Routinizing Terror: Media Coverage and Public Practices in Israel,2000-2005

Abstract

This article argues that counterintuitively, the unrelenting multivictim terrorist attacks on Israel between 1996 and 2004 did not bring about a linear escalation in the intensity of media coverage nor in the demoralization of the public, as seen in the changes in daily routine and in the radicalization of political attitudes. By the use of a combined index based on the length of television’s disaster marathons, their viewing rates, and the extent of changes in the daily lives and the political attitudes of Israelis (drawing on secondary analysis of various sources), the authors distinguish between two periods in terms of the impact of terror. In the first period, from1996 to the end of 2002, they observed a relatively strong effect in all the indicators mentioned above. From the beginning of 2003, in spite of the continuing high frequency of the attacks, the authors see a process of routinization apparent in all our indicators, on the part of the media and of the public.