Social media are an important source of news during crises such as terrorist attacks. However, how news media and their audiences make sense of terrorism on social media is subject to bias, for example, given their differential treatment of terrorism by right-wing versus Islamist extremist perpetrators. In this study, we analyze how incident- and perpetrator-related characteristics of terrorist attacks are associated with bias in public debates about terrorism on YouTube. We focus on selectiveness in which attacks are covered (gatekeeping bias), how attacks are covered (presentation bias), and how audiences react to coverage (audience bias). Methodologically, we employ a manual and an automated content analysis of terrorism coverage by five international broadcasters on YouTube ( N = 643, 2018–2020) and related user comments ( N = 193,721). Our findings illustrate how sociocultural contexts shape news bias in terrorism coverage, both in the form of gatekeeping bias and presentation bias—but we conclude with less evidence for audience bias in public reactions to terrorism, at least on social media. Consequently, journalists should critically question working routines in covering crises to avoid reinforcing power imbalances, especially those from Western contexts.

中文翻译：

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社交媒体上关于恐怖主义的偏见辩论？对 YouTube 上恐怖袭击的新闻报道和受众反应的内容分析


社交媒体是恐怖袭击等危机期间的重要新闻来源。然而，新闻媒体及其受众在社交媒体上理解恐怖主义的方式受到偏见的影响，例如，鉴于右翼和伊斯兰极端主义肇事者对恐怖主义的对待不同。在这项研究中，我们分析了恐怖袭击的事件和肇事者相关特征如何与 YouTube 上关于恐怖主义的公开辩论中的偏见相关联。我们关注覆盖攻击的选择性（把关偏差）、如何覆盖攻击（呈现偏差）以及受众对覆盖的反应（受众偏差）。在方法上，我们对 YouTube 上的五家国际广播公司 （ N = 643， 2018–2020） 和相关用户评论 （N = 193,721） 的恐怖主义报道进行了手动和自动内容分析。我们的研究结果说明了社会文化背景如何塑造恐怖主义报道中的新闻偏见，包括把关偏见和呈现偏见——但我们得出的结论是，公众对恐怖主义的反应中存在受众偏见的证据较少，至少在社交媒体上是这样。因此，记者应该批判性地质疑报道危机的工作程序，以避免加剧权力不平衡，尤其是那些来自西方背景的权力不平衡。