Sign in. Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Trapp Abstract The rules of State responsibility have an important but under-utilised role to play in the terrorism context. More The rules of State responsibility have an important but under-utilised role to play in the terrorism context. Authors Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Show Summary Details. In February, March, and April , Antifa members attacked alt-right demonstrators at the University of California, Berkeley, using bricks, pipes, hammers, and homemade incendiary devices.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, using a propane tank but was killed by police. Our data suggest that right-wing extremists pose the most significant terrorism threat to the United States, based on annual terrorist events and fatalities.
Over the next year, the threat of terrorism in the United States will likely increase based on several factors, such as the November presidential election and the response to the Covid crisis.
These factors are not the cause of terrorism, but they are events and developments likely to fuel anger and be co-opted by a small minority of extremists as a pretext for violence. First, the November presidential election will likely be a significant source of anger and polarization that increases the possibility of terrorism.
Some—though not all—far-right extremists associate themselves with President Trump and may resort to violence before or after the election. Alternatively, some on the far-left could resort to terrorism if President Trump is re-elected. In June 14, , James Hodgkinson—a left-wing extremist—shot U. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. Some far-right extremists, for example, have threatened violence and railed against federal, state, and local efforts to take away their freedoms by requiring face coverings in public indoor settings, closing businesses, and prohibiting large gatherings to curb the spread of the virus.
In March , Timothy Wilson, who had ties to neo-Nazi groups, was killed in a shootout with FBI agents who were attempting to arrest him for planning to bomb a hospital in Missouri. Though he had been planning the attack for some time and had considered a variety of targets, he used the outbreak of Covid to target a hospital in order to gain additional publicity. On the far left and far right, some anti-vaxxers—who oppose vaccines as a conspiracy by the government and pharmaceutical companies—have threatened violence in response to Covid response efforts.
As highlighted in the introduction, extremists from all sides attempted to hijack the May and June protests in the United States as an excuse to commit acts of terrorism. In addition, far-right and far-left networks have used violence against each other at protests—such as in Berkeley, CA and Charlottesville, VA in —raising concerns about escalating violence.
All parts of U. Politicians need to encourage greater civility and refrain from incendiary language. Social media companies need to continue sustained efforts to fight hatred and terrorism on their platforms. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other companies are already doing this. But the struggle will only get more difficult as the United States approaches the November presidential election—and even in its aftermath. Finally, the U. Terrorism feeds off lies, conspiracies, disinformation, and hatred.
Seth G. The authors give special thanks to James Suber and Grace Hwang for their research assistance and helpful comments, including their involvement in building the terrorism data set. For an overview of the methodology used in compiling the data set, please see here. This brief is made possible by general support to CSIS. Not really.
The relative ranking of deaths in the USA is reflective of the global average: most people die from heart disease and cancers, and terrorism ranks last or second last alongside natural disasters.
Terrorism accounted for 0. The third relates to the very nature of news: it focuses on events and stories. Whilst I am often critical of the messages and narratives portrayed in the media, I have some sympathy for what they choose to cover. Reporting has become increasingly fast-paced.
Combine this with our attraction to stories and narratives. The most underrepresented cause of death in the media was kidney disease. But with an audience that expects a minute-by-minute feed of coverage, how much can possibly be said about kidney disease?
Without conquering our compulsion for the latest unusual story, we cannot expect this representation to be perfectly balanced. Media and its consumers are stuck in a reinforcing cycle.
The news reports on breaking events, which are often based around a compelling story. We come to expect news updates with increasing frequency, and media channels have clear incentives to deliver. This locks us into a cycle of expectation and coverage with a strong bias for outlier events. Most of us are left with a skewed perception of the world; we think the world is much worse than it is.
The responsibility in breaking this cycle lies with both media producers and consumers. Will we ever stop reporting and reading the latest news? But we can all be more conscious of how we let this news shape our understanding of the world. And journalists can do much better in providing context of the broader trends: if reporting on a homicide, for example, include context of how homicide rates are changing over time. This requires us to check our often unconscious bias for single narratives and seek out sources that provide a fact-based perspective on the world.
This antidote to the news is what we try to provide at Our World in Data. It should be accessible for everyone, which is why our work is completely open-access. Whether you are a media producer or consumer, feel free to take and use anything you find here. Shares of deaths, media coverage and Google searches over time The interactive charts present the full annual data series published by Shen et al. Due to data availability Google Trends data only runs from the year to In our research on terrorism we rely on the Global Terrorism Database GTD as a key source of data on incidents and fatalities from terrorism across the world.
It does, however, have limitations which we think should be clear before making inferences from trends or signals represented by the data. In the area of terrorism research, there are now multiple databases available which attempt to record and detail terrorist incidents across the world. We take a more detailed look at the differences in estimates from these three databases here.
In it was officially published as an academic output in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence , and since then has been one of the widely used resources within academic research on terrorism.
The GTD is therefore well-respected and highly-regarded as a comprehensive data source on global terrorism. The GTD — as with other terrorism databases — are curated through records and analysis of print and electronic media.
We expect that the collation of incidents across the world today and in the recent past is sufficiently complete to understand the global distribution of terrorist incidents and how they have changed over time. A valuable resource which also provides impressive accounts of terrorist incidents across the world is the many detailed entries in Wikipedia by year, by region or by country. Using this as a cross-reference with the GTD, we have high confidence in the completeness of global data in recent years.
Where we have less confidence is the completeness of the data for inferring longer-term changes. The GTD extends back to In their accounts of the GTD, the authors of the database acknowledge that data for this earlier period most likely undercounts the number of terrorist incidents and victims. The shift to digital media in recent years has made this process much easier.
Global records of terrorist incidents — at least in the first half of the dataset — are therefore likely to be an underestimate. We have found no research which attempts to quantify the extent of this underestimate, so we cannot say by how much. We do think some countries or regions — most notably the US and Western Europe — have a high degree of completeness over these decades. Until the GTD was collated by Pinkerton Global Intelligence Service PGIS which trained US researchers to identify terrorist incidents from reports, governmental records and international media to assess the risk of terrorism for clients.
We would expect that this mandate would mean records are skewed towards more complete coverage of incidents in the US and countries with better reporting and records of incidents, such as Western Europe. But for major incidents, there are closely matched. For other regions we would caution against inferring trends over this complete time period. One key reason we have reservations about the completeness of earlier data is that there are several incidents we would have expected to have featured in the GTD which are not included.
The other limitation to inferring particular trends in terrorism are changes in methodology and shifting — or unclear — definitions of terrorism over time. Even within the research community there are differences in its scope, and there are often blurry lines between what constitutes terrorism as opposed to other forms of violence such as homicide and civil war. We discuss the definition of terrorism used by the GTD here and how its methodology differs from other well-known databases here.
But an additional question when trying to understand changes, is whether the GTD had a consistent definition and methodology over time.
As previously mentioned, the GTD has been maintained by four organizations since With time — and particularly with the shift towards maintenance by an academic organization — the criteria for a terrorist incident improved and refined over time. Whilst researchers have attempted to retrospectively revise estimates particularly of the period from to based on updated criteria, the authors caution that there will inevitably be issues in data consistency over this period.
This inconsistency will, most likely, be expressed in an underestimate of terrorist incidents earlier in the dataset. For this reason, again, we would be cautious about trying to infer changes in the prevalence of terrorism globally and across most regions since In terrorism research, there are multiple databases available which attempt to record and detail terrorist incidents across the world.
Nonetheless, estimates of the number of terrorist incidents and fatalities vary across these databases. Understanding why these differences exist is important for how this data is interpreted, and what we can conclude about the prevalence, causes and consequences of terrorism. Our understanding of the sources and frequency of terrorism can have a significant impact on many areas of society and policy, including immigration, counterterrorism efforts, and international relations. Why is this the case?
In a study published in the Journal of Peace Research , Sandler looked at the differences in methodology, estimates, and conclusions from the various terrorism databases in detail. Domestic terrorist incidents are those where the venue, perpetrators and victims are all from the same country: for example, a terrorist attack committed in the United States by a US citizen against victims from the US.
If an attack involves more than one country — if the venue or victims of the attack are not the same country as the perpetrators — then it is classified as transnational. During this time it included domestic incidents, whilst RAND did not.
Since — when RAND also included domestic attacks — their figures have converged. A very clear example of this is seen if we look at figures in the United Kingdom. Understanding the reasons for variations in the estimates of terrorist deaths may have a substantial impact on research and resource allocation.
The root causes of transnational and domestic terrorism can be very different. The economic impacts — whether in the form of counterterrorism strategies; defence measures; or tourism impacts — can also vary significantly. Beyond differences in the inclusion of domestic and transnational events, some differences in estimates exist.
Most databases used in terrorism research are curated and maintained from media reports, whether print or digital media. Differences in the completeness and choices of media sources can lead to further variation between databases.
This is because media sources do not always report, or accurately report terrorist events; this can lead to absent or conflicting estimates.
Therefore, even when databases use the same definition of terrorism, the reported number of deaths depend on which media sources the database uses. The data visualisations in this page are generated using the Global Terrorism Database GTD , and so it is important to understand the definition used in their construction.
The GTD database uses the following definition of a terrorist attack:. The threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation. In practice this means in order to consider an incident for inclusion in the GTD, all three of the following attributes must be present:.
In addition, at least two of the following three criteria must be present for an incident to be included in the GTD:. We may therefore now attempt to define terrorism as the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change. All terrorist acts involve violence or the threat of violence. Terrorism is specifically designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim s or object of the terrorist attack.
Terrorism is designed to create power where there is none or to consolidate power where there is very little. Through the publicity generated by their violence, terrorists seek to obtain the leverage, influence, and power they otherwise lack to effect political change on either a local or an international scale. One important point of departure in many legal definitions of terrorism is computer hacking. The UK the Terrorism Act defines terrorism as:. The use or threat of action designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public, or a section of the public; made for the purposes of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause; and it involves or causes:.
Summary Over the past decade, terrorists killed an average of 21, people worldwide each year. The global death toll from terrorism over the past decade ranged from 8, in to a high of 44, in In , terrorism was responsible for 0.
In most countries terrorism accounts for less than 0. Airline hijackings were once common but are very rare today. Public concern about terrorism is high — in many countries more than half say they are concerned about being a victim. Media coverage of terrorism is often disproportionate to its frequency and share of deaths. All our charts on Terrorism Battle-related deaths in state-based conflicts since Conflict and terrorism deaths IHME, GBD to Conflict deaths per ,, World various sources Death rates from conflict and terrorism Deaths from conflict and terrorism IHME, GBD to Deaths from terrorism GDP per capita vs State fragility Global number of airliner hijackings and fatalities Incidence, fatality and injury from terrorist attacks Incidents of conflict and one-sided violence since Number of deaths from terrorist attacks Number of non-fatal injuries from terrorist attacks Number of terrorist attacks Rate of violent deaths in conflicts and one-sided violence per , since Share of US citizens who say they're less willing to do certain activities because of terrorism Share of people who are worried about terrorism Share who are worried about vs.
GTD Terrorist attacks by region World conflict deaths various sources. What is terrorism? The criteria for terrorism. Distinguishing terrorism from other forms of violence.
Based on the criteria above, we can begin to separate terrorism from other types of violence based on some very simplified distinctions: killings perpetrated by non-state actors against civilians, which are not ideological in nature i. How terrorism and other forms of violence overlap.
Terrorism deaths globally. Click to open interactive version. How many people die from terrorism relative to other causes? Which regions experience the most terrorism? Global map of deaths from terrorism. Share of deaths from terrorism by country. Is terrorism increasing?
Has terrorism in Western Europe been increasing? Airline hijackings. Fatalities from hijackings are now very rare. The risk of hijacking in perspective. Public opinion on terrorism. Half of the US population are worried about about being a victim of terrorism. Do we see these claims when we look at actual patterns of behaviour?
In most countries levels of concern are disproportionate to the likelihood of being a victim. Media coverage of terrorism. What we die from; what we Google; what we read in the news. So, what do the results look like? In the chart below I present the comparison. And the discrepancy between what we actually die from and what we get informed of in the media is what stands out: around one-third of the considered causes of deaths resulted from heart disease, yet this cause of death receives only percent of Google searches and media coverage; just under one-third of the deaths came from cancer; we actually Google cancer a lot 37 percent of searches and it is a popular entry here on our site; but it receives only percent of media coverage; we searched for road incidents more frequently than their share of deaths; however, they receive much less attention in the news; when it comes to deaths from strokes, Google searches and media coverage are surprisingly balanced; the largest discrepancies concern violent forms of death: suicide , homicide and terrorism.
All three receive much more relative attention in Google searches and media coverage than their relative share of deaths.
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