September 11 had a major impact in the world, and this impact is also reflected in the news coverage in the following years. With this study, we wanted to investigate to what extent 9/11 had an impact on the creation of one global public sphere in the Western world.

On the contrary, we found that the classic news value of geo- graphical proximity is still dominant: The news coverage increases most clearly the moment an event occurs on a local level.

The extreme example of this was the murder of van Gogh, which was widely covered in the Dutch newspapers while relatively neglected on a global level. The other key events discussed also show strong and significant local focus.

Whereas 9/11 was mainly seen as an American event by both local and international press, an interesting difference is seen looking at Madrid and London.

While Madrid was localized almost to the same extent in the newspapers, the London bombings were far more localized in the U.S. press, even more so than in the British press.

The portrayal of Muslims also reveals an interesting pattern. Although no significant shifts in negativity were found after 9/11 or after the local key events, 9/11 did create a strong framework of Muslims as terrorists in all investigated media. After the creation of this global frame, the identification of Muslims with terrorism was transformed by local events; it was reinforced in the British press after the London bombings and deconstructed in the Dutch press after the van Gogh assassination, with more attention focusing on domestic rather than international problems with Muslims.

2004 killer: Dutch- Moroccan Muhammad Bouyeri

This table further reveals the relative stability of terrorism across nations, with 71.43 percent (n = 140) of countries remaining in the equivalent trajectory group before and after the killing of bin Laden. Interestingly among this stable subset were notable countries including Afghanistan, France, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Qatar, the UK, and the United Arab Emirates.

Conclusion about 🇳🇱 attack done by Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (see picture)

Islamist terrorist activity in Western Europe increased significantly after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and after al-Qaida’s no. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri started to direct specific threats against the United States’ European allies in 2002. The activity increased further after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and remained at a high level in 2004.

The Islamist milieus in the Netherlands, radical and moderate, have been put under pressure following the disclosure of multiple Islamist terrorist conspiracies in several European countries since 2001. As noted above, Dutch police have arrested more than 40 terrorist suspects.

The tensions and xenophobia have increased social problems among Muslim immigrants, struggling to complete their education and to obtain decent jobs.

In this climate the Dutch have also seen the rise of right-wing extremism that adds to the tensions. The Dutch government’s support for Israel, their inclusion of HAMAS on the list of terrorist organizations, the support for the US-led invasion of Iraq, and the deployment of more than one thousand troops to the country, are other factors that might be used by Islamist radicals to explain how Holland joined the US-led “crusade against Islam”, and to justify terrorist attacks against Dutch targets.

Not done by 🇳🇴:
This article presents evidence that the killing of Osama bin Laden was a major event that may have qualitatively changed the nature of terrorism in a number of nations around the globe. Our findings also suggest that this event was observed on a global scale, and was followed by detectable increases in the incidence of attacks by Al Qaeda and their affiliates in a number of strategically important nations.

Although the number of terrorist attacks in the United States declined by nearly half in the 2000s, the lethality and long-term impact of al-Qaida’s attacks on September 11, 2001 were extraordinary. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, and thousands more were injured on the day of the attacks.

Al-Qaida’s attacks notwithstanding, the 2000s saw a decline in the number of formal perpetrator organizations who were attributed responsibility for terrorist attacks.
Although the organizational size, structure, and cohesion varied, more than 30 named groups were responsible for attacks in the 1990s, compared to just eight in the 2000s.

Other Islamist attacks during the 2000s were primarily carried out by assailants who were not formally affiliated with particular perpetrator organizations. These include Nidal Hasan’s 2009 attack at Fort Hood in Texas, in which 13 people were killed and more than 30 others were injured. Although lethal terrorist attacks motivated by Christian, anti-abortion ideology and anti- Semitic ideology also took place in the 2000s, there were far fewer than had occurred in the 1990s.

The number of attacks by left-wing extremists increased 80 percent in the 2000s.

These attacks were nearly all motivated by environmentalism and carried out by perpetrators affiliated with ALF and ELF. All of these attacks were intended to cause property damage and intimidation; none were lethal. The number of attacks motivated by right- wing extremism declined by 40 percent between the 1990s and the 2000s, and included attacks carried out by perpetrators motivated by white supremacy and neo-Nazi ideology, as well as anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, and anti-abortion beliefs, and opposition to progressive social policies.

In comparison to the 2000s, there was a sharp increase in the proportion of attacks carried out by right-wing extremists (from 6% to 35%) and religious extremists (from 9% to 53%) in the United States.

Instead, attacks between 2010 and 2016 were typically carried out by individual perpetrators ...