ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on a research investigation undertaken approximately 9 weeks after the terror attacks of September 2001. It focuses on the public’s fear of terrorism and its relationship to three issues of interest to communication researchers. First, we look at the relationship between feelings of fear about terrorism and public attitudes toward restrictions on civil liberties and the news media. Next, we explore the relationship between feelings of fear about terrorism and news media use. The third focus is an examination of whether self-reports estimating an affective state-fear of terrorism-result in a perceptual bias similar to that repeatedly found in the literature of the so-called third-person effect theory. The latter issue is dealt with in much more depth in Chapter 7, and specifically in the context of the online news user, but some preliminary observations derived from the data set collected for this investigation may lend some additional insight. The chapter concludes by presenting descriptive data about online news readers and their uses and perceptions of online news media coverage of the war on terrorism.
