Social Media Use and Fear Levels After the Paris 2015 Attacks: A Comparative Study

• In Event: Comparing Contexts: Diverse Methodological Approaches in Comparative Research

Abstract

In the wake of major terrorist attacks, how do ordinary citizens use media to understand and cope? We use a 5-country survey fielded in the month after the November 2015 Paris attacks and a follow-up study from November 2016 to investigate how citizens in France, Finland, Norway, Spain and the United States utilize social media to inform themselves about unfolding events as well as cope with fear about the attacks. Research has shown a positive relationship between mass media exposure and experienced fear after terror events. There is evidence that this relationship goes two ways: on the one hand, the most fearful are most active in seeking information about terror events; on the other hand, those who are most exposed to media stories also become more fearful. The results from the 2015 survey show, first, that social media use is related to increased fear: those who used social media the most during the Paris attacks were more fearful than others three weeks later. Second, while there was a positive relationship between all forms of social media use and fear in France, Spain and the US, such effects were much less systematic in Norway and Finland. These national variations may have more to do with the cultural context in which social media were used than with country variations in media use. A hypothesis which is explored is that people in Finland and Norway felt more remote from the events and the fear of being struck by terror, and that there was therefore less of a felt culture of fear in social media. The study shows the importance of doing comparative studies within media research in order to avoid essentialist assumptions about the functions of media, and in order to explore the complex interplay between media and cultural and political context.

Authors

• Kari Steen-Johnsen, Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway

• Bernard Enjolras, Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway

• Shana Kushner Gadarian, Syracuse U