Government Informational Strategies Regarding Terrorism

Abstract

Scholars and laymen assert that media attention is an important element inboth an individual terrorist incident and in the ongoing struggle against terrorists. Thusfar, economists' only concrete policy recommendation is that governments shouldmaximize media coverage of negotiations in order to trade zero cost media attention forexpensive ransom (Islam and Shahin, 1989). This policy recommendation is supportedby work that suggests that media attention does not encourage future terrorism (Nelsonand Scott, 1992). We apply the technique of Granger causality to a more complete dataset than previous researchers have used. We find that media attention Granger causesterrorism. Our results temper the conclusions of earlier work, bringing the prescriptionof maximizing media attention into question (D74, D83, K42).