Page 203 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

They add that terrorism is ‘violence for effect. It is theatre. It is
crime and it is politics. This three-fold confluence of real life-and-
death spectacle, high politics and base crime fits so well into what
the Western media is conditioned to cover that they cannot resist
giving it full exposure’ (ibid., p. 76).
Like all the other forms of political communication discussed in
this book, terrorism can have significance as a communicative act
only if it is transmitted through the mass media to an audience.
Unless it is reported, the terrorist act has no social meaning. David
Paletz observes that ‘terrorists seek publicity to bring about their
psychological goals . . . they use violence to produce various
psychological effects – demoralising their enemies, demonstrating
their movement’s strength, gaining public sympathy, and creating
fear and chaos. To succeed in these goals, terrorists must publicise
their actions’ (Paletz and Schmid, 1992, p. 2). Pickard in turn notes
that terrorist acts ‘have been strategically used to help turn the
public’s attention towards problems that aggrieved groups wish to
have attention focused upon’ (1989, p. 21).
In addition to the general aim of generating publicity for a
political objective, terrorist acts may be intended to fulfil a number
of more specific purposes (Gerritts, 1992). They may, for example,
be organised in such a way as to demonstrate the vulnerability of
the state. The assassination by the Irish National Liberation Army
(INLA) in 1978 of Lord Mountbatten was such an act, as was the
bombing of the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984
by the Irish Republican Army and that same organisation’s 1991
mortar attack on the Cabinet as it met in Downing Street. The
casualties and narrow escapes occasioned by these acts were
symbolic reminders to the British people of the reach of groups
who were, according to the official line, unrepresentative criminal
thugs.
Terrorist groups may use these acts to communicate to their own
supporters. In the aforementioned examples of Irish republican
terrorism, one may argue that non-republicans in Britain, including
those with a dislike and even hatred for the then Conservative
government, would not have welcomed the death and destruction
caused by, for example, the Brighton bomb. To their own
supporters, however, the IRA were attacking a legitimate target,
with a professionalism and devastating impact which would
certainly have enhanced their status within their own community.
Related to this, terrorist acts may be used to signify the ‘heroism’ of
the perpetrators. The suicide bombings carried out by Hezbollah in

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