Disruptive Media Events

Abstract

Terror attacks force democratic societies to mobilize, reinforce and rethink core values, including media freedom and freedom of speech. The present article analyzes how one traumatic event—the 2011 Oslo terror—challenged editorial practices related to editorial control and open debate in major Norwegian media organizations. Meeting the call for more research on disruptive media events in a hybrid media landscape, it illuminates how professional media balance critical debate with strategies for societal recovery in contemporary post-crisis contexts. Based on in-depth interviews with debate editors, the article documents how terror profoundly challenges editorial practices, routines and norms in media organizations with debates in multiple formats and platforms. In their online comment sections, the media organizations all moved towards a more interventionist policy introducing multiple new control measures. In the traditional op-ed formats, however, they selectively expanded the range of voices and included actors deemed too extreme prior to the attacks. Theoretically the article contributes to the literature on disruptive (key) events, editorial strategies during crisis, editorial control in contemporary media systems and editorial approaches to mediated deviance.

KEYWORDS:

• deviance
• editorial control
• key events
• mediated debate
• reader comments
• right-wing actors
• terror

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The concept of disruptive events closely overlaps Kepplinger and Habermeier’s (1995) negative key events, Nossek’s (2008) negative media events and Hepp and Couldry’s (2010) concept of conflictual media events.

2 The three niche newspapers have distinct editorial profiles (district/rural, Christian and socialist profile), and target designated audiences across the country.

3 ABB is the acronym for the July 22 terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

4 Eurabia characterizes the theory of a radical Islamic take-over of Europe, as a result of an agreement between European and Arab states. The concept was coined by writer Bat Ye’or (real name Gisèle Littman) in the early 2000s, and has inspired various far-right activists, counter-jihadists, anti-Islamists and conservative activists.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway [grant number 220797].