ABSTRACT
In mid-August 2014, the Islamic State shocked the world with a close to five-minute video uploaded on YouTube. The involuntary star of the production was American journalist James Foley wearing an orange jump suite and kneeling next to a masked ISIS fighter. Students of terrorist violence and communication are well aware that for terrorists the immediate victim is merely instrumental, the skin of a drum beaten to achieve a calculated impact on a wider audience. The Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany and its successor cells timed their terrorist attacks so that the news coverage would be particularly generous: They struck on days when the news holes in newspapers were larger than on other days. News organizations tend to over-cover terrorist strikes when they are especially dramatic and shocking and offer plenty of human interest. As a general rule, terrorist incidents further perpetrators universal or media-related goals regardless of whether they also advance their short-term or long-term political objectives.
