ABSTRACT
Communication is at the heart of terrorism. The principal accomplishment of Al Qaeda on 9/11 was not killing several thousand people, but rather terrifying millions more through the reports and images of the attacks and changing the way many people throughout the world live. Furthermore, the global dissemination of news about that day’s events advanced Al Qaeda’s political agenda, giving credence to the organization’s claims that it is the champion of Muslims long victimized by the infidel West and apostate Arab governments. This chapter addresses terrorism as a communicative act and explains how
tightly woven are terrorists’ violent acts and their communication strategies. The most visible (which perhaps means most successful) terrorist groups are those that operate with a communication model that has advanced beyond simple delivery of a message to a passive audience. Rather, the modern communication model used by terrorist organizations is audience-based, meaningcentered, culture-dependent, and always tied into an ongoing narrative stream that is part of the socio-political context in which these organizations operate.1
