Introduction: Toward Hybrid Media Events of Terrorist Violence

Abstract

This is an introdcution to a special section in the journal in which we examine terrorism as a media event. The introduction reviews the classic works by Elihu Katz and Daniel and adds our own contemporary extension of their theories. It acknowledges the significance of temporality and related mnemonic patterns (Zelizer, Kraidy, in this introduction); networked, relational territorialities (Kraidy, in this introduction); and the discursive politics applied to categorize the violence in question (Hervik; Cui and Rothenbuhler; Price, in this introduction), but it also suggests a more detailed focus on the hybrid dynamics between actors, platforms, and messages which circulate during violent media events. The authors continue the debate on the complex relationship between media, event, and terror by introducing hybridity as yet another angle to this topical discussion.