings, and other story elements.” (Monahan 2010: 5) Separate and often simultaneous events or data are placed into a linear narrative, allowing consumers to more easily process information and understand new ideas and interpretations. The power of narratives is displayed strongly by many cognitive experiments. In discussion of one such experiment, Uri Hasson (2010) wrote:

! “When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their ! brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain ! region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs. By simply

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! telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the ! listeners’ brains.”

(Hasson in Wildrich 2012, discussing Hasson, Stephens and Silbert 2010)

These stories, then, are powerful tools in which we construct our personal images of the world around us. These findings give new immediacy to Monahan’s later assertions:

“The images and information we acquire through our interactions with the media shape our perceptions of social reality... We use this information as a basis for activity, as a cue to how we should define the situation... the news remains essential to both the creation and the communication of the systems of shared meanings that people use to guide their actions and interactions.”

(Monahan: 5)

! The media, and these societal functions which it fulfils, are of critical importance to understanding terrorism in a cultural context. As previously discussed, terrorists seek to destabilise a population’s shared meanings and understandings about their nation and themselves. What is intriguing about these assertions is that the media is much more heavily involved in this process than would appear to the casual observer: not only does the media relay to us the destabilisation of cultural and social symbols; it is central to the creation and internalisation of these shared beliefs and values (Herman and Chomsky 1988) which terrorists later seek to attack.

! The psychological effects of media are debated at great length. Even a brief scan of the relevant literature informs us that the influence of news media has a profound impact upon the individual’s images of, and ideas about, the world. Studies such as Sloane (2000) demonstrate that media coverage inhibits rational decision-making, creating feelings of anxiety and distress even in subjects completely disconnected from the political violence which they are witnessing (Sloane 2000: 508). Gerbner et al (2002) propose the ‘Mean World Hypothesis’, arguing that frequent consumers of mass media often feel they are in more danger on a daily basis than is true. Other studies have also demonstrated a link between media consumption and stress-related illnesses such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (see Ahern, Galea, Resnick et al. 2002).

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!This powerful grip which the media seems to hold upon the psychological state of individuals - and even whole populations - is argued to be exactly why terrorists attack. Nacos (2002) asserts that:

! “In mass societies in which direct contact and communication between the ! governors and the governed are no longer possible, the media provide the lines of ! communication between public offices and the general public...

! most terrorists calculate the consequences of their deeds, the likelihood of gaining ! media attention, and, most important, the likelihood of winning entrance - through ! the media - [to] The Triangle of Political Communication.”

(Nacos 2002: 11)

Figure 1: The Triangle of Political Communication (Ibid)

! The media, then, are a key tool through which terrorists seek access to our collective understandings about social reality. They do so with the aim to alter or change those understandings: in order to cause psychological damage and cause public states of shock. This is what is termed as ‘Mass-Mediated Terrorism’ (Nacos: 3). However, what makes this aspect of the media doubly interesting to the study of audience response to terrorism is what is demonstrated by Figure 1: namely, the ways in which our own governments can also seek to shape our responses to such events, as well as violent non-state actors. As Nacos explains:

“Similarly, it is useful to speak of mass-mediated counterterrorism or mass-mediated antiterrorism, when governments use the mass media to enlist public support for

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military or other actions in the name of fighting terrorism, to communicate warnings to terrorist foes and to send assuring messages to their own publics.”

(Nacos 2002: 19)

! Before we discuss the ways and means in which governments or other actors may seek to influence public opinion through the media, we must effectively ascertain the kind of power that media coverage holds over the opinions and behaviours of populations. Herman and Chomsky (2008) assert that the media perform an institutional function, which ‘manufactures consent’ by emphasising certain events and patterns while ignoring others, in accordance with the values and interests of a societal ‘elite’:

! “The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to ! the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to ! inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior [sic] that will ! integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.”

(Herman and Chomsky 2008: 5)

The media acts as a conduit, guiding public opinion through what it chooses to broadcast and that which it chooses to omit.

! Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui (2009) found that public opinion and awareness is easily malleable through mass media campaigns. Through a period of nine years, they discovered that newspaper coverage of climate change had a sharp but short-term influence on public opinion on the issue (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui: 203). More particularly, awareness of climate issues was positively correlated and very closely linked to the amount of media coverage upon these issues (Ibid: 205). This significant effect upon awareness and opinion - and its very transient nature - gives an indication of the ways in which media coverage can guide our awareness of issues and our opinions of them. This is not helped by the considerable variation in the issues which the media discuss, even if they can be arranged into identifiable cycles (Downs 1972).

! This study may relate to environmental issues in particular, but it is demonstrative of a wider more important trend: that media coverage can lead to popular misperceptions about the society and world in which individuals live. Ipsos Mori (2013) identified that the British public were highly misinformed upon several key issues within society. They

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discovered that 51% of the British public believed that violent crime was rising, despite falling over 20%; that the Muslim population was at 24%, despite being just over 5%; that benefit money was being claimed fraudulently 34 times more than is estimated by the government (24% as opposed to 0.7%); and that 31% of the population were immigrants, as opposed to the true figure of 13%. (Ipsos Mori 2013). These wildly inaccurate beliefs were asserted to be largely caused by the media and political manipulation through the media. Hetan Shah, Executive Director of the Royal Statistical Society, argues that:

! “First, politicians need to be better at talking about the real state of affairs the ! country, rather than spinning the numbers. Second, the media has to try and ! genuinely illuminate issues, rather than use statistics to sensationalise.”

(Shah, in Ipsos Mori 2013)

! By focussing upon particular aspects of British social life, such as immigration, crime, and a ‘benefits culture’, the British media have altered the popular conceptions of social reality within the United Kingdom, to the point where they have become completely misaligned with all relevant data and information. This is often the work of politicians and members of the state, who seek to mould public opinion to support particular ways of thinking about and acting on particular issues.

! Further, Gerber, Karlan and Bergan (2007) discovered that voters provided with subscriptions to the Washington Post were “eight percentage points more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor than those assigned to the control group.” They also discovered smaller but marked changes in attitudes to a wide range of other social and political issues (Gerber, Karlan and Bergan: 1-5).

! These findings indicate very clearly how the media influence our perception of social reality. Through narrative focussing, the media implant beliefs and perceptions about the nature of the social world, and give us cues for action in response to that reality. What is even more suggestive is how closely linked the two become, and how it can alter our perceptions to such an extent that they become highly misaligned with reality. Holding this kind of power, it is not surprising that governments and other actors try to use the media towards their own ends.

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! However, these arguments are not unanimous. So far, we have discussed the power of the media through a narrative framework - the creation of casts of characters, engrossing scenes and dramatic actions, as well as continuing focus upon particular types of narratives. On the other hand, there are contrary schools of thought about what makes media coverage so powerful, and if it holds significant sway upon us at all.

! Virilio (2000) argues that in our new ‘information age’, the instant and ubiquitous coverage of major news events, along with differing expert opinions and speculation about future implications and progressions, results in a type of sensory and mental ‘overload’: we are unable to process information correctly, and this worrisome miscomprehension drives us toward both feelings of anxiety and radical action. These ‘information bombs’ destabilise public conceptions and attitudes, not by interpretation or narrative connection, but by a basic lack of comprehension from media consumers. We cannot understand, therefore our previous understandings are thrown into disarray.

! This kind of ‘information overload’ is perhaps an even more relevant understanding today, with access to the internet more prevalent than ever before: in 2013, over 36 million people accessed the internet every day in the United Kingdom, up from 16 million over the previous 7 years (Office of National Statistics 2013).

! A much more significant counter-argument exists about the effects of media coverage: chiefly that, it is of little true significance to citizens. Bray and Kreps (1987) assert that if individuals are aware of media bias, and actively ‘filter’ the information they receive, media bias is unlikely to have significant impact on voter beliefs. Della Vigna and Kaplan (2007) found that in a study of Fox News election coverage, media coverage and bias seemed to merely mobilise the “already convinced” - “latent” Republicans were roused into active voters, increasing popular Republican support, due to the channel’s pre-established demographic (DellaVigna and Kaplan: 20-21).

! Further, Chiang and Knight (2008) argue that empirical research suggests that “voters do rely on the media for information during campaigns but that the extent of this reliance depends upon the degree and direction of any bias.” (Chiang and Knight: i) Media consumers are aware of the pressures and biases implicit in media coverage, and use it as a detached source of information with which to make decisions. The opinions

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expressed through the media do have an effect, but it is a more limited, rational effect than many commentators believe (Ibid: 19).

! What these findings seem to suggest is that political awareness and education supply what Chomsky calls “intellectual self-defence” (Chomsky in Achbar and Wintonick 1993) against the portrayals of the media; it is a lack of political awareness which allows the media to shape popular public opinion, and cause heightened responses to events within the general population.

Important Variables: Political Beliefs

! We have already begun to establish how political beliefs alter the perception of terrorism and the media, but it is important to analyse these effects more closely if we are to build a true picture of individual responses to terrorist attacks. We have already discussed how individuals with low levels of political engagement may be more likely to be swayed by media bias. This may seem a trivial detail, but due to the fact that voter turnout in the UK has been consistently lower for the past three elections than at any other time since 1945 (UK Political Info: 2010); and that membership of the three main political parties (Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat) is now under 1% of the population - a historic low - (ONS 2014) it would be reasonable to believe that these effects may be high in the general British population. This could bring us to a closer understanding of why the British public seems so ill-informed about the true state of social affairs, as previously discussed (Ipsos Mori 2013).

! Thus what remains is to identify any significant difference in responses from different sides of the ideological spectrum: chiefly between conservative and more ‘left-wing’ attitudes. In lieu of repeating ad nauseam basic statements as to the well-known differences between these opposing sides, it may be more useful to discuss the deep-determinant psychological differences between the two sides. Not only will this save valuable space for discussion, it can also more effectively generate systems for producing hypotheses for our experiment.

! Many studies have been undertaken in order to determine whether these basic psychological differences may exist, and if so what form they may take. For the purposes

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of this study, it is highly interesting to note the differing attitudes to images that appear to be manifest between the two camps. Smith et al (2011) discovered that individuals identifying themselves as ‘conservative’ were much more sensitive to disgusting images (such as a man eating a handful of worms) than those who identified themselves as ‘liberal’ or otherwise.1 This held true even when adjusted for those who identified themselves as “disgust sensitive” (Smith et al: 1). Similarly, Oxley et al (2008) discovered that conservatives react much more sharply to threatening images than liberals. Those who experienced higher responses to these stimuli appeared to favour “defence spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War.” (Oxley et al: 1667). More importantly, they argue that:

! “the degree to which individuals are psychologically responsive to threat appears to ! indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social ! structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.”

(Ibid)These findings are supported by the differing brain structures of liberals and conservatives. Kanai et al (2011) discovered that liberals demonstrated increased grey matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, which “may be linked with tolerance to uncertainty” (Kanai et al: 678) while “greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala” (Ibid: 677) an area of the brain associated with the processing of fear (Ibid: 678). If these visual threats can be expanded into described or imagined threats, then this bears important leverage on the outcomes of our study. In any case, it seems conservatives are likely to respond more aggressively to terrorist threats upon the UK.

! Once this fear-response has been initiated, it is still important to understand the processes individuals on either side of the political divide will use in order to gauge what they believe to be appropriate options for their government to undertake. Janoff-Bulman (2009) asserts that conservatives and liberals have fundamentally divergent approaches to the solution of political and social problems. He describes this dichotomy as “Provide versus Protect” and asserts that:

! “Conservatism is avoidance-based; it is focussed on preventing negative outcomes ! (e.g. societal losses) and seeks to regulate society via inhibition (restraints) in the

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1 It is important to note that these studies were undertaken in the US, and therefore the term ‘liberal’ is used as a catch-all term for those on the ‘left’ of the political spectrum.

! interests of social order. Liberalism is approach-based; it is focussed on advancing ! positive outcomes (e.g. societal gains) and seeks to regulate society via activation ! (interventions) in the interests of social justice.”

(Janoff-Bulman: 120, emphasis added)

Those on either side of the political spectrum have fundamentally different ways of interacting with and processing the external world, and seemingly as a result, take dichotomous approaches to dealing with societal problems and ills.

Important Variables: Gender

! In the popular narrative of gender-oriented international relations theory, women have a radically alternate view of world politics and social relations as a whole. This is referred to commonly as ‘Standpoint Feminism’. In short, “the knowledge, concepts, and categories of world politics [are] predicated upon a norm of masculine behaviour and masculine experiences” (Smith and Owens: 282): therefore, the reactions of women to international affairs will differ markedly from the reactions of men.

! These assertions are largely based upon deductive reasoning, and often stress the importance of the female experience of motherhood (Ruddick 1989; Dietz 1985). As such, gender is considered to affect attitudes to international relations in the following way:

! “Competition, violence, intransigence, and territoriality are thus associated with a ! “male” approach to human relations, including relations among sovereign states, ! whereas moderation, compromise, tolerance and pacifism are seen as a “female” ! perspective on world affairs.”

(Tessler and Warriner 1997: 251)

In this view, one would expect women to react far less aggressively than men to terrorist attacks, and international security threats as a whole. However, there is strikingly little empirical evidence to suggest any significant differences between men and women in their understandings of international politics and security.

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Healy et al (2002) note that while “men responded with more violence than did women overall”, this was only the case in one out of four total experiments (Healy et al: 460). Conover and Shapiro (1993) found no significant changes in preference for military action between men and women. While they did find a slight difference overall in terms of support for the 1991 Gulf War, they noted that this divide was “by no means large enough to divide men and women into different camps, and they are certainly not large enough to warrant making the kind of statements differentiating men and women” within the mainstream narrative of gender studies (Conover and Shapiro: 1095). Tessler and Warriner themselves note, in their study of attitudes to the Arab-Israeli conflict in Kuwait, Egypt, Palestine and Israel, that “not only are gender-linked differences statistically insignificant, but there is for the most part a remarkable similarity for the attitudinal distributions of the two sexes” (Conover and Shapiro: 273). In one case, Egypt, they actually found men more likely to adopt more pacifist responses than women (Ibid).

! These factors indicate that despite deductive reasoning and inference, empirically little difference can be found between the genders when reflecting upon issues international or national security. Instead it seems, at the least, that political and social beliefs are of much greater importance in shaping reactions to security threats.

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IV. RESEARCH DESIGN

Overview

! The research undertaken in this study takes a random-sample controlled survey approach. 80 University of Nottingham students, randomly sampled, are given two fictional scenarios depicting attacks against the United Kingdom. The first takes place in a non-major, provincial city centre, the other in a major cultural landmark. These scenarios are non-sequential; i.e Scenario B is not a follow-up attack to Scenario A. The attacks are undertaken by a fictional Radical Islamist group - ‘The Caliphate’ - largely based in a fictional Middle-Eastern state, ‘Waziristan’.

! Once these scenarios are described to the subjects, they are presented with a list of potential responses that the British government may choose to undertake - ranging from ‘No Response’ to ‘Launch a thermonuclear strike’. The subjects are asked to give their opinions as to what actions they would wish to see their government undertake. They are asked to give their opinion as citizens, as opposed to imagining themselves as part of the executive branch of government.

! These responses are inserted into the data model, and responses to Scenarios A and B are compared. Shifts in the number of actions selected - and their severity - are marked as ‘Escalation’, resulting from the variable of whether the target of the attack was a cultural landmark.

! The second variable tested was whether there was escalation dependent on the presentation of these facts. The test group were sub-divided into two groups of forty. The first group (‘Experiment 1’) acted as a control group, while the other (‘Experiment 2’) were provided the same information, instead presented in the style of a tabloid newspaper. The responses from the separate groups were compared, to understand whether media representation creates a more heightened response.

! These responses are then cross-referenced with responses from a preceding personal information questionnaire, asking the subject to identify their gender; age; degree subject; study level (undergraduate or postgraduate); religious beliefs; political beliefs; and

21

whether they are a UK citizen. If the subject is not a UK citizen, they are asked whether they are an EU citizen, and for how many years they have been resident in the United Kingdom: from under a year to over 5 years. All answers were given anonymously, and all fields were provided with a ‘Prefer not to say’ response.

! After all these results have been analysed and collected, they are used to see if they generate any conclusions as to the true effects of cultural symbolism, of media bias, and other key variables such as political beliefs and gender.

Design Choices: Problems & Implications

! Given the fact that only two key variables are being tested, the way that the survey is designed - and more particularly, the content of each of the scenarios, and how they are presented - is of vital importance to the significance of any results or findings generated from the study. Important choices had to be made, while potential defects had to counteracted or, at worst, accepted and noted.

! The main potential defect of a study such as this one is the suspension of disbelief. It is certainly not controversial to say that if either of these scenarios were in fact to take place, the media coverage which would follow these events would be intense and far-reaching. The real-world damage caused by such events - if they truly took place - would far outstretch the emotional responses which could be generated in these experiment conditions. Knowing that these attacks did not take place, and they are being presented in experiment conditions, may cause subjects to behave in a far more detached manner towards their responses as would actually be the case. In a study of this type, there is no truly effective way to counter-act this problem, so these could result in very little escalation of response between scenarios. On the other hand, because of this problem, even a small amount of escalation could be indicative of a much more forceful trend for real-world terrorist attacks.

! The second issue with which to contend is the sheer amount of information, footage and coverage that would be generated by such events. It would of course be impossible to recreate the true amount of information, argument and opinion that individuals would be subject to if these attacks truly did happen. This information would often be repetitive and distressing in nature, often covered for several weeks and months. It would be impossible

22

to recreate what Virilio called ‘The Information Bomb’ in such experiment conditions, nor were there the resources to effectively replicate such coverage, with multimedia such as video or photography.

! As a result, in Experiment 2, a narrative approach was undertaken: the same basic information provided (number killed, place attacked, terrorist demands etc.) was the same, but was presented in a heightened narrative form. Narrative indicators were added, for example, describing the terrorists and their attacks as “evil” and providing cues for action, demanding to know how the government planned to keep British citizens safe. Full amendments to the scenarios can be seen in the next section. We seek to test whether the presentation of these facts in a more stylised narrative generates more heightened responses from the subjects. This was the first of several design choices which needed to be made.

Design Choices: Attack Targets

! The most significant, perhaps, were the choice of targets presented to the subjects. Firstly, the non-cultural landmark target had to be selected. This was difficult, as all places and settings carry emotive and symbolic value. Upon reflection, it was decided that the attack would take place in the city centre of Bradford, Yorkshire, outside an unnamed popular chain store. Bradford was chosen for the following reasons: first, it is a city with a higher-than-average British Muslim population (Telegraph & WikiLeaks 2011) which makes it perhaps more believable as a centre of radical Islamist activity; this is particularly because Bradford is not commonly associated with the major economic and cultural centres outside of London, such as Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle or Bristol (among others).

! For the second scenario, it was quickly decided that the target would be located within London. This is for two reasons. First, it is the home of the most famous cultural landmarks in the United Kingdom, such as the Houses of Parliament, Shakespeare’s Globe, St Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace. London also, as the capital city, holds a unifying cultural and social position within the United Kingdom. In 2011, London generated over twice as much tourism income than any other UK region (ONS 2014) demonstrating its cultural centrality to the United Kingdom as a whole. The question therefore was which cultural landmark should be the target of the attack in Scenario B.

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! Given the problem of suspension of disbelief inherent in this kind of experiment (as previously discussed) selecting the most appropriate landmark was imperative: in short, finding the landmark most likely to generate emotive escalation within the sample. The candidates were shortened to two main choices: the Houses of Parliament, or Buckingham Palace. After careful consideration, Buckingham Palace was selected. This decision was reached by studying the approval ratings of the institutions associated with each site.

! Whereas the government and political parties rank extremely low in the estimation and approval of the general population - routinely under 35% approval - (Ipsos Mori 2014), the Royal Family enjoys quite the opposite. A recent survey found that Prince William and Prince Charles - the heirs to the throne - enjoyed approval ratings of over 80%, while the Queen herself enjoyed an approval rating of over 90% (Ipsos Mori 2012). While these polls are two years out of date, the lack of severe scandal or negative press for the Royal Family suggested that these figures remained largely the same at the time of writing.

! It seemed, with this information, that Buckingham Palace was the ideal choice for the experiment - it would negate political apathy against the government skewing potential results, while maximising positive associations with the landmark, and would be instantly recognisable to any non-UK citizen subjects in the sample. For reasons of parity, and to minimise the amount of variables, it is highlighted in Scenario B that none of the Royal Family were in residence at the time of the attack. This was done to avoid adding any royal victims which may have also skewed any findings.

Design Choices: Potential Responses

! It would of course be impossible to list all potential actions that a Western government could take in response to such attacks. Furthermore, these highly nuanced options would be extremely difficult - if not impossible - to operationalise in order to generate useful results. Accordingly, broad definitions were used, and separated only if significant differences between similar options could be foreseen. Seventeen potential responses were chosen on this criteria (a full list can be seen in the next section) and a higher number of responses would indicate escalation in the face of a cultural-target being attacked.

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! Yet it was important to address how the varying severity of response could affect our understanding of these escalations. Given the wide range of responses, it was important to operationalise in some way their differing severity. A numerical method was initially proposed, listing each response in order of severity, in order to achieve an aggregate severity score. However, this produced two problems: first, the ranking of each response in terms of severity is open to a wide range of interpretation, even to the point of arbitrariness; and second, asserting that a ‘Nuclear Strike’ answer may give a score of 17 and an answer of ‘Declare Martial Law’ a score of 16 would be to wildly underestimate the catastrophic damage and political outrage that would undoubtedly follow such an act. A more open numerical range was suggested, with ‘Thermonuclear Strike’ listed as 100 and ‘No Response’ as 0 - yet this again exposed these values to even higher levels of subjective interpretation than before.

! As a result, the responses were listed in a tentative order relative to their extraordinary nature. Actions that the government would be more expected to take were placed higher up the list, with more unusual, radical or extraordinary responses listed lower. ‘No Response’ headed the list, due its passive nature, though this indeed would be a highly unusual response of a Western government. The order selected was as follows:

No Response

Condemn the Attacks

Tighten security in transport hubs (train stations, airports etc.)

Increase security in public places (football grounds, shopping centres etc.)

Seek Economic Sanctions Against Waziristan

Increase police presence upon the streets in the UK

Tighten Border Controls

Increase funding to the Security Services

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Increase State Surveillance Powers

Lengthen Detention Without Charge for Terror Offenses

Launch one-off Covert Ground Operations against the Caliphate in Waziristan

Launch Air Strikes Against Caliphate positions in Waziristan

Launch a Ground Invasion of Waziristan

Arm police with guns in the UK to protect citizens

Fully close the UK border

Declare Martial Law

Launch a thermonuclear strike upon Waziristan

In the experiment, these answers were placed in a random order, so as to not reveal the order to the subjects, and skew the findings from subjects carefully avoiding heightened responses due to self-awareness during the experiment. It is to be stressed that this order is only a tentative one to illustrate any general trends towards more extreme forms of action selected by subjects to each scenario.

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Design Choices: Subjects

! This study is largely inspired by an experiment carried out in 1997 and 1998 by Healy et al (2002), studying the individual responses of University of Colorado students to fictional attacks against the United States. Though this study is simplified and changed to focus attention upon desired variables, the number of participants in each unique experiment was 40 (Healy et al: 447). This was enough to produce statistically significant results for publication in a major journal, so by extension it is reasonable to assert that statistically significant results will be produced by our experiment. Furthermore, if no statistically significant change is detected between responses to Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, then the scores may be aggregated to produce larger quantities of data from which to draw conclusions.

! The make-up of the sample consists solely of University of Nottingham students. This is largely due to the constraints of time, and resources available. This may limit our ability to generalize any findings to the wider population, but due to the relative mix of political views and study interests, a reasonable spectrum of attitudes is taken into account. Furthermore, as higher numbers of the British population become university graduates, (12 million and rising (ONS 2013)) this study will be widely applicable to the population as a whole.!

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EXPERIMENT ONE

28

Research Project Information Sheet

David Porter - MA Research Project

! Thank you for agreeing to take part in this piece of research. Please read this information sheet carefully and make sure you understand how the research will be carried out before continuing. If you have any questions, please ask now, as it will be easier to answer your queries before the experiment begins. You may, however, request assistance or to withdraw from the experiment at any time before the experiment is completed.

The questionnaire you are about to receive is divided into three parts:

1. The first section is a brief form which asks you to provide personal information about yourself. The categories include gender, age, religion (if any), political affiliations (if any), whether you are a UK citizen, what course you are studying, whether you are a postgraduate or an undergraduate, etc. As previously mentioned, all these answers will remain completely anonymous, but all questions come with a ‘Prefer not to say’ option.

2. Once this is complete, please turn over to the section named ‘Experiment’. You will be provided with an account of a fictional terrorist attack upon the United Kingdom. Once you have read about the scenario, you will be asked to give your opinion on how the UK government should respond. There will be a number of options to choose from, ranging from No Response to Thermonuclear Strike. Please select the responses most appropriate to you.

3. You will then be presented with another fictional scenario, and presented with the same questions. Once again you will be asked to briefly explain your choices below. PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE YOUR PREVIOUS RESPONSE. Please select your initial reaction to the questions, for the purposes of the experiment it is best not to over-think your response. Please mark your initial reaction.

Once you have completed all the sections please return your questionnaire to the research team. It will be securely kept away until the results are tabulated. These answers are anonymous.

Thank you for taking part.

Sincerely,

The Research Team

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Personal InfoPlease circle the answer most relevant to you, or write your answer. All answers are anonymous.

1. What is your Gender?

Male Female Other Prefer not to say

2. What is your age?

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 or above Prefer not to say

3. Are you an undergraduate or Postgraduate?

Undergraduate Postgraduate Prefer not to say

4. What degree are you studying?

…………………………………………………………………..

5. What best describes your religious views (if any)?

Christianity Islam Buddhism Hinduism Atheism Judaism

Agnosticism Don’t know Prefer not to say

6. Which of these best describes your political views?

Conservative Labour Liberal Democrats Green Party

UKIP Right-Wing Left Wing Centrist

Don’t know Other (please specify……………………….) Prefer not to say

7. Are you a UK citizen? (If YES, turn to Scenario A)

Yes No

8. If no, are you an EU citizen?

Yes No

9. If no to Question 7, how long have you lived in the UK?

Under 6 months 6-12 months 1-2 years 2-3 years

3-4 years 4-5 years Over 5 years

Thank you. Please turn to Scenario A.

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Scenario A

The date is 20th December 2014

Time: 11.32 am

Location: Bradford

This morning at around 11.30, a car bomb exploded in Bradford town centre, killing 17 people, leaving 4 in a serious condition and injuring approximately 50. The driver ran over 2 men before detonating his Improvised Explosive Device (IED) outside the store of a major shopping chain.

A Fundamentalist Islamic group naming itself ‘The Caliphate’ have claimed responsibility for the attack, threatening further attacks upon the United Kingdom if British forces do not withdraw from operations in Afghanistan, and cease its ‘undermining and exploitation of the Muslim World’.

The group is known to have its heaviest concentration of cells and personnel in Waziristan, though to this point the Waziristani government have been unable - or unwilling - to act.

As a citizen, which of the following actions should the UK government take to protect the country from further attacks?

(Please circle which answers are most appropriate to you)

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No Response!

Condemn the Attacks!

Tighten Border Controls!Seek Economic Sanctions Against Waziristan


Declare Martial Law!! !












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Scenario B

This afternoon, a bomb exploded inside Buckingham Palace, killing 17, placing 5 more in a serious condition, and injuring approximately another 50. The palace was open for tours, though the Royal family were not present. The facade of the palace has been severely damaged, leaving it unusable. A suicide bomber had just gained entry when he detonated his suicide jacket, killing those nearby and injuring others with shrapnel.

A Fundamentalist Islamic group naming itself ‘The Caliphate’ have claimed responsibility for the attack, threatening further attacks upon the United Kingdom if British forces do not withdraw from operations in Afghanistan, and cease its ‘undermining and exploitation of the Muslim World’.

The group is known to have its heaviest concentration of cells and personnel in Waziristan, though to this point the Waziristani government have been unable - or unwilling - to act.

As a citizen, which of the following actions should the UK government take?


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No Response!
















35

EXPERIMENT TWO

36

Research Project Information Sheet

David Porter - MA Research Project

! Thank you for agreeing to take part in this piece of research. Please read this information sheet carefully and make sure you understand how the research will be carried out before continuing. If you have any questions, please ask now, as it will be easier to answer your queries before the experiment begins. You may, however, request assistance or to withdraw from the experiment at any time before the experiment is completed.

The questionnaire you are about to receive is divided into three parts:

1. The first section is a brief form which asks you to provide personal information about yourself. The categories include gender, age, religion (if any), political affiliations (if any), whether you are a UK citizen, what course you are studying, whether you are a postgraduate or an undergraduate, etc. As previously mentioned, all these answers will remain completely anonymous, but all questions come with a ‘Prefer not to say’ option.

2. Once this is complete, please turn over to the section named ‘Experiment’. You will be provided with an account of a fictional terrorist attack upon the United Kingdom. Once you have read about the scenario, you will be asked to give your opinion on how the UK government should respond. There will be a number of options to choose from, ranging from No Response to Thermonuclear Strike. Please select the responses most appropriate to you.

3. You will then be presented with another fictional scenario, and presented with the same questions. Once again you will be asked to briefly explain your choices below. PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE YOUR PREVIOUS RESPONSE. Please select your initial reaction to the questions, for the purposes of the experiment it is best not to over-think your response. Please mark your initial reaction.

Once you have completed all the sections please return your questionnaire to the research team. It will be securely kept away until the results are tabulated. These answers are anonymous.

Thank you for taking part.

Sincerely,

The Research Team

37

Personal InfoPlease circle the answer most relevant to you, or write your answer. All answers are anonymous.

1. What is your Gender?

Male Female Other Prefer not to say

2. What is your age?

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 or above Prefer not to say

3. Are you an undergraduate or Postgraduate?

Undergraduate Postgraduate Prefer not to say

4. What degree are you studying?

…………………………………………………………………..

5. What best describes your religious views (if any)?

Christianity Islam Buddhism Hinduism Atheism Judaism

Agnosticism Don’t know Prefer not to say

6. Which of these best describes your political views?

Conservative Labour Liberal Democrats Green Party

UKIP Right-Wing Left Wing Centrist

Don’t know Other (please specify……………………….) Prefer not to say

7. Are you a UK citizen? (If YES, turn to Scenario A)

Yes No

8. If no, are you an EU citizen?

Yes No

9. If no to Question 7, how long have you lived in the UK?

Under 6 months 6-12 months 1-2 years 2-3 years

3-4 years 4-5 years Over 5 years

Thank you. Please turn to Scenario A.

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DEATH COMES TO THE STREETS

Horror and destruction came to the streets of Britain today in a despicable act of cowardice and violence. It was a day almost like any other. Families together doing last minute-Christmas shopping, friends sharing a coffee to fight away the cold. But the Christmas joy was shattered upon the streets of Bradford, taking the lives of 17 mothers, fathers and children - and leaving dozens more injured - in a suicide bombing attack by Islamic extremists.

The scene was catastrophic as the attacker drove his vehicle into two innocent bystanders before detonating an Improvised Explosive Device stored in the car. Those nearby were covered in shrapnel and broken glass as the shockwave caused huge damage to the buildings around. The scene was quickly cordoned off to help ambulance personnel tend to the wounded, as police began a search for potential follow-up attacks in the coming days and weeks.

Mere hours after the explosion, a group naming themselves ‘The Caliphate’ claimed responsibility for the attack, threatening further destruction unless the UK pulled its brave servicemen and women out of Afghanistan, and ceased its “undermining and exploitation of the Muslim world.” The murderous group is largely based in Waziristan, and experts have told this newspaper that while Caliphate presence is heavy in the region, the Waziristani government to this point have been unable - or unwilling - to act.

The country awaits the response of the government, and how they plan to protect the citizens of the UK from further harm.

-----------------------------------



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No Response!
















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DEATH AT THE PALACE

Yesterday, just after 3 o’clock, Buckingham Palace - a national treasure and the home of the British monarchy - was shredded by a despicable act of violence, leaving 17 dead, and over 50 injured, many seriously. Enjoying a Christmas day out at the famous palace, lives were torn to shreds by the evil actions of Islamic extremists.

Just after gaining entry to the residence, a suicide bomber detonated his device, killing those around and injuring others with shrapnel from the explosion, defacing the palace, and leaving a proud symbol of British history a burning reminder of the innocent lives lost to the evil actions of our enemies. The scene was quickly cordoned off to help ambulance personnel tend to the wounded, as police began a search for potential follow-up attacks in the coming days and weeks.

Mere hours after the explosion, a group naming themselves ‘The Caliphate’ claimed responsibility for the attack, threatening further destruction unless the UK pulled its brave servicemen and women out of Afghanistan, and ceased its “undermining and exploitation of the Muslim world.” The murderous group is largely based in Waziristan, and experts have told this newspaper that while Caliphate presence is heavy in the region, the Waziristani government to this point have been unable - or unwilling - to act.

The country awaits the response of the government, and how they plan to protect the citizens of the UK from further harm.

------------------------------------



41

No Response!
















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V. Hypotheses

! This experiment was carried out in order to test a key number of pre-established hypotheses. These hypotheses are based upon the best-available evidence, and upon the arguments which were found most convincing within the body of evidence. Where results go against our previous expectations, these are identified and alternative explanations are suggested.

Hypothesis 1:Scenario B will draw a higher number and more radical responses than Scenario A

in both Experiment One and Experiment Two

Because of the evidence already discussed, we consider that the attacks upon the cultural landmark will draw more heightened responses than the attack upon the non-cultural landmark. This increase is not expected to be dramatic, but even small escalations in response from B to A can be considered significant: this is because of the ways in which the experiment invites participants

Hypothesis 2:Experiment Two will draw a higher number and more radical responses than

Experiment One.

With the use of media narratives, characterization, and cues for action, we predict a small but marked rise in responses from participants taking part in Experiment 2 than those in Experiment 1. This is for both Scenario A and B. These effects are predicted to be small as with the resources at disposal it would be impossible to accurately reflect the scale of media coverage that would be generated if events such as these should truly occur.

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Hypothesis 3:Participants identifying as being political conservatives (Conservative, UKIP, Right Wing) will select higher numbers of, and more radical responses to, both A and B

than others (Centrist/Left Wing)

Due to the findings and hypotheses of Smith et al (2011), Kanai et al (2011), Oxley et al (2008) and Janoff-Bulman (2009) we predict those participants that identify with conservative ideologies (Conservative, UKIP or Right Wing) to demonstrate higher than average responses to all scenarios. In order to ‘prevent negative outcomes’ inflicted by the ‘outgroup’, conservatives are predicted to favour greater border control and defence spending than those of other ideologies. These expectations further push us to predict:

Hypothesis 4:Participants identifying as political conservatives (Conservative, UKIP, Right Wing) will demonstrate higher escalation in responses from A to B than others (Centrist/

Left Wing)

Hypothesis 5:Female participants are not expected to respond in a less conflictual manner than

male participants

Despite popular and interpretive suggestions of differing political responses from men and women - particularly in the case of international conflict - we predict that there will be no significant difference between the responses of male and female participants in either experiment. This is due to the findings of both Tessler and Warriner (1997) and Conover and Shapiro (1993) which reflect no statistical difference between male or female citizens over responses to international conflict. While there may be a small correlation, we expect this to be far less significant than the impact of political beliefs upon individual responses to the scenarios.

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VI. Findings and Discussion

Participants

! In total, this study was undertaken by 80 University of Nottingham students, equally divided between Experiment One and Experiment Two. In Experiment One, our sample included 18 females, 21 males, and one participant who preferred not to specify their gender. In this sample were: 6 Conservative supporters; 5 Labour supporters; 4 Liberal Democrat supporters; and 6 Green supporters. 13 participants solely identified as Left Wing, 1 as Centrist, 3 selected ‘Don’t Know’, while one participant selected ‘Other’ and specified ‘None’. No participants identified as either UKIP or Right Wing.

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! In Experiment Two, there were 22 female participants and 18 male participants. In terms of political stance, 6 identified as Conservative supporters; 6 as Labour; 1 as a Liberal Democrat; 5 as Green supporters; and 1 as a UKIP supporter. Otherwise, 7 identified as Left Wing, 6 identified as Centrist, and 7 selected ‘Don’t Know’. One participant selected ‘Other’ and specified as SDLP. This particular participant informed us that they are a male EU citizen, having been resident in the UK for two to three years. Given this information, it is extrapolated that this answer refers to the Social Democratic and Labour Party in the Republic of Ireland. Any anomalous findings generated from this participant will therefore be viewed through the prism of this information. No participants selected the Right Wing designation.

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Hypothesis 1:Scenario B will draw a higher number and more radical responses than Scenario A

in both Experiment One and Experiment Two

&

Hypothesis 2:Experiment Two will draw a higher number and more radical responses than

Experiment One.

! For the sake of ease and of clarity, it was decided that it would be best to analyse Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 concurrently. This is for two reasons. Firstly, Hypothesis 1 applies to both Experiment One and Experiment Two, meaning that both would have to be analysed. At the same time, we can observe the veracity of both hypotheses in one set of findings, providing clarity and concision to the results. As we can see from the tabulation of findings overleaf, both Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 appear to be verified, though tentatively.

! To begin with Hypothesis 1, in both experiments we see a rise in the number of responses given. In Experiment One, participants selected an aggregate total of 178 responses to Scenario A, and 190 responses to Scenario B, giving an aggregate Escalation Score of 12. In Experiment Two, participants gave an aggregate of 181 responses to Scenario A, and 202 responses to Scenario B, giving a combined Escalation score of 21. Furthermore, both sets of data demonstrate a marked shift towards more radical potential responses in their answers to Scenario B in both Experiment One and Experiment Two. These are listed in rank on Section IV ‘Research Design’ - they are here replicated in the same order.

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! Initially, we have found there is a decrease in selection of potential responses to ‘Condemn the Attacks’, ‘Increase security in public places’ and ‘Tighten security in transport hubs’ in both Experiments One and Two.

Experiment OneExperiment OneExperiment OneExperiment One

Condemn the Attacks Tighten Security in transport hubs

Increase security in public places

A 34 29 25

B 31 26 24

Experiment TwoExperiment TwoExperiment TwoExperiment Two

Condemn the Attacks Tighten Security in transport hubs

Increase Security in public places

A 36 30 30

B 36 29 28

! However, these are small adjustments, and are more than compensated in increases in support for more radical responses in their place. In Experiment One, participants became more in favour of Tightening Border Controls (14:17)2, Increasing Security Service Funding (13:17), Increasing State Surveillance Powers (11:16) and Launching a Ground Invasion (0:2).

! In Experiment Two, support for these preceding options actually dropped across both scenarios, with smaller gains or none in Scenario B. In the same order, the responses were (8:9), (14:14) and (7:7). However, this is more than made up for by increases in support for more radical options such as: Launching Covert Ops (7:13), Launching Air Strikes (2:10), and a small increase for Ground Invasion (1:3).

! While these escalations are sometimes small, given the limitations of this study (in particular the suspension of disbelief) any increase in the number of responses or their

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2 Scores are reported thusly (Score in A: Score in B)

severity indicates that individuals react more strongly to the culturally-sensitive events in Scenario B. This suggests that attacks upon socially significant targets do indeed generate more escalated responses from citizens. This may not be a universal result, but it indicates that Hypothesis 1 is verifiable, along with its underlying assumptions.

! Hypothesis 2, on the other hand, needs slightly closer analysis to ascertain the veracity of our assumptions and expectations. Whilst, as previously discussed, the number of responses to Scenario A was increased in Experiment Two (178 to 181) this increase is far too small to be of any statistical significance, let alone draw any inferences. As already noted above, increase in support for options towards the less radical end of the response spectrum was small, and support for middling responses fell, or did not increase significantly.

! However, the large increases for military intervention do suggest that the narrative effects may have pushed the participants towards heightened and tangible aggression against the perpetrators of the events. The fact that the aggregate Escalation Score increased from 12 in Experiment One to 21 in Experiment Two, while initial scores remained steady, indicates that cultural targets are more easily subsumed into media narratives and thus emotive responses to these narratives are increased. These suggestions, given the data sample, can only be tentative, and much further research would be needed to understand their effects to a fuller extent.

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Hypothesis 3:Participants identifying as being political conservatives (Conservative, UKIP, Right Wing) will select higher numbers of, and more radical responses to, both A and B than others (Centrist/Left Wing)

&

Hypothesis 4:Participants identifying as political conservatives (Conservative, UKIP, Right Wing) will demonstrate higher escalation in responses from A to B than others (Centrist/

Left Wing)

! As previously discussed, due to the findings of several studies - and common political knowledge - we have predicted that participants identifying as political conservatives will respond with a greater number of potential responses to the scenarios described within the experiments. In order to test this hypothesis, the participants have been grouped into broad ideological categories, according to their responses to the personal information questionnaire. Each Ideology is grouped as follows: conservative ideology is constituted of participants that identified as either Conservative or UKIP supporters;3 our Left-Wing group is constituted of participants who identified as either Labour, Green or supporters, or described themselves as ‘Left Wing’; our third grouping is made up of Liberal Democrat supporters and those who identified as ‘Centrist’. Our final grouping is made up by respondents who responded ‘Don’t know’ to the political leanings question. In Experiment One, a single participant selected ‘Other’ and specified their political leanings as ‘None’: this participant is grouped with the ‘Don’t know’ ideological category. In Experiment Two, a single participant also selected ‘Other’ and specified their leanings as ‘SDLP’ - confidently assumed to be a reference to the Social Democratic and Labour Party in the Republic of Ireland. This participant has been grouped with the Left Wing ideological grouping in Experiment Two.

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3 No participants responded with the ‘Right Wing’ selection in either Experiment.

! We predicted that conservatives would “select higher numbers of, and more radical responses to, both A and B”. In terms of higher rates of response, these predictions were correct. After the calculation of averages to overcome the disparity in participants, those in the conservative grouping scored consistently higher than all other grouping in both Experiment One and Experiment Two. In Experiment One, conservatives on average out-responded other groupings by between 1.3 to 0.8 responses. The conservative grouping averaged both 5.57 responses for both Scenario A and B; the Left Wing grouping averaged 4.22 responses for Scenario A and 4.74 responses for Scenario B; while the Centrist and Don’t know groupings scored 4.0 and 5.0 for both scenarios respectively.

! In Experiment Two, this trend holds, but is exacerbated. The conservatives outstripped the other groupings by between 2.0 and 2.6 response points. The conservative grouping scored, on average, 6.57 responses to Scenario A and 7.14 responses for Scenario B. The Left-Wing grouping on average scored 4.5 responses for Scenario A, and 4.78 responses for Scenario B. Centrists scored on average 4.29 responses to Scenario A, and 4.71 responses to Scenario B. Lastly, the Don’t Know grouping scored an average of 3.43 responses to A, and 4.71 responses to B. Even when the slightly anomalous result of Participant 66, the sole UKIP supporter in the study, was removed, this advantage remained strong. Participant 66 selected 9 responses for Scenario A, and 10 responses for Scenario B. After recalculation, the Conservatives still outstripped the other groupings, from 1.6 to 1.9 response points: their new average was 6.17 for Scenario A, and 6.67 for Scenario B.

! However, conservatives did not show a significant trend of pursuing more radical or aggressive courses of action in Experiment One (Please see below)4. Furthermore, they were not the ideological grouping which escalated the most in response to Scenario B. In Experiment One, the ideological grouping which escalated and supported the most radical responses for those in the Left Wing grouping. This grouping demonstrated greater support for: Increasing Security Services Funding (7:13), as compared to the conservatives (3:3); and Declaring Martial Law (0:2), when no conservatives selected this option. If not outscoring, they were matching conservative support for Arming the Police

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4 N.B these examples are not meant for strict or direct empirical comparison. Rather, due to the disparity in numbers, they are designed to allow an insight into the general trends witnessed in the various responses.

with Guns (0:2), to (2:0); Launching Air Strikes, both (1:1), and Launching a Ground Invasion, both (0:1). It is important to interject, for the sake of balance, that there is a wide spectrum of political beliefs within different parties and ideologies. However, these answers indicate that the dichotomy of Left Wing and Conservative ideologies is less solid than asserted by this study and others.

! To more fully understand this trend - particularly as the Left Wing grouping accounted for almost the total Escalation score of Experiment One - we needed to understand what - if any - concrete patterns were causing this escalation. Upon dissecting the Left Wing grouping, and recalculating the average response scores, it was revealed that Labour Party supporters were for the most part responsible for Left Wing escalation, and demonstrated clearly elevated numbers of responses and severity of response in Experiment One.

! Labour supporters on average scored 5 responses for Scenario A, and 6.4 responses to Scenario B. This far outstripped both the Greens (3.33 for both A and B) and Left Wing supporters, who on average scored 4 responses to Scenario A and 4.38 responses to Scenario B. This gave Labour supporters a lead of between 1.0 and 2.1 response points. It was participants that identified solely as ‘Left Wing’ who were responsible for the more radical responses. It was this group who supplied the entirety of left-wing grouping support for Martial Law (0:2) and Arming Police with Guns (0:2). Without this, the outlook of Labour responses shifts markedly towards the left of the scale of Potential Responses, but still remains high in terms of escalation from Scenario A to Scenario B.

! These findings are particularly interesting as they seem to reverse in Experiment Two. Indeed, the average score of the Left Wing grouping increased slightly from Experiment One (4.22 to 4.5 for A, and 4.74 to 4.77 for B). However, in comparison to the dramatic increase in conservative scores (5.57 to 6.57 for A, and 5.57 to 7.14 for B) these results seem to suggest a marked depression in the Left Wing grouping’s responses to Experiment Two.

! In a further reversal, participants in the Conservative ideological grouping demonstrate higher levels of support for more aggressive and radical responses to the scenarios. From a group made of seven constituent participants, the group demonstrated

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highly elevated levels of support in comparison to Left Wing, especially given the disparity in the size of the Left Wing group of 18 participants. In this context, the conservative grouping outstripped left wing support for Tightening Border Controls (4:5) to (2:0); Increasing State Surveillance Powers (3:3) to (2:3); and Launching Covert Ops (3:4) to (2:5). The question remains therefore as to why this shift took place between Experiment One and Two.

! Two concurrent explanations seem to explain to a certain degree what has caused these changes to occur. Firstly, there is the deliberate political slant of the type of media report which was presented to the participants. In Experiment Two, the Scenarios were described in the style of a British Tabloid newspaper. In general, these publications are associated with a right-wing and conservative bias on social and political issues. As such, the findings of both Della Vigna and Kaplan (2007) as well as Chiang and Knight (2008) bear significance. The implied conservative bias of the reporting in tabloid style may have roused ‘latent’ conservative beliefs, like in Della Vigna and Kaplan (2007). As a result, we see a heightened level of desired action in those whose values match those of the media source. !! At the same time, the tabloid style - and its implicit conservative values - may have made those in the Left Wing ideological grouping more sceptical and wary of the account of events in the experiment. As Chiang and Knight (2008) note: “voters do rely on the media for information... but the extent of this reliance depends upon the degree and direction of any bias.” (Chiang and Knight: i) The implied conservative bias of the information source therefore may have influenced the group to select more restrained responses. Escalation did take place - but at lower rates, and was counter-balanced by the de-selection of other responses.

! These findings seem to undermine both Hypothesis 3 and Hypothesis 4. While conservative responses were consistently high in both experiments, the severity and escalation of Left Wing responses throws our initial assumptions into doubt. Given the limited evidence, it seems appropriate to tentatively suggest that differences between Conservative and Left Wing reactions are not as profound as is asserted within the literature; or, at the very least, is not as divisive or as dichotomous in the United Kingdom than in the United States. Second, it seems that media bias plays a key role in determining the types of action citizens seek from their governments. We suggest that the implied

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conservative bias of Experiment Two depressed Left Wing reactions, though escalations are still present, and offset by de-escalations in other categories. Therefore, the source of information does seem to carry a good deal of significance in determining an individual’s response to security crises. However, these reactions appear to depend upon their ideological predispositions, as well as how information about said crises is presented to these individuals.

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Hypothesis 5:

Female participants are not expected to respond in a less conflictual manner than male participants

! Gender studies in International Relations theory, particularly in terms of security studies, focusses upon the widely differing life experiences of men and women: particularly on social gender-constructions, as well as biological differences, based upon the dichotomy of male and female. Standpoint Feminists and Social Feminists stress that these experiences provide women with images of the social world, and strategies for coming to terms with that social world, that are hugely differentiated from those of men. In layman’s terms, due to social and biological factors, women are expected to prefer more pacifist, compromising, and conciliatory forms of action then men.

! However, in both Experiment One and Experiment Two, this hardly appears to be the case. In Experiment One5, male participants made an average of 4.25 responses to Scenario A, and 4.35 to Scenario B.6 Female participants, on the other hand, averaged 4.67 responses to Scenario A and 5.22 responses to Scenario B. This gives the female group a lead of between 0.42 to 0.87 response points, far too low to draw any statistically significant inferences.

! In Experiment Two, male participants on average gave 4.50 responses to Scenario A, and 4.83 responses to Scenario B. Female participants gave an average of 4.54 responses to Scenario A, and 5.23 responses to Scenario B. This gives a fractional lead of between 0.04 to 0.69 response points. No inferences of difference between men and women can be justified on such statistics. In terms of numbers of responses, males and females cannot be said to differ in their reactions to terrorist attacks. Furthermore, when we investigate the levels of aggression associated with particular responses, we cannot see any marked difference in the selection of Potential responses in either Experiment6060.

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5 In Experiment One, a single participant declined to designate their gender, and are thus excluded from this discussion.

6 The Male average is calculated without the anomalous result of Participant 44, a male who selected ‘No response’ to both Scenarios.

! In terms of escalation, in Experiment One, female participants gave an aggregate of 84 responses for Scenario A, and 94 for Scenario B: giving an escalation score of 10. Male participants gave an aggregate of 86 responses for Scenario A, and 88 responses for Scenario B, giving and escalation score of 2.

! In Experiment Two, female participants gave an aggregate of 100 responses to Scenario A, and 115 responses to Scenario B, providing an escalation score of 15. Male participants scored 81 and 87 respectively, giving an escalation score of 6. According to the statistics, females escalated 5 times more than men in Experiment One, and just under three times in Scenario B. However, due to close nature of the average responses and average escalation scores - under a single digit of difference in all counts - it would be foolhardy to suggest anything statistically significant as arising from these figures.!! If any inference were to be drawn, it would be that there is little practical difference between men and women in the face of terrorist attacks and security threats. If there were a practical difference, the data leads us to believe that women are more likely to react more strongly, and with comparative aggression, to men. However, political leanings and ideologies appear to show a much stronger correlation with altered patterns of response to security threats, and particularly, terrorist attacks.

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VII. CONCLUDING REMARKS

!! This study has sought, ambitiously, to try and gain deeper understanding of how individual citizens - in Western liberal democracies in particular - respond to acts of terrorism on their home soil. Beginning with perhaps the most famous act of terrorism ever committed - the September 11th 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States - we have sought the reasons why certain terrorist attacks are more effective at inflicting psychological damage upon their target audiences than others.

! Two main avenues were quickly identified: the ever-increasing role of the media within our societies, and the implicit cultural meanings which surround highly-recognisable national landmarks, such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Moreover, this study has strived to use these interpretive studies and theories in order to generate solid empirical findings into the relationship of cultural symbolism and acts of terrorism - something that has been sadly lacking in this particular area of security studies.

! For reasons mentioned in the larger scope of the study, these findings are not at all intended or believed to define the answers to these highly complex social questions. Due to the size of the sample available, and the narrow social category from which they are drawn (voters of university age and education), the findings and inferences which have been generated are merely suggested as interesting points in a wider conversation, whilst suggesting exciting avenues for future study. As already stated, these conclusions are tentative, but they provide fascinating potential insights into the study of terrorism.

! Firstly, and most centrally, there is significant empirical evidence to support the theory that certain places are perceived as more ‘culturally valuable’ than others - and acts of terror that destabilise the implicit cultural codes of these places result in heightened responses from the target audience. Despite a modest increase in reaction at times, the limitations of this type of study mean that it is reasonable to assume that these effects would be more keenly felt if they were to happen in the real world; at the very least, the study proves that cultural symbolism plays a role for a portion of the population in gauging their reactions to acts of terror and violence upon their societies.

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! Secondly, the effects of media have been shown to play a key role in the formation of attitudes and responses to terrorist attacks and political events more generally, but in ways that were not initially fully appreciated. Base reactions stayed the same, but media-style narrative indicators and action cues caused a substantial jump in response to the attack upon the cultural landmark. This suggests that these places offer terrorists a more effective way into the national psyche; the narrative is more gripping, and thus our reactions to that narrative become increasingly heightened relative to the cultural significance of a target.

! Thirdly, it appears that the interplay between political beliefs and the media plays a significant role in shaping our responses to terrorist attacks. The implied conservative bias of the ‘story’ in Experiment Two led to heightened conservative responses and depressed Left Wing responses - demonstrating that our relationship with the media is highly complex, with particular sources preferred over others. The attitudes of preferred sources, it seems, can be a powerful indicator of individual response to security threats and crises, as well as other political and social events.!! These remain small steps into the interplay of cultural and security studies. The conclusions here remain tentative, and scepticism, as always, is encouraged. However, they provide significant strides towards empirical understanding, and point to numerous avenues which could be highly rewarding for the study of security in the modern world.

Word Count: 14,877

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The Terror of Symbols: Individual Responses to Terrorism, Cultural Symbolism, & Media Narratives

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