Repertoires of Terror: News Media Classification of Militant Groups, 1970 to 2013

Abstract

The authors examine how print news media classify militant groups as terrorist. Drawing on a relational view of news media and contentious politics, the authors develop a theory of repertoires of contention and classification. The authors argue that news media interpret the social standing of actors from the categories implied by the tactics they use and that variation in tactical repertoires explains the variation in classification among different groups and within individual groups over time. Using newly collected annual data on media coverage of 746 groups across 589,779 news articles from 1970 through 2013, statistical analyses support the authors’ argument. Moreover, consistent with scholarship on the evolution of political violence, the authors show that the effects of repertoires are sensitive to historical developments and vary in relation to key events, further supporting a relational repertoire view of the classification of terrorism.