ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how security threat image took root there and eventually came to be viewed as the ultimate threat to critical infrastructures. It argues that US media outlets have been significant contributors not just to the dissemination, but to the actual discursive construction of the contemporary cyberterrorist threat and, further, that it is their emphasis on the fatal connectivity between virtual networks and physical infrastructures that makes the concept of cyberterror so powerful. The chapter explores theoretical underpinnings, particularly the important role of the mass media in framing the threat and thus in agenda-setting. It focuses on how fears associated with terrorism and technology are linked in so-called ' shut-down-the-power-grid scenarios' to hype the threat to critical infrastructures from cyberterrorists. The chapter investigates popular analogies associated with the cyberterror threat discourse: the possibility of an 'electronic Pearl Harbor' and the equation of cyber-attack tools, so-called 'weapons of mass disruption', with the threat from 'weapons of mass destruction'.