What Counts as Terrorism ? Racial heuristics and media portrayals of mass shooters

Under what conditions do news sources describe a violent event as terrorism? We hypothesize that a perpetrator’s race, religion, or other racialized characteristics (which should have no impact on whether an event is considered terrorism) shape whether media characterize or associate an event as terrorism. We develop an original corpus of news coverage of U.S. mass shootings to test our hypotheses against other factors associated with media’s terrorism designations. We use statistical regression, qualitative analysis, and unsupervised natural language processing to evaluate relationships between mass shooters’ characteristics and terrorism designations. These analyses suggest that Muslim and Middle Eastern perpetrators may be more likely to be considered terrorists and covered unsympathetically, relative to white perpetrators. With mass shootings on the rise and media treatment of terrorism shaping event data and policymaker perceptions, understanding racial biases in media coverage is crucial to urgently identify and immediately rectify. Document word count: 9,928