Search

We use the occurrence of the London bombings on July 7, 2005, during the fieldwork period of the British Social Attitudes Survey to analyze the dynamics of public support for measures curbing core freedoms. We observe little change in public attitudes toward counterterrorist policies in the first week after the attack. Approval of infringements on privacy and procedural rights surges in the following weeks before stabilizing at an increased level in the medium run. Our findings indicate that, when it comes to restrictive counterterrorist measures, the public adopts a wait-and-see attitude rather than reacting in fear. Ancillary analyses suggest that the media may be the source of attitudinal changes on policies curtailing civil liberties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dehumanization and distrust can have devastating consequences for intergroup relations. Until now, few studies have examined the ways in which both (de)humanizing and (dis)trustful discourse are presented in popular media. Recognizing the detrimental effects of terrorism on intergroup attitudes and the power of media in influencing social and political attitudes, the present research examined the frequency of (de)humanizing and (dis)trustful statements in newspaper coverage of the July 7, 2005, London bombings in the aftermath and at the 10-year anniversary of the attack. Drawing from theoretical work on dehumanization, it was expected that (de)humanizing content in media coverage about a stereotyped outgroup would be linked to (dis)trust of that group, and would also be linked to political orientation of the media source. Primary analyses were conducted using an existing manual coding framework for frequency of (de)humanizing and (dis)trustful statements. Results from the coding show that dehumanizing and distrusting discourse was more frequent than humanizing and trusting discourse. Whereas dehumanization was significantly correlated with distrust only in the right-wing source, humanization was significantly correlated with trust only in the left-wing source. The findings advance theoretical understandings of (de)humanization and humanization as they manifest in media discourse following a terrorist event, and how these relate to outgroup (dis)trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on previous research about journalistic news sources, this study explores the use of experts and other sources in coverage of the London suicide bombings (7 July 2005) in British, American, and Russian newspapers. Using content analysis of news reports of these attacks, it assesses the differential usage of information sources across newspapers published in countries with different media systems. The comparative analyses indicate that the use of government officials, non-government experts, and other journalistic sources in this context varies both between and within nations' media systems. However, despite their media systems-related differences, ideological orientation, and source utilization, the cross-national newspaper coverage of the London bombings often reflected similar themes and a common dialogue that affirmed each nation's shared mourning and condemnation of the bombings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies have examined the significance of UK media coverage of the 7/7 London bombings. This article seeks to widen this analysis by exploring the coverage of 7/7 in the leading newspapers of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Poland comparatively using a new agenda-setting perspective that is grounded within network analysis. The study is devised to respond specifically to the contrasting arguments about the influence of media globalization versus religion and ethnicity on this reporting. It finds that the diverse approaches to religion within the countries of the analyzed newspapers appear to mitigate the reproduction of shared religious narratives in this reporting. Nevertheless, the analyzed coverage does carry common attributes and these, it argues, can be explained broadly by the influence of a US-dominated 'lens on terror'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now commonplace to suggest that acts of terrorism on home soil impact the media's ability to challenge the anti-terror policies that follow immediately from them. Still, complex contexts can emerge, and this article focuses on one that shapes a media response to a proposed UK anti-terror policy in 2006. It observes how proposed legislation for an identity card scheme, following closely after the 2005 London bombings, is reported in the elite press according to different 'thresholds'. Emerging from an initial (1) observing of political conflict and a (2) detailing of claims made about the policy are (3) moments of performed criticism of the policy as a 'threat' to the British public's 'civil liberties' by these newspapers. This verbally 'empowered' coverage provides an important exception to the previously observed media passivity in response to anti-terror policies/propaganda. Furthermore, the article argues that this is instigated by a complex context of political contest and reproduced cultural associations that encourage the performance of these newspapers' 'fourth estate' role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the #WalkTogether initiative which commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 7 July 2005 London bombings by encouraging people to individually re-enact and share on social media the moment when following the bombings, in the absence of a functioning public transport network, Londoners walked to and from work together. It asks what forms of togetherness did the initiative promote and what was the role of professional journalists and news organisations in facilitating this togetherness? To answer these questions, the article conceives of togetherness as hybrid and unfolding within broader media and memory ecologies. This encourages the use of innovative combinations of methods and the introduction of the concepts of 'mediatised performative commemoration' and 'digital gestural remains'. In turn, this allows a number of specific enquiries into the characteristics of #WalkTogether's commemoration, communities, remembrance and reporting a decade after 7/7 took place and a discussion of the extent to which the initiative resulted in forms of clicktivism and commemorative silos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The suicide bombings of 7 July 2005 remain the most serious terror attacks in the United Kingdom to date in the so-called 'war on terror'. Much has been published on the war on terror but few journalists have reflected on their practice post 9/11 and none on their domestic coverage of the 7/7 attacks. This article is written by a journalist who covered the London bombings for a UK national newspaper and more recently is a practitioner-academic. Using academic texts focusing on the domestic reporting of the war on terror as stimuli for scholarly reflection, this article reviews the author's own coverage using reflexive practice and content analysis. This article places 7/7 in the continuum of reporting subsequent to 11 September 2001 (9/11) and issues discussed. Some 63 authored articles were considered from the period. Scholarly texts have proposed a range of concepts to analyse coverage from including political ritual, trauma, national wound and hegemony. This article concludes by noting that while many academic texts see coverage of terrorism as an elite discourse, dominated by political economy drivers and responding to events in a homogeneous reactivity, in practice, news organisations can have complex responses and journalists, agency in their coverage of major terrorism events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countering violent extremism (CVE) is one of the central focuses of the government of Pakistan. This article examines the current CVE policy framework and questions the existing paradigm of CVE policies in Pakistan. The article employs R. Kim Cragin's model of "resisting violent extremism" to suggest the need for a paradigm change in Pakistan's CVE policy framework, especially after the launch of another military operation in 2017. After a decade of security-centric counterterrorism policies, such a change requires balancing security-, development-, and prevention-centric policies in order to redefine Pakistan's policy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensification of London as a viable filmmaking location within the recent Daniel Craig-era James Bond films has marked a turning point for how the series has negotiated 007's homeland. Conventionally marginalized by Bond's post-colonial travelogue aesthetic, the emergence of London between Casino Royale and Spectre has, this article contends, mined the imagery of terror(ism) to conduct mourning work for the 7/7 London terror attacks. In examining the Craig era's fluctuating portrayal of the capital's geography, this article argues that Craig's iteration of the secret agent has become the ideal character through which to articulate London's tumultuous post-7/7 condition, one connected to a presentation of the capital that has been progressively haunted by the spectre of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years of community engagement under the war on terror in the UK have seen the co-option of bridge-building initiatives into wider narratives of securing communities. Through ethnographic insights into a peace building inter-faith initiative that made it onto the news as a ‘deradicalization’ workshop, I show how encounters in such projects are susceptible to being reframed into the very narrative in which encounters are sought after in the first place as a political settlement to growing inter-ethnic tension and conflict. This paper contributes to the growing geographies of encounter literature by making more explicit the narratives that shape how encounters function. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Britain has always been a land of several ethno-national groups. As an imperial power, it ruled over several nations in Asia and Africa. The British Empire unraveled after the Second World War ended in 1945, and Britain was left with an economy and infrastructure in shambles. To revive the British economy, immigrants were taken in from diverse backgrounds, mostly from Britain's former colonies. To accommodate these migrants and to avoid racial tensions, the policy of multiculturalism was designed and adopted. Over the decades, British multiculturalism has been confronted with several challenges and the prominent British political parties have responded to them in different ways. The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the respective policies of major political parties on multiculturalism. The focus of the study is on the period 1997-2016, for during this particular period, debate began on multiculturalism. The debate became more contentious in the aftermath of the catastrophic events of 9/11and the 7/7 London bombings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I first retrace some aspects of a dynamic theory of humans in society, and then highlight what appear to me as major contributions of two papers of this special issue. This leads me to highlight a series of questions, which I address through two other consonant studies on remembering, the work of Harald Welzer and his team on the memory of WWII in three generations in German families, and the study by Steve Brown and Paula Reavey on people’s remembering of the London bombings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media-terrorism nexus needs further exploration. This article is a qualitative analysis of the coverage of London Attacks, 2005 by the British TV news channels. It aims to investigate and to empirically ascertain the veracity of the media-terrorism-symbiotic-relationship notion. The research draws a comparison with a similar study of the coverage of Mumbai attacks, 2008 and maintains that when the terrorist event happens on British soil, the symbiotic relationship theory is not verified completely. It concludes that British TV news channels, while reporting the home event of terrorism, do not overly focus on the theme of awe and terror. Instead, they are more responsible, careful, and nationalistic while covering the events of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the politics of response to the 7 July 2005 London bombings, by analysing UK counter-terrorism institutional campaigns in the three years following the attack. By drawing on the interpretive category of community/immunity, the semiotic analysis of counter-terrorism campaigns aims to describe their representation of the political community and citizen in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. The article argues that the counter-terrorism discourse relies on two contrasting tendencies: on the one hand, the unifying force that brings people together in the name of common values; and on the other, the necessity to weaken communitarian bonds in order to allow the citizen to control and check-up on others, reporting “anything suspicious” to authorities. In these texts, the figure of the citizen surveillant clearly emerges. Surveillance activities are shaped around the representation of the terrorist event, from the image of the terrorist in normal everyday life to the actual attacks. Paradoxically this brings about a mimicry effect. The surveillance action carried out by the citizen and the imagined actions of the preparation of a terrorist attack partially overlap in the way they are described and visually represented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the increase number of death due to the incident of terrorism which triggered by religious differences of people living around the world. Topics mentioned include the coordinated terrorist attacks of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, the March 2004 bombing at the Atocha train station in Madrid, Spain and the bombing of underground train stations in London, England on July 7, 2015. It also cites the questions of immigration and culture among the Muslims due to their involvement in terrorism.

The article focuses on need of implementation of victim compensation scheme utilizing rules akin to the detailed statutory guidelines provided for in Spain's civil system. Topics discussed include U.S. can utilize the stability and neutrality of these combined systems, tort system and response to the London Bombings and September 11th Victims Compensation Fund enacted by the U.S. government to compensate victims of the 9/11 attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaeda.

For more than a decade, 'radicalization' has been a keyword in our understanding of terrorism. From the outset, radicalization was conceived of as an intellectual process through which an individual would increasingly come under a spell of extremist ideas. This ideological understanding of radicalization still prevails. In a 2015 speech on extremism, British Prime Minister David Cameron, for instance, claimed that the 'root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself'. But the way we understand radicalization has specific consequences for the way we manage and fight the scourge of terrorism. Considering recent events, including the November 2015 Paris attacks, the present article sets out to reassess the above-mentioned intellectualist understanding of radicalization and come up with new suggestions as to how radicalization may be understood today. Initially, the article suggests that ideology is not necessarily a precondition for violence, but that a prior experience with violence is more often a precondition for engaging an extremist ideology. Such experience with violence can be both domestic and international, obtained in Europe or Syria and other conflict zones. In the second part of the article it is argued that although radicalization is often conceived of as an individual process, pathways towards terrorism are inherently social and political. Finally, the article argues that by stressing the importance of ideology and ideological processes, concepts of radicalization have abstracted away from another factor that is pivotal for understanding pathways towards terrorist violence: the skills and capacities of the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 7/7 bombings of July 2005, Britain has experienced a domestic terror threat posed by a small minority of young Muslims. In response, Britain has initiated ‘Prevent’, a preventative counter-terrorism programme. Building on previous, general critiques of Prevent, this article outlines and critically discusses the ways in which Prevent has approached young Muslims and their educational institutions. The article argues that, rather than trust in broader and non-stigmatizing processes of anti-extremist education, the police-led Prevent has ‘engaged’ with and surveilled young Muslims. Within Prevent there is little evidence of educational processes that explicitly build youth resilience against extremism. Instead, Muslim youth are viewed as both a risk to society and at risk of catching the terrorist disease, with the contested model of ‘radicalisation’ and child protection concepts utilized to portray risks of exploitation by Islamist extremists that necessitate a deepening process of education-based surveillance. The article identifies non-stigmatizing alternatives to the approach of Prevent, approaches of anti-extremism education that learn from previously problematic anti-racist educational efforts with white young people. This enables the article to advocate for enhanced human rights-based approaches of citizenship education (admittedly, in themselves contested) withallyoung people as the most effective way of building individual and collective youth resilience against terrorist ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major terrorist events, such as the recent attacks in Ankara, Sinai, and Paris, can have profound effects on a nation's values, attitudes, and prejudices. Yet psychological evidence testing the impact of such events via data collected immediately before and after an attack is understandably rare. In the present research, we tested the independent and joint effects of threat (the July 7, 2005, London bombings) and political ideology on endorsement of moral foundations and prejudices among two nationally representative samples (combined N = 2,031) about 6 weeks before and 1 month after the London bombings. After the bombings, there was greater endorsement of the in-group foundation, lower endorsement of the fairness-reciprocity foundation, and stronger prejudices toward Muslims and immigrants. The differences in both the endorsement of the foundations and the prejudices were larger among people with a liberal orientation than among those with a conservative orientation. Furthermore, the changes in endorsement of moral foundations among liberals explained their increases in prejudice. The results highlight the value of psychological theory and research for understanding societal changes in attitudes and prejudices after major terrorist events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines newspaper reaction in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings 2005 to identify the repertoires they use to respond to this large-scale terrorist incident perpetrated on UK soil. It introduces to our established view of media reporting of terrorism, a moment when traditionally differentiated newspapers respond collectively to this incident with coverage marked by its representations of condemnation, solidarity and law and enforcement brought together within human-interest story treatments. These findings point to newspaper journalists employing a generic reporting template at this time to reproduce copy so ordered as to respond consensually to this incident. Newspapers’ performances across this period privilege official responses and collective national reaction to the bombings as they cauterise an identified social wound produced by the incident. Their investigation calls attention to the ritual character of reporting produced against this context, pointing in particular to the enacted images of ‘Britishness’ central to its performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism has evolved over the past decade. It argues that there have been significant developments that impact how we conceptualize and study it and offers two suggestions moving forward. It argues that re-branding it Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism (IIHGT) better captures the nuances of this phenomenon and that sub-dividing it by “endgame,” the action the radicalized individual pursues creates the opportunity for a more robust analysis and provides a better way to compare incidents and identify traits that our current efforts overlook. Focusing on the action component may also provide a new way to investigate radicalization as the different endgames represent an escalation in violence, suggesting different degrees of radicalization might also be present. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Muslim public opinion polls are mostly taken at face value as the direct and unbiased voice of British Muslims, but, as this article argues, most of the public opinion polls are commissioned by the media and suffer from similar framing effects to those seen in the general media coverage of Muslims. At a time of national crisis, following the London terrorist attacks in 2005, it has become especially clear that the media have been following their pre-existing narrative on Muslims rather than responding to public interest. We analyse all public opinion polls conducted in the 18 months following the 7 July attacks and all their broadsheet newspaper coverage to show that the media-framing effects influence both the creation of Muslim opinion polls and their reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labour of Memory: Memorial Cult ure and 7/7, Matthew Allen (2014) 1st ed., London: Palgrave Macmillan, 176 pp., ISBN: 9781137341631, h/bk, $95.00 The Undersea Network, Nicole Starosielski (2015) 1st ed., Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 312 pp., ISBN: 9780822357551, p/bk, $25.95 Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance, The Subcultures Network (ed.) (2014) 1st ed., Manchester: Manchester University Press, 320 pp., ISBN: 9780719090295, h/bk, £75.00 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain and the United Kingdom have experienced similar types of political violence. Since the 1960s, both countries have suffered casualties as a result of long-standing ethno-nationalist conflicts as well as terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda–inspired groups. In spite of these similarities, the two countries display a striking variation in the attitudes to victims. In Spain, Associations of Victims of Terrorism have been highly visible and influential, whereas United Kingdom-based organizations have not captured the public's imagination and the attention of policymakers in the same way. Spanish associations of victims have been present in the public sphere and have routinely provided their opinions on counterterrorist policy and appropriate government legislation whereas this sort of political activity is difficult to trace in the United Kingdom. As a result of this puzzle, the article tries to answer the following question: Why are associations of victims of terrorism by Al Qaeda–inspired attacks more influential in Spain than in the United Kingdom? The article will argue that political and sociocultural variables account for the difference. More specifically, the article demonstrates that the experience of both ethno-nationalist and jihadist political violence has affected party systems and cultural frames differently, hence providing distinct sets of political opportunities for victims’ associations to carry out their lobbying strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social network analysis (SNA) is believed to be capable of revealing significant insights into crime and terror groups, including identifying important individuals and unique approaches to disruption. However, SNA has a number of theoretical and practical limitations, particularly when applied to ‘dark’ networks. While most analysts certainly acknowledge at least some of these limitations, we need to know more about their potential impact in a crime intelligence context. This article aims to go some way towards that end by placing greater scrutiny on the problem of ‘fuzzy boundaries’ when applied to small group networks. SNA is applied to the groups responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 attempted London bombings. The article concludes that while SNA is a valuable tool for understanding crime and terror groups, the age-old problem of fuzzy boundaries can have a profound impact on the analysis of small dynamic networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A criticism is presented of the public service broadcaster the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC's) television program "Sherlock," created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. An overview of the influence that early 21st century British social conditions had on "Sherlock," including in regard to the British television viewer's psychology, British mass surveillance and the fear of terrorism in country, resulting from the July, 7, 2005 terrorist bombings in London, England, is provided.

Particularly since the London bombings in July 2005, Muslim communities in Britain have faced extensive criticism for their alleged inability to assimilate to British cultural mainstream expectations. Various government schemes have attempted to tackle ‘Islamic radicalism’ and ‘violent extremism’, thought to emanate from within Britain’s long-standing Muslim communities. Based on extensive ethnographic research conducted among a sizable Muslim community, this article questions the thesis that British-born Muslims represent a threat to social cohesion and embody the failure of multiculturalism. Observation of their everyday lives, particularly in the realm of work and during leisure time, suggests that for Luton’s young Muslims, apart from working for the family, religion and strong community relations act as innovative means to strengthen bonds of nationality and citizenship, despite perceptions of widespread hostility and detachment from society beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the impact of the London bombings on attitudes toward ethnic minorities, examining outcomes in housing and labor markets across London boroughs. We use a difference-in-differences approach, specifying 'treated' boroughs as those with the highest concentration of Asian residents. Our results indicate that house prices in treated boroughs fell by approximately 2% in the 2 years after the bombings relative to other boroughs, with sales declining by almost 6%. Furthermore, we present evidence of a rise in the unemployment rate in treated compared to control boroughs, as well as a rise in racial segregation. ( JEL J15, J71, R21) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author focuses on the Islamic clothing burqa. It mentions several significant consequences related to Islam like Islamophobia after London bombings in 2005 and Twin Towers attacks in 2001. It also mentions that burqa is a religious symbol that has become stigmatised and criminalised to non-Muslim states, while mentioning that covered Muslim women are becoming threats to Western nation state.

This article investigates representations of national belonging in British South Asian theater productions after the 2005 London bombings. It identifies a significant yet hitherto underresearched corpus of plays that show the formation of the UK "home front" in the war on terror from the perspective of postcolonial subjects who are deemed threatening rather than worthy of protection. After discussing the construction of British South Asian citizens as suspicious subjects, the article analyzes two plays that offer an extensive consideration of the contingencies of national belonging. It argues that True Brits by Vinay Patel and Harlesden High Street by Abhishek Majumdar dramatize strategies for building, making, or keeping a home in London in spite of the strictures of suspectification and securitization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects his experience of his encounter with Nigerian novelist Ben Okri in London, England. He states that it is the lightness that inhabits the laughter of Okri that ennobles his best work as insight is difficult to sell when people are frowning. He mentions that his first meeting with Okri was a solemn affair where they were both speaking at the vigil of the mayor for victims of the July 7, 2005 bombings.