The terror experts and the mainstream media: the expert nexus and its dominance in the news media

Abstract

Academic writing on ‘terrorism’ and the availability to the mainstream media and policy-makers of terror ‘experts’ have increased exponentially since 11 September 2001. This paper examines the rise of terror expertise and its use in one particular public arena – the mainstream news media. Using a combination of citation analysis and media analysis, the paper presents a ranking of the most influential terror experts in the mainstream news media in the Anglophone world. It is shown how what has been called an ‘invisible college’ of experts operates as a nexus of interests connecting academia with military, intelligence and government agencies, with the security industry and the media. The paper then takes a small number of case studies of some of the most prominent experts who exemplify the dominant trend in the field and examines the networks in which they are embedded. The last part of the paper uses the data generated to re-examine theories of ‘terrorism’ and the media, of ‘propaganda’ and ‘terrorism’, and of ‘source–media’ relations. It is suggested that the study of terror experts shows the need to study and theorise the media in a wider context by focusing on the relations between media content and production processes and wider formations of power. In so doing, the paper attempts to connect studies of media and terrorism to wider studies of terror and political violence.

Keywords:

• terrorism expertise
• academia
• news media
• think-tanks
• ideology
• military–industrial complex

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge a small grant from the University of Strathclyde Research Development Fund for enabling much of the research on which this article is based. Thanks also to Tamasin Cave of Spinwatch for producing Figure 2. Lastly, the authors thank all those involved in the Spinprofiles project which has provided an outlet for much of the terrorism expertise project.

Notes

1. The study is ongoing, but there are extensive data already posted on the Internet that give much further detail on our methods and various samples including profiles of several hundred terror experts and terrorism institutes and research centres (see http://www.spinprofiles.org).

2. Table 1 shows data on the number of academic articles on Terrorism published between 1970 and 2007. It was compiled from the Social Science Citation Index. The specific details of the search were: TS=(Terrorism) DocType=All document types; Language=All languages; Database=SSCI; and Timespan=1970-2007.

3. Table 2 shows data on the coverage of terrorism in The Times and The Sunday Times, and The Guardian and The Observer between 1950 and 2007. The data were compiled from three fully searchable newspaper archives; The Times Digital Archive (1785–1985), the ProQuest Historical Newspapers archive of The Guardian and The Observer (1791–2003), and the newspaper database of Lexis Nexis. Each year between 1950 and 2007 was searched for articles including the terms ‘Terrorism’ OR ‘Terrorists’. The data for The Times show a decline in coverage in 1979. This is an anomaly due to an industrial dispute which led to the paper's closure between December 1978 and November 1979.

4. For a full account of how this list was compiled, see http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Terrorexpertise:Methodology/.

5. For a full account of how this list was compiled, see http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Terrorexpertise:Methodology/.

6. Dershowitz is well known for his defence of Israel and its political and military actions including in Lebanon in 2006 and following September 2001 for his argument that torture is, in certain circumstances, morally acceptable providing it was done within the law. Fukuyama is famous for his essay on the End of History on the global triumph of political and economic liberalism. An official in the Reagan administration, he went on to play a significant role in the Project for A New American Century, though he later became disenchanted with the Bush administration and with Neoconservatism. For further details about Dershowitz and Fukuyama, see Spinprofiles (2009c, 2009e).

7. The cut-off point here was all articles cited 16 or more times. This excluded those authors who have not reached that total of citations for any given article. Given that some of these authors have written a significant number of articles, it may be that compiling all their citations would exceed 16 cumulatively. However, in the specific cases of Wilkinson Hoffman and Gunaratna, their cumulative citations between 1970 and 2007 did not reach the threshold of 16 according to the Web of Science.

8. We use the term ‘dominant’ here to signify both numerically preponderant (where appropriate) and dominant in the sense of a power relation. That is, dominance is a property of power relations. Specifically in relation to the argument here it relates to the power of the state to enforce its own conception in policy discussion and in public debate or to the dominance of certain strands of expert discourse. This can be referred to as a dominant ideology, but not in any reductionist sense as an inevitable expression of class relations. Nor do we accept those versions of the theory that assume that dominant ideology is shared by most people in a society. It may in fact be the case that it is dominant in the sense of ruling, but not in the sense of having a preponderance of adherents (Miller 2001).

9. There is inevitably a degree of subjectivity in assigning experts to categories A or B as it may be the case that some of those categorised as ‘A’ have on some occasion voiced some criticism of the dominant paradigm.

10. Though Category A has been rounded up to 77% to make up the percentage figures, it should be noted that in fact the calculation fell below the decimal point at 76.4%.

11. We included quotations from texts as well as published op-eds or letters.

12. For more background and sources on Wilkinson and his associates, see Spinprofiles (2009a, 2009b, 2009i, 2009m, 2009o).

13. Wilkinson joined the Council of Management at the Institute for the Study of Conflict on 27 October 1980, resigning on 26 May 1981 (Companies House 1981).

14. Inquiry into Legislation Against Terrorism (CM3420), vol. 2 (Lloyd 1996), authorship credited in Wilkinson's entry in Debrett's (2007).

15. For more background and sources on Hoffman and RAND, see Spinprofiles (2009h, 2009n).

16. For more background and sources on Gunaratna, see Spinprofiles (2009g).

17. For more background and sources on Kohlmann and associates, see Spinprofiles (2009d, 2009f, 2009j, 2009k, 2009l).

18. Which obviously also publishes this journal too.