Framing Terrorism and its Effects on Attitudes toward Islam: An Experiment

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Science

Valentina Michelle Michael

August 2019

© 2019 Valentina Michelle Michael. All Rights Reserved. This thesis titled

Framing Terrorism and its Effects on Attitudes toward Islam: An Experiment

by

VALENTINA MICHELLE MICHAEL

has been approved for

the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism

and the Scripps College of Communication by

Jatin Srivastava

Associate Professor of Journalism

Scott Titsworth

Dean, Scripps College of Communication

ii Abstract

MICHAEL, VALENTINA MICHELLE, M.S., August 2019, Journalism

Framing Terrorism and its Effects on Attitudes toward Islam: An Experiment

Director of Thesis: Jatin Srivastava

This study intended to measure the influence of radical Islamic frame in terrorism news coverage on attitude toward Islam and to explore how any negative attitude resulting through such frames can be negated. Social identity theory was used to cite expert sources in the news stories from both the in-group and the out-group. Based on the two primary independent variables, an experiment was designed with four treatment groups. Although there were no statistically significant results indicating any relationship with the dependent variable (attitude toward Islam), the ANOVA means and the ranking of the groups based on mean attitude score show that in general, participants who were exposed to the in-group source had a relatively high positive attitude toward Islam .

Political preference proved to be the strongest variable that had varying degrees of correlations with attitude toward Islam, media consumption, and age. Unlike what previous literature has shown, this study also suggests that increased knowledge of Islam can contribute to more favorable attitude toward Islam.

iii Dedication

To God, “for from Him, and through Him and for Him are all things.” - Romans 11:36.

And to my mom, for being my first and forever role model.

iv Acknowledgments

I extend my sincerest thank you to the following individuals for helping me in this long process and for being supportive overall in my endeavors.

Dr. Jatin Srivastava, my thesis committee chair, for being patient with me and meticulously guiding me from the day I started thinking about my research. Thank you for keeping me on track and pushing me to go further.

Dr. Hugh Martin, thesis committee member, for instilling a love for statistics and helping me understand it.

Dr. Victoria LaPoe, thesis committee member, for always opening your door to me to brainstorm and being willing to help in any way you can.

Mommy, Rochelle, and Romel, for always having my back and for supporting me from miles away.

Lynn and Bernie, for going out of your way to make America feel like home and for always cheering for me.

Purva, for being my friend and sister and for standing by me as I evolved through this process. Graduate school would have been far less fun without you.

Mohammad Adaileh, for agreeing to be photographed for my study even when you barely knew me.

Wesley Temple, for helping me with the photos for my experiment and making sure they met all the criteria.

God, my very existence wouldn’t be possible without you.

v Table of Contents

Page

Abstract ...... iii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgments...... v List of Tables ...... viii List of Figures ...... ix Introduction ...... 1 Literature Review...... 4 Framing ...... 4 Terrorism...... 7 Social Identity ...... 8 Variables and Hypotheses ...... 11 Method ...... 14 Pilot Study and Factor Analysis ...... 15 Experiment Design...... 19 Stimuli ...... 19 Questionnaire ...... 21 Experiment Method ...... 24 Procedure ...... 24 Analysis...... 26 Data Structure ...... 26 ANOVA Assumptions ...... 28 Results ...... 30 Discussion ...... 36 Religious Framing ...... 36 Source Group ...... 37 Media Consumption ...... 38 Knowledge of Islam ...... 39 Implications...... 40 Limitations and Future Research ...... 42 References ...... 43 vi Appendix A: Original BBC Story that was Used to Create the Stimuli ...... 48 Appendix B: News Stories Used in all Four Treatment Groups ...... 50 Group 1: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack ...... 50 Group 2: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack ...... 52 Group 3: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack ...... 54 Group 4: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack ...... 56 Appendix C: Experiment Questionnaire ...... 58 Attitude toward Muslims ...... 58 Muslim Contact ...... 59 Threat Perception ...... 59 Media Consumption ...... 60 Knowledge Questions ...... 62 Demographics ...... 63

vii List of Tables

Page

Table 1 Independent variables and treatment groups ...... 14 Table 2 Pilot study factor loadings ...... 18 Table 3 Frequency Tables of Socio-Demographic Variables ...... 27 Table 4 Descriptive statistics for DV attitude toward Islam score ...... 30 Table 5 T-tests for news frame, source group, and gender ...... 32 Table 6 Spearman’s correlations for the six primary variables ...... 33 Table 7 Spearman’s correlations for the four secondary variables ...... 35

viii List of Figures

Page

Figure 1. Estimated marginal means of attitude toward Islam plot ...... 31

ix Introduction

Research has shown that many Americans do not know a Muslim (Lipka, 2017,

Moghul, 2016). Because of the American audience’s lack in interactions with Islam and its followers, the media messages portraying Muslims tend to highly influence their thoughts and opinions about Muslims. Unlike any entertainment or fictional media, the news media has greater influence in shaping public opinion because of its myth about maintaining objectivity and unbiased reporting. Therefore, news media’s messages about

Islam and Muslims will be highly influential in public’s attitude toward this people group.

If media messages affect its audience, then it is important to closely examine the creation of such messages. When considering the process of content creation, media framing stands out; it is inevitable. Due to limited resources and power structures, when communicating messages, media is forced to contain vast amounts of information into digestible frames. Framing, as studies have shown, tend to only highlight certain elements of a story, making certain issues, ideas, and keywords more salient than others.

Framing affects the messages conveyed by media. Therefore, if Americans’ perceptions of Muslims are largely affected by news media’s messages, and if framing is a key component in how messages are conveyed, it is crucial to examine the types of frames utilized by news media to convey messages about Muslims and Islam.

An increase in negative attitudes toward Muslims is one of the many social behavior changes that followed 9/11 (Moore, 2002, Yum & Schenck-Hamlin, 2005). The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that unfolded on September 11, 2001 brought

1 the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” to the forefront of news media. Repeatedly including the Islamic frame when covering terrorism tends to marry the concepts of Islam and terrorism together. The general American public that is highly receptive to media messages about Muslims, a less-interacted people group, are therefore influenced by the use of Islamic frames in terrorism coverage.

Although many studies have separately explored the media frames used in covering terrorism and public perceptions of terrorism and Muslims, little to no studies have attempted to bridge the gap between theory and attitude change. This study aims to link theoretically grounded frames used in terrorism coverage and public perception change about Muslims caused by such media frames.

However, examining the link between Islamic frames in terrorism coverage and public perceptions about Muslims is only an attempt to recognize the problem. Even though acknowledging the problem may be half the battle, the rest relies on finding an effective solution to combat the problem. Many scholars have worked to define the problem. But little is known about the effective measures the media industry can undertake to reduce, limit, or eliminate the Islamophobic sentiments portrayed by news media’s framing. Therefore, this study intended to explore the other side of the coin—a possible solution to fight negative perceptions of Muslims when covering terrorism news stores.

A primary reason why news media’s messages about Muslims are highly effective is because they are considered an out-group with which the American audience, the in- group, have little to no contact. It is impossible for media organizations to compel its

2 audience to interact with Muslims. But news outlets can offer insight into how not all

Muslims have extreme or radical ideologies that stand in opposition to the American democracy and safety. Similar to any people groups that have handfuls of individuals who hold extreme ideological positions, radical Islamic terrorists are only a handful of individuals with such beliefs. However, since interactions with this out-group is minimal, repeated negative frames used in covering terrorism may overpower any little knowledge of this people group, contributing to negative, Islamophobic attitudes. Therefore, to explore solutions, this study proposed that negative associations with terrorism may be countered with positive associations of Muslims who condemn terroristic activities that use Islam as the reason, tarnishing the image of the whole religion and over a billion followers. This adds the second element of the study. The study will explore whether adding a fabricated source—who can be recognized as Muslim, someone from the out- group—criticizing the actions of terrorism negate any negative impressions left by the marriage of Islam and terrorism in news stories.

3 Literature Review

Framing

Despite the popularity of the term “framing” and its use in the social sciences and humanities, scholars continue to dispute over the quintessential meaning of the term, resulting in the term’s vagueness (Entman, 1993; Scheufele, 1999; Woods, 2011).

Entman (1993) calls this idea of framing “scattered conceptualization.” He argues that although there are no set ways to explain how frames insert and manifest themselves in communication, the framing theory in itself is quite noble in its efforts to identify and communicate social realities. Woods (2011) discusses the problems surrounding the definition of framing and how it has come to mean different things to different scholars.

He says that some scholars presume framing, priming, and agenda setting to be identical while others acknowledge just one of the terms but fail to distinguish it from the rest of the related concepts. However, for the purpose of this study, I will operationalize framing through Entman’s (1999) study, Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured

Paradigm.

The underlying assumption in framing is that any given issue can be looked at from various angles and be interpreted to have numerous insinuations and values (Chong

& Druckman, 2007). Based on this, framing refers to the particular frame or lens through which any specific communication text can be viewed. Entman (1993) describes framing as a process of selection and salience. He further elaborates it in the following way:

To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more

salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem

4 definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment

recommendation for the item described. (p. 52).

Selection is important for framing because it ensures that a certain lens is chosen out of all the possible frames available in regard to a particular issue. According to

Entman (1993), salience is the means through which information and keywords are made more noticeable and memorable. Both these processes together make framing a reality.

News coverage is not immune to such framing, especially given the limited resources within which news organizations, just like any other businesses, must operate. Shah and his colleagues (2002) say that “when constructing a news story, journalists must choose from among a multitude of vantage points and voices” (p.343). News frames are manufactured and expressed through keywords, metaphors, concepts, symbols, and other visuals (Entman, 1991). Further, Entman (1991) reasons how framing is essentially sizing; by magnifying or shrinking elements in a news story, certain components can be made salient, conveying the importance, or the lack thereof, of any event. Framing is therefore both inevitable and essential to how news consumers digest news and interpret social reality.

Scheufele (1999) states that media is part of the progression through which people construct meaning. Framing communicates how texts and communication discourse exercise their power (Entman, 1993). Although journalists may maintain “objectivity” in news reporting, dominance of frames in the story makes it impossible for the news audience to make unbiased evaluations of situations (Entman, 1993). Thus, dominant

5 frames impact and influence public opinion and political outcomes in societies (Entman,

1991), making the closer examination of framing and its effects crucial.

Framing is operationalized here as repeated keywords or trigger words that are scattered throughout a news story. Research on framing effects has shown that even small variations in messages, when made salient through repeated exposure to words, images, and symbols, can influence audience’s opinion about the event, people, and objects

(Woods, 2011). The same study also argues that “the differences between two frames need not be extreme in order to elicit noticeable variations in people’s perceptions of social problems” (p. 202). Following this line of thought, my study aims to show how the presence and absence of the religious frame in covering terrorism can influence public opinion about Islam and its followers. This study also intends to provide a bridge between theoretically-sound content analyses, which explore frames in media, and survey-based public opinion that evaluate effects of framing.

Obtrusiveness. An important factor that weighs in on framing effects is the range of obtrusiveness. Sheafer and Dvir-Gvirsman (2010) describe obtrusiveness using

Zucker’s (1978) hypothesis. They explain that obtrusiveness depends on public’s direct experience with a particular issue; more obtrusive an issue is, the more direct experience an individual would have had. They reason that unobtrusive issues with which individuals have had little to no experience will be heavily mediated by the media. This obtrusiveness factor is quite essential to this study because in America, most people do not know a Muslim nor have much personal interactions with them (Lipka, 2017), making the effects of mass mediated messages highly effective.

6 Framing effects. Druckman (2001) in his study categorizes framing effects into two: equivalency and emphasis framing effects. The first category relates to frames that present the same information arbitrarily (example: 95% employment and 5% unemployment). On the other hand, emphasis framing effects show that by highlighting certain subsets of relevant information, message creators can redirect the receivers’ attention to consider such elements when constructing opinions. In the context of this study, it can be said that emphasis framing is primarily used in media messages because out of all possible frames, radical Islamic frame is often highlighted in news coverage of terrorism.

Terrorism

Woods (2011) reasons that the term “terrorism” itself cues the audience to perceive danger and threat as well as evoke certain emotional responses. However, due to the heavy cultural insinuations, social frames, and different value assignments, Norris and colleagues (2004) argue that the definition of the term is highly contended. Nevertheless, for the purpose of this paper, the following definition proposed in their study will be used:

‘Terrorism’ is understood here as the systematic use of coercive intimidation

against civilians for political goals. This concept identifies this phenomenon by

the techniques, targets, and goals, and all these attributes are regarded as

necessary and sufficient for an act to qualify as terrorism. ‘Terrorists’ are those

who employ the methods of terrorism. (p. 3).

7 Out of all the available framing options to cover terrorism, Woods (2011) explains that the radical Islamic frame is particularly influential due to its diagnostic nature. He says that this frame goes beyond labelling violence and attempts to answer why such violent acts are executed. This frame does not only recognize a social group, but also suggests that terrorism is a product of religious ideologies, in this case a product of Islam.

Social Identity

Islam entered the present-day American media landscape through news about oil,

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and terrorism (Powell, 2011). Furthermore, Powell (2011) says that as an unobtrusive subject matter, this unknown or little-known religion is introduced to the West within the frameworks of seeking to control resources, war, and terrorism.

Tajfel’s (1974) social identity theory comes into play here and identifies the followers of

Islam (Muslims), as members of the out-group; they are different, distant, and dissimilar.

Thus, the us-versus-them narrative is constructed, otherizing Muslims further and placing them in the East—the orient—and in opposition to the West, the occident (Said, 1985).

Such literature on the importance of framing effects and the effectiveness of diagnostic frames in terrorism coverage justifies the inclusion of the first independent variable, the inclusion or exclusion of the religious frame, in this experiment. On the other hand, this experiment attempted to explore any possible ways to neutralize the diffusion of negative perceptions of Islam through terrorism coverage.

Inoculation. A meta-analysis conducted by Banas and Rains (2010) says that the inoculation theory, developed by social psychologist William McGuire in 1961, has

8 evolved to aide in the examination of controversial topics in contemporary scholarship.

Inoculation theory suggests that weak arguments contradicting a message receiver’s beliefs and attitudes enables them to easily refute the presented argument. This in turn contributes to their resistance to the weak argument while strengthening their existing views in preparation for a future, stronger persuasive message. The meta-analysis shows that perceived threat is an essential element in the process of inoculation when building resistance to persuasive communication. Thus, the perceived threat of terrorism affects how people resist to any neutralizing messages about Islam and Muslims that may counter their existing beliefs and attitudes.

Negating stereotypes. Stereotype associations can be annulled through training and continuous practice, which is a necessity for automaticity (Kawakami, Dovidio,

Moll, Hermsen & Russin, 2000). This can be done in two ways: stereotype negations, which cancel prejudicial notions or counter stereotype affirmations that assert non- stereotypical ideas (Gawronski, Deutsch, Mbirikou, Seibt & Strack, 2008).

Therefore, this study aims to measure the interaction between religious framing of terrorism news and attitude toward Islam as moderated by in-group and out-group sources to negate stereotypical understanding of the religion and its followers. The second independent variable, Muslim and non-Muslim sources distinguishing between terrorism and Islam will act as the stereotype negation training to counter prejudicial views about this unfamiliar faith. If the source from a specific social group proves to be more effective than the other, this may offer a glimpse into a possible solution to how media can cover terrorism neutrally without feeding into Islamophobic sentiments.

9 Considering the problem of highly influential news media messages about Islam in terrorism coverage and in an attempt to discover a solution that can counter any negative perceptions, the study primarily aimed to explore the following questions:

1. Does the usage of the radical Islamic frame in covering terrorism news

influence one’s attitude toward Islam?

2. Does the inclusion of a Muslim source condemning terrorism negate or

neutralize any negative attitude toward Islam?

10 Variables and Hypotheses

To answer the above questions, this experiment employed several variables and demographic and psychographic information. The dependent variable measured the public’s attitude toward Islam. The experiment included two independent, categorical variables: (1) inclusion and exclusion of radical Islamic frame (2) inclusion of an in- group and an out-group source condemning terrorism. The four stimuli (two categories under two independent variables) were treated to reflect both these independent variables.

In addition, the experiment utilized psychographic information to administer the influence of prior experiences with Muslims and its effects on the stimuli. The study also controlled for influences by demographic differences and media consumption.

The dependent variable measured how the independent variables affected one’s attitudes toward Islam. The first independent variable was the inclusion and absence of religious frame in the coverage of terrorism. Half of the stimuli had a general terrorism frame without the mention of any religion. These stories only used “terrorism” as the keyword to imply the general terrorism frame. The other half of the stories included keywords such as “radical Islamic terrorism” and “Islamic terrorism” to suggest the religious frame. Woods’ (2011) study found that the word “terrorism” in itself did not greatly influence people’s threat perception. However, using the radical Islamic frame affected how people perceived threat from terrorism. On the other hand, studies have shown that biased news coverage suggests all Muslims are Islamic extremists and therefore, terrorists (Powell & Abadi, 2003; Powell, 2011; Bail, 2012; Yusof, et.al, 2013;

Winegar, 2008). This suggests that terrorists are equated with Muslims. If so, the term

11 terrorism, even without the Islamic frame, should invoke unfavorable emotions toward

Muslims. This experiment, similar to Woods’ study, included measurement of subjects’ threat perception of terrorism as manipulated by both frames. In addition, it also measured the degree of influence of both these frames on subjects’ attitude toward Islam.

The second independent variable attempts to explore possible ways in which any negative attitudes can be countered. Two of the four stimuli included a fictitious Muslim

(out-group) source representing an Islamic organization and a mosque condemning terrorists’ actions and motives, trying to differentiate terrorists as extremists. The other two included the same criticism, but by a fictional non-Muslim (in-group) source representing two fabricated civic organizations. Out-group homogeneity effect (Park &

Rothbart, 1982) suggests that people ascribe broad, indistinguishable social categories to the behaviors of those seen as different. This independent variable was an attempt to distinguish the out-group, the Muslims, from extremists and terrorists. In the same vein, this variable also tried to measure any variation in how such a message will be perceived when received from a member of the out-group compared to a member of the in-group.

This variable was expected to produce one of the following three possible outcomes: the subjects could assign more value to the message from the in-group member, perceiving them as more trustworthy and thus, believing their message. Or they may receive the out- group member’s message better assuming the source to know better about their own group. Or the third and last predicted outcome was to completely overlook the inclusion of this message by the source. Regardless of the outcome, measuring effects of this

12 variable could help the media understand how any negative portrayals of Muslims can be countered, if possible.

After identifying and understanding the dependent and independent variables, the following hypotheses were proposed to be tested through this study:

H1: News stories using radical Islamic terrorism frame will elicit more negative attitude toward Islam than the stories that do not use the religious framing.

H2: News stories using a person from the in-group as a spokesperson condemning terrorism will elicit a more positive attitude toward Islam than the stories that using a person from the out-group as a spokesperson.

H3: High threat perception will lead to a more negative attitude toward Islam

(negative relationship between the variables).

H4: Higher media consumption will be associated with a more negative attitude toward Islam.

H5: More knowledge about Islam will be associated with a more positive attitude toward Islam.

13 Method

Before beginning the study, a pilot survey was initially conducted online using convenient sampling with the primary purpose of developing and testing an attitude toward Islam scale. Then, using this scale, a lab experiment was designed and conducted at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. The subjects were recruited through undergraduate classes in the Scripps College of Communication. After manipulating the treatments to reflect the independent variables, the participants were assigned to one of the following four groups as indicated in the table below:

Radical Islamic Frame Non-Religious Frame Out-group Source Condemning Group 1 Group 2

Terrorism

In-group Source Condemning Group 3 Group 4 Terrorism

Table 1. Independent variables and treatment groups.

14 Pilot Study and Factor Analysis

The pilot study was conducted to develop and validate an instrument to measure peoples’ attitude toward Islam. This process was modeled after the paper “Development and Validation of the Islamophobic Scale” by Lee, Gibbons, Thompson and Timani

(2009).

Convenience sampling was used for this part of the study. An online survey was designed using Quatrics to collect data and was sent out to friends and relatives via email and social media. The pilot study collected data over a two-week time period starting

February 25, 2019 (N=54). There were 23 males and 29 females. 2 identified themselves as “other.” The ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 80. Thirty-nine participants identified themselves as Christians, one as Hindu, and another as Jewish; 11 said they did not have a religion and 2 chose “other.”

The questionnaire included 14 attitude-measuring questions, most of which came from the attitude toward religion scale developed by Piazza and Landy (2009). Modeling after Von Sikorski and team’s (2017) study, the pilot survey asked participants about their contact with Muslims and the quality of their experiences with them so far.

Following the same study, the pilot survey also included risk (threat) perception questions. In addition, the online questionnaire contained questions about participants’ media consumption, knowledge-based questions to measure the participants’ understanding of the religion, and demographics. The pilot study did not expose the participants to an article about terrorism, but simply gathered the above-mentioned data using the questionnaire.

15 This pilot survey was conducted to test and develop an attitude toward Muslim scale through factor analysis to be used in the final experiment. Out of the 14 attitude- measuring questions in this survey, seven were phrased negatively (e.g. there is little good that comes from Islam) and the other seven were phrased positively (e.g. Muslims positively contribute to the society they live in). The seven positively-phrased questions were reverse coded before beginning the factor analysis. In other words, the scale measured negative attitudes toward Islam. The responses for all 14 of these questions were measured on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

To determine the suitability of the dataset for factor analysis, several assumptions were tested. First, the dataset was tested for normality. One case was flagged as an outlier. However, this was not eliminated from the dataset as one outlier would not significantly alter the results. Then, the data was tested for skewness and kurtosis, which showed that the data was normally distributed. The data also passed the Kaiser-Meyer-

Olkin (KMO) test that measured the proportion of variance (KMO = 0.879) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ2 (df=28) = 228.166, p< 0.01), indicating sampling adequacy and the appropriateness of the dataset for factor analysis.

The 14 questions were then subjected to principal axis factoring method of extraction. Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization was used as the rotation method. This produced three distinct factors with the second factor including only one item (Islam promotes ideas that are out of date and have little relevance to modern life). As this item

16 was conceptually unsound and an oddity, it was removed and the remaining 13 questions were subject to another factor analysis. This produced a two-factor solution.

To retain an item, the researcher decided that it must meet the following two criteria:

1. Item’s factor loading must be above 0.6

2. Item’s cross loading must be below 0.4

Out of the 13 questions that were subjected to this factor analysis, eight items met the above criteria and were retained to be used in the final experiment (see Table 2). The items were deemed reliable (α = 0.897, N=54) and the rotations, which used the Oblimin rotation method with Kaiser normalization, converged in 11 iterations. When the remaining 8 items were re-tested through another factor analysis, it produced a single- factor solution, proving the coherence of the items. These 8 questions were used to measure the attitude toward Islam in the experiment.

17 Table 2. Pilot Study Factor Loadings Item Item Factor Loading No. 1 2

1 All things considered, Islam has caused more harm 0.408 0.446 than good for the world.

2 Modern scientific knowledge makes Islam 0.287 0.201 unnecessary.

3 Islam makes most people better than they would be 0.167 0.656 otherwise. a **

4 Islam teaches tolerance and compassion. a 0.299 0.558 5 Muslims positively contribute to the society they 0.787 - live in. a **

6 If possible, I would avoid going to places where 0.672 - Muslims gather. **

7 Islam is for people who cannot think for 0.748 - themselves.**

8 Islam only serves to increase tensions and hostility 0.175 0.774 between groups of people.**

9 There is little good that comes from Islam. ** 0.161 0.694

10 One important benefit of Islam is that it provides 0.528 0.341 people with comfort during hard times. a

11 There are some important lessons to learn from 0.797 - Islam. a **

12 One positive aspect of Islam is that it helps bond 0.604 0.276 people together. a **

13 Without Islam, a lot more people would act selfishly -0.128 0.567 and care little about others. a Note: N=54. Bold loadings indicate factor number assignments. Factor loadings: coefficients in the pattern matrix. Extraction method: principal axis factoring. Rotation method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization. a Item was reverse coded for analysis. ** Item was retained to form the attitude toward Islam scale in the experiment.

18 Experiment Design

After developing and testing the attitude toward Islam scale and with feedback from participants from the pilot study, the final experiment was designed.

Stimuli

The article used for each of the four conditions was based on a news story published on bbc.com on September 27, 2018, titled, “Netherlands police arrests foil

‘major terrorist attack’” (see appendix A). This specific article was chosen to be manipulated for the following reasons: 1. A failed terror plot was chosen because a terror attack in the United States would have received wide media coverage, which would have raised red flags among participants as to why they were not aware of such an attack, affecting the believability of the article. 2. There is a higher chance of not hearing about a terror attack bust than an actual terror attack with fatalities or injuries. 3. An actual news story would provide satisfactory information that can be manipulated to fit the study.

Following the original BBC story, the basic geographic information in the stimuli was manipulated to fit the American context before treating to fit the conditions (see appendix B). The location of the arrest was changed to Cleveland, Ohio, to make the event close enough to the location of the study and yet maintain some distance. The target location of the attack was changed to New York City as it is a prominent city in the

United States with a history of being targeted for terrorist attacks. The details of the authorities were changed to FBI’s Counterterrorism Division from the National Joint

Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF) to reflect the American context. The descriptions of the

19 arrested suspects from the original story were left unchanged as it did not affect the validity or the reliability of the experiment.

After changing the basic information to fit the study locale, the article was further manipulated to fit each condition. In the article for Group 1, all the instances that referred to terrorism or terrorist was changed to “radical Islamic terrorist” or “radical Islamic terrorism.” This was done to include keywords that capture the Islamic frame in the story.

Further, a direct quote from a fictitious Muslim source condemning such plots and intents was added. The source is signaled to be Muslim (and therefore, a member of the out- group) because of his name, his position in a fictional Islamic forum and mosque, and the picture of him wearing a keffiyeh (Middle Eastern headdress fashioned from a square scarf).

In the article for Group 2, the instances where “terrorism” and “terrorist” were mentioned were left unaltered with no religious references. But the story included the same fictitious direct quote from the Muslim source as in Group 1. The article for Group

3 reflected the Islamic frame similar to the treatment in Group 1. The same quote condemning the plot was included in this treatment. This time, the source had a non-

Muslim-sounding name and was affiliated to a fabricated local community forum. The same source was photographed in a men’s suit, holding the same pose to signal that he was from the in-group. The final group, Group 4, had no religious references (similar to

Group 2) and had the same quote with the non-Muslim source as in Group 3. All other information in the articles remained the same, resulting in the same information exposure

(besides the independent variable changes) to the subjects.

20 In order to match the visuals of the originals story that appeared on bbc.com and to enhance the visual cues in the digital story, a map of the northern region of Ohio was used with Cleveland marked on it to denote the location of the arrest in the story. The second image of the source manipulated to meet the treatment condition. The person photographed as the source for all four conditions was a fair-skinned person of Eastern ethnic origin with dark hair and beard. All four treatments shown to the subjects were designed in a way to reflect a digital story. Each treatment article ranges between 220 and

300 words in addition to the headline, which has less than 10 words.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire consisted of the attitude toward Islam scale developed from the pilot study, questions about contact with Muslims, threat perceptions, media consumption, control checks, knowledge-based questions and demographic questions

(see appendix C for the questionnaire with all the scales and subcategories). All questions within the sections were randomized except the two items for contact with Muslims measurement in order to implement skip logic and the demographic questions. Almost all responses were recorded on a Likert scale ranging from 1 through 7 except media consumption, knowledge-based questions and demographic questions.

Attitude toward Islam scale. This scale (see appendix C) comprised the 8 finalized questions developed through the factor analysis on the pilot study data. Unlike the pilot study, to analyze the final experiment, the four negative statements were recoded to obtain a positive attitude toward Islam scale (the pilot study measured negative attitude toward Islam, meaning if they scored high on the scale, they had a more negative

21 attitude). For the purpose of correlation and analysis, a composite score was derived for each participant using the sum of the both the positive and negative statements (8 x 7 =

56), meaning the higher they scored, more positive an attitude they had toward Islam (α =

0.79, N=256).

Contact with Muslims. This tested two things: First, whether the participants perceived themselves to have any contacts with Muslims. This was measured on a Likert scale from 0 to 7 (0= none at all and 7= a great deal). Secondly, it tested how they rated their experience with Muslims. The question read “if you have had personal contacts with

Muslims, how would you rate your experience with them thus far? (1= very negative and

7= very positive). If the participants chose zero on the Likert scale for the amount of contact they had with Muslims, the second question about experience rating was skipped.

Threat perceptions. Three questions were employed to test how the participants perceived terrorism threats around them. These questions were based on the study by

Fischer and team (2007). These three questions made up the threat perception scale to test hypothesis 3 (see appendix C for scale items). This scale asked the participants to rate the likelihood of terror attacks occurring in America and near them and the likelihood of them becoming a victim of a terror attack (α = 0.69, N=256).

Media consumption. The five questions tested how frequently the participants consumed various forms of media. These questions contributed to the media consumption score (α = 0.51, N=256), which was used to test hypothesis 4 (see appendix C for scale items).

22 Control checks. These four questions tested any outside influences that may affect the results of the study. It was assumed that if a participant closely followed news about terrorism, their perception might be already influenced by what they have heard and seen. The question about a spokesperson’s similarity to the participant in the experiment was included to test the negation theory as it depended upon whether the participant saw the source as being from their group or not. The story relevance was checked to ensure that perceived irrelevance didn’t affect response. Lastly, the question about bias against organized religion was included based on feedback from the pilot study as such biases would influence attitude toward Islam regardless of how the religion was framed.

Knowledge questions. Five basic questions about Islam and its practices were included to gauge the participants’ knowledge of the religion and to test hypothesis 5.

These questions were chosen subjectively based on what the researcher perceived to be foundational knowledge of the religion.

Demographics. General demographic questions were included to cross-check other influences in participants’ attitude toward the Islam.

23 Experiment Method

The lab experiment was conducted with 265 participants using the Qualtrics software. The two-factor experimental design with two levels in each factor resulted in four treatment conditions (see table 1): Islamic frame with out-group source (n = 69),

Non-Islamic frame with out-group source (n = 63), Islamic frame with in-group source (n

= 67), and Non-Islamic frame with in-group source (n = 62). The participants were randomly assigned to a condition using the randomizer option in Qualtrics.

Procedure

The experiment was conducted in a media laboratory in the Scripps College of

Communication at Ohio University. The participants were recruited through undergraduate classes offered through the Scripps College of Communication with the approval of Ohio University’s Institutional Review Board. The participants were compensated with extra credit, no more than 2% of the total grade points possible for the particular class. Those who did not want to participate in the study had an alternate opportunity to earn the same amount of extra credit by submitting an essay on terrorism and religion.

Data was collected over a two-week time period with each session accommodating up to 20 participants (i.e. the number of available computers in the lab).

During the experiment, after the participants signed the consent form, they were seated in front of a computer where they were briefed on what to expect during the study. To ensure consistency, this information was based on the consent form. The participants were also told that their participation was voluntary and they could end the session at any

24 time. But all participants followed through and no one withdrew in the middle of the study.

Participants were randomly assigned to conditions using the randomization feature of Qualtrics, the online survey platform used for the study. When they began the study, they were first shown the news story pertaining to their stimulus condition after which they were presented with the assessment questions. Exposure time was not forced.

But participants were told that some follow-up questions may depend on the news story to ensure careful reading. After the participants completed the study, they were thanked and debriefed. They were told that the news story was fictitious and that they could follow up with the results of the study if they wished. A number of participants from

Cleveland, the locale of the news story, expressed relief when they found out the story was fabricated.

25 Analysis

Data Structure

Qualtrics exported each of the four treatment groups as four different dummy variables, meaning those who were in Group 1 had the value 0 for the other three group variables and had the value 1 under the Group 1 column. These four variables were combined to compute a single condition group variable that indicated the number of the group to which the participants belonged. The overall demographics of the population can be seen in Table 3. Attitude toward Islam, threat perception, and media consumption scales were computed by summing the relevant questions as detailed here. The composite score of the eight items in the attitude toward Islam scale was used for the analysis, meaning all the participants had a score between 0 and 56 (see appendix C).

26 Table 3

Frequency Tables of Socio-Demographic Variables

Respondent Characteristics Frequency %

Gender Male 69 27 Female 185 72.3 Other 2 0.8

Age a 18-20 164 64 21-25 87 34 26-40 3 1.2

Race American Indian or Alaska Native 5 2 Asian 11 4.3 Black or African American 20 7.8 Hispanic or Latino 6 2.3 White 221 86.3 Other 4 1.6

Religion Buddhist 1 0.4 Christian 155 60.5 Jewish 5 2 Muslim 1 0.4 No Religion 82 32 Other 12 4.7

Political Preference b Very Liberal 39 15.2 Liberal 62 24.2 Moderately Liberal 43 16.8 Moderate 53 20.7 Moderately Conservative 34 13.3 Conservative 15 5.9

Note: Sample size varies for age and political preference because of missing values.

27 Then, a news frame variable and group variable were computed. Under news frame, “1” meant the participant was exposed to the story with the Islamic frame and “0” meant the story had a general terrorism frame void of any religious associations. In the group variable, “1” meant the participant read the story with the in-group source and “0” meant they saw the out-group source. Threat perception scale was computed by summing the three items that were measured on a 7-point Likert scale (see appendix C).

Participants scored between 0 and 21 on this scale. Similarly, media consumption scale was computed by summing the five related items. Media consumption was measured on a

5-point Likert scale, which meant the participants scored between 0 and 25. Knowledge of Islam score was calculated by summing the 5 knowledge questions. But unlike the other two scales, this was not a Likert scale measure and could score between 0 (if they got all five questions wrong) and 5 (if they got all five questions right).

ANOVA Assumptions

The two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data. Before beginning the analysis, the data was checked to ensure it met the six recommended

ANOVA assumptions. The experiment met the first three assumptions: the dependent variable was measured at the interval level, the independent variables consisted of at least two categorical variables, and the treatment groups were observed independently.

To test the fourth assumption, the data was checked for any significant outliers.

Four cases based on duration (to both read the article and answer questions) were identified as outliers and removed (duration > 555 seconds; this cutoff was decided based on a boxplot), bringing down the sample size from 265 to 261. Shapiro-Wilk test of

28 normality was conducted within each group to test the fifth assumption and ensure that the data was normally distributed. Five outlying cases were identified and removed

(N=256). The dependent variable, attitude toward Islam score, was then tested for skewness and kurtosis to ensure normality. The distribution was normal for three groups as assessed by Shapiro-Wilk test (p > .05) except for group 3 with religious frame and in- group source (p = 0.03). But as ANOVA is robust to violations of normality and because the p value was close to 0.05, the data was assumed to be normally distributed. Skewness and kurtosis were also tested to reaffirm normality. The skewness value was -.452, meaning the distribution was approximately symmetric. The kurtosis value (-.269) reflected a light-tailed distribution.

Finally, assumption six—homogeneity of variance—was tested using Levene’s test. As the significance level was above 0.05 (i.e. p > 0.05), the group variance can be treated as equal, meeting the last assumption.

29 Results

At a glance, the descriptive statistics show that all four groups, regardless of the treatment condition had a more favorable attitude toward Islam with means closer to 80% on a 0-56 point scale (see table 4).

Table 4 Descriptive statistics for DV attitude toward Islam scale score (0-56) Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

(Rel & Out) (No Rel & Out) (Rel & In) (No Rel & In) N Valid 68 62 66 60 Missing 0 0 0 0 Mean 45.06 44.44 45.48 44.55 Median 45 45 46.50 45.50 Mode 51a 48 50 46 Standard 5.48 5.59 6.10 6.03 Deviation a. Multiple modes exist. The largest value is shown.

The two-way ANOVA examined the effects of the independent variables on the dependent variable. The results showed that there were no statistically significant interaction effects between news framing and source group on the attitude toward Islam,

F (1,252) = 0.046, p = 0.83. The profile plot of estimated marginal means (see figure 1) shows that the participants in the two in-group source conditions had a relatively higher average on the attitude toward Islam score compared to the other two treatment condition with out-group source. The plot also shows that those exposed to the Islamic frame had a more positive attitude toward Islam. However, the results did not support hypothesis 1 that suggested a relationship between religious framing and attitude toward Islam or

30 hypothesis 2 that predicted a relationship between in-group and out-group sources and the attitude toward Islam (the mean differences were not statistically significant).

Figure 1. Estimated marginal means of attitude toward Islam plot.

T-test averages of the attitude toward Islam scores were calculated for both independent variables to identify any differences. The averages for participants who were shown stories with the Islamic frame and without any religious frame were 45.27 and

44.49 respectively (see table 5). The averages for treatments with the in-group source and the out-group source were 45.04 and 44.76 respectively. The difference in mean attitude toward Islam score for both categories under each independent variable were not statistically significant. The scores were not also largely different. Similar results was 31 found when the t-test averages were calculated based on gender. Males had an average score of 43.75 and females had an average score of 45.29. The difference between these scores was not statistically significant.

Table 5

T-tests for news frame, source group, and gender (not statistically significant) News Frame Source Group Gender Non- Religious Religious In-group Out-group Male Female Frame Frame Attitude Toward 45.27 44.49 45.04 44.76 43.75 45.29 Islam Score N 134 122 126 130 69 185 (Std. dev.) (5.77) (5.79) (6.06) (5.52) (5.67) (5.80)

Spearman’s correlations were calculated to measure any relationships between the dependent variable and the other primary variables measured through the experiment (see table 6). Threat perception did not have a statistically significant correlation with the attitude toward Islam, not supporting hypothesis 3. However, the direction of the relationship between threat perception and attitude toward Islam were negative as predicted in hypothesis 3—the higher the participants perceived to be threatened by possible terrorist attacks, the lower they scored on the attitude toward Islam scale. Media consumption had a weak positive correlation with the attitude toward Islam (rho = 0.184, p < 0.01). The results did not support H4, which proposed a negative correlation between media consumption and attitude toward Islam. But the variables showed a statistically significant result in the opposite (positive) direction. In addition, those who scored higher

32 on the knowledge of Islam scale also scored high on the attitude toward Islam (rho =

0.126, p < 0.05), supporting hypothesis 5. Political preference and age had negative, statistically significant correlations with the attitude toward Islam (p < 0.01). Political preference had a moderate negative correlation (rho = -0.452) and age had a weak negative correlation (rho = -0.224) with attitude toward Islam. Political preference also had a weak negative correlation with media consumption (rho = -0.143, p < 0.05). Age and political preference were also weakly correlated (rho = 0.128, p < 0.05).

Table 6 Spearman’s Correlations for the six primary variables Attitude Media Threat Knowledge Political Towards Consumpti Age Perception of Islam Preference Islam Score on Attitude 1 Towards (n=256) Islam Score

Threat - 0.009 1 Perception (n=256) (n=256)

Media 0.184** 0.027 1 Consumptio (n=256) (n=256) (n=256) n

Knowledge 0.126* 0.042 0.098 1 of Islam (n=256) (n=256) (n=256) (n=256)

Political - 0.452** - 0.053 - 0.143* - 0.054 1 Preference (n=246) (n=246) (n=246) (n=246) (n=246)

- 0.224** - 0.074 0.032 - 0.066 0.128* 1 Age (n=254) (n=254) (n=254) (n=254) (n=244) (n=254)

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

33 Table 7 shows that following news about terrorism and the news relevance variables had a moderate, positive, and statistically significant correlation (rho = 0.338, p

< 0.01). In other words, those who closely followed news about terrorism found the story to be relevant regardless of the condition group they were in. Participants who thought the source who condemned terrorism looked similar to the participants, meaning they considered them to be in the same social in-group, found the news story to be more relevant than those who saw the source as belonging to the out-group (rho = 0.132, p <

0.05). Although the correlation between the perception of organized religion and attitude toward Islam was negative, it was not statistically significant. In general, those who scored low on how much they liked the idea of organized religion also scored low on the attitude toward Islam scale. But this correlation is very small (-0.09) and not statistically significant and therefore, cannot be considered substantial.

34 Table 7 Spearman’s Correlations for the four secondary variables Attitude Follow Organized Source News Towards Terrorism Religion Similarity Relevance Islam Score News Perception Attitude 1 Towards (n=256) Islam Score

Follow 0.069 1 Terrorism (n=256) (n=256) News

Source - 0.041 - 0.015 1 Similarity (n=256) (n=256) (n=256)

News - 0.047 0.338** 0.132* 1 Relevance (n=256) (n=256) (n=256) (n=256)

Organized - 0.099 0.071 0.072 0.048 1 Religion (n=256) (n=256) (n=256) (n=256) (n=256) Perception **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

35 Discussion

The main goal of this study was to measure the influence of religious framing of terrorism news on audience’s attitude toward Islam and if such framing led to unfavorable attitudes, whether any measures can be taken to negate such influence. The research questions in this study dealt with the two main independent variables—framing of terrorism news and sources in the story from two different social groups. The hypotheses further expanded these two research questions and also explored other possible relationships with the secondary variables measured through the experiment. Out of the five proposed hypotheses, only hypothesis 5 was supported. Hypothesis 4 assumed high media consumption would mean increased exposure to negative framing of Islam and therefore proposed that these two variables will be negatively related. But the study statistically proved the opposite of this to be true. It showed that these two variables had a positive relationship—more media consumption meant higher score on the attitude scale.

Findings from the experiment also supported hypothesis 5, which proposed that more knowledge of Islam was positively correlated with the attitude toward Islam.

Religious Framing

This study did not support any influences of religious framing of terrorism news on audience’s attitude toward Islam. This stands in contrast with what previous literature has found. But, it is important to note the context and setting of this experiment. This experiment employed young university students from the college of communication, especially those enrolled in journalism classes. Most journalism and communications students are aware of framing and may have been immune to this manipulation. Further,

36 the correlation analysis showed that age had a statistically significant relationship with the attitude score—younger people had a more positive attitude toward Islam. As most participants were comparatively young, this could have overridden the effects of framing and have resulted in a higher mean score. Although Woods’ (2011) study claimed radical

Islamic frame tended to be influential due to its diagnostic nature, this study did not support that argument. But this could have also been because of a lack of strong conveyance of the frame or participants’ immunity to such frames. Further, the increasing dialogue about Islamophobia and Islam in general, especially in the academic environment, could have also primed the participants, which may need to be addressed in future studies.

Source Group

The effects of including sources from in-group and out-group in terrorism stories were also not statistically supported by this study. The nature of the stimulus could have also rendered to the inefficiency of the variable. Although a picture of the source was included, it could have been made more effective through moving image. Moreover, different accents of sources, further emphasizing the group dynamics could have been more stimulating than a static image. However, regardless of statistical significance, the estimated marginal means of the four treatment groups and how they rank may cue to the importance of sourcing (see figure 1). When comparing the means of all four treatment groups, both groups with the in-group source scored higher on the attitude toward Islam scale compared to their counterpart with the same second variable. For example, group 3 that was exposed to the in-group source and radical Islamic frame had a higher mean

37 score than group 1, which was exposed to the story with the out-group source and radical

Islamic frame. This provides ground for further consideration of this variable.

Media Consumption

Hypothesis 4 was proposed with the assumption that high media consumption would expose people to the more prevalent negative profile of Islam and Muslims in media as Powell (2011) suggested in her study. Thus, the hypothesis said more media consumption would lead to a more negative attitude toward Islam. Rather, this study found that media consumption and attitude toward Islam had a positive relationship, meaning the more media people consumed, more positive an attitude they had toward

Islam. Although the correlation was weak, it was statistically significant. This could be the result of four possibilities: First, media landscape may have changed throughout the past decade, now offering a more balanced frame of Islam. Secondly, with the range of options available for one’s media diet, people might be sifting through the available frames and choosing the ones they believe to be more neutral. This of course assumes that people are media literate and know to navigate the media landscape. Zemmels (2012) argues that passive media consumers are evolving to become active users engaging with the media, especially the youth whose identity constitutes new media. As this study’s sample were mostly youth, it could be well assumed that they were media literate, leading to the positive relationship between media consumption and attitude toward Islam.

Thirdly, according to the study by Sheafer and Dvir-Gvirsman (2010), obtrusiveness was a key factor in the effectiveness of media in influencing its audience. It suggested that highly familiar issues are considered to be more obtrusive and those with

38 which the public do not have much direct experience. But, a Pew study (Mohamed, 2018) shows that the Muslim population in the United States is growing at a rate of about

100,000 a year, which may make this people group more obtrusive, weakening the influence of media frames, which could have led to this result. Lastly, all the participants were recruited from the college of communication in the university. As students of journalism and communication, they may have had a higher degree of media literacy than an average person, which would mean that they were more likely to consume media sources with quality content and reputation for balance and integrity.

Knowledge of Islam

Knowledge of Islam was positively correlated with the attitude toward Islam. It could be argued that more people knew about Islam, even a basic understanding without any nuances that come with media frames, the more favorable attitude people had. Smith

(2013) argued that animosity toward Islam continued to increase post 9/11 regardless of increasing knowledge about Islam. He also argued that media framing was considerably more influential than educating oneself about this otherwise lesser known religion.

However, in contrary to his argument, the results of this study show that knowing more about Islam can elicit a more favorable attitude toward Islam. It could also have a cyclical effect. Increased knowledge may increase positive attitudes and more positive attitudes may in return encourage people to increase their knowledge of Islam.

39 Implications

This study set out to find the relationship between framing of terrorism news and attitude toward Islam and whether any negative-attitude-triggering messages in terrorism coverage can be negated by how sourcing decisions are made. Although the primary independent variables in this study did not influence attitude toward Islam in a statistically significant way, the effects of the other variables and some of the general relationship between variables need to be considered.

Political preference and attitude toward Islam had the strongest correlation in this study. Considering the liberal and conservative ideologies on a left to right political spectrum, the further right people leaned, less favorable their attitude was toward Islam and its followers. In a sense, political preference variable dominated the results of this study with strong correlations with several variables. Older participants leaned further right on the political spectrum than their younger counterparts. In addition, they also consumed less media. This all ties together in the current polarized political environment and affirms what previous studies have found—American society is highly polarized along partisan lines (Messing & Westwood, 2014; Smith, 2013). This suggests that younger audience who consumed more media and were more liberal in their political ideologies tended to have a more favorable attitude toward Islam. Understanding the power of political partisanship, less-politically-triggering frames can be used to convey sensitive news stories like terrorism, which by its nature tend to elicit more emotionally- charged responses.

40 Overall, this study supports the audience-centered approach to stereotype reduction as suggested by Ramasubramanian (2007). She says that this approach emphasizes “instructing participants to expend conscious effort to reduce stereotype accessibility while viewing biased media materials” (p. 252). Both media consumption and knowledge of Islam influenced the attitude score in this study. Based on this approach, it can be said that even if media cannot directly control audience’s attitude toward Islam, it can contribute to negating Islam stereotypes by promoting media literacy and educational material on the religion for exposure. As the audience is increasingly exposed to unopinionated learning material on Islam, the topic will become more obtrusive, leading to a more favorable attitude. This in turn may influence them to seek out knowledge and be aware of any biased media messages they may consume. Political partisanship which had the highest influence on this attitude score can be weakened if

Islam and Muslims are detached from the umbrella lens of partisanship and are simply seen as cultural stereotypes that have resulted from fear-inducing terrorism narrative. In other words, media can attempt to disassociate Islam from political ideologies, which feed this stereotype, in order to negate the typecast that marries Islam and terrorism and otherizes Muslims.

41 Limitations and Future Research

One of the major limitations of this study was the demographic details of the sample which limits generalization of the results. As the participants were recruited from a university, the sample only reflects the position of this specific demographic and is in no way a reflection of the national population. Future research can consider looking at the variables with a more diverse sample population. Further, media framing variable can be strengthened to include more pronounced frames. Also, future studies can consider how the news stories are presented to the treatment groups. Manipulating the stories to suit online platforms or broadcast news to reflect the ways in which media is consumed today may produce more significant results than weakly framed and presented stories. The number of participants can also be increased to strengthen the reliability of results.

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47 Appendix A: Original BBC Story that was Used to Create the Stimuli

Published on BBC, Sept. 27, 2018. Accessed via https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-45673221

Netherlands police arrests foil ‘major terrorist attack’

Police in the Netherlands have arrested seven men over an alleged plot to carry out what they describe as a major terrorist attack involving guns and explosives.

Police say the men were trying to source AK47s, hand grenades and bomb materials to carry out their attack. The men, aged between 21 and 34, were arrested on

Thursday.

Three had been arrested previously for trying to travel abroad to join foreign militants.

Prosecutors say the man at the centre of the group is a 34-year-old of Iraqi origin, who was convicted in 2017 for trying to travel to fight for the Islamic State group.

They say they were tipped off about the plot in April 2018 by intelligence services, who said the main suspect wanted to target "a large event in the Netherlands where there would be a lot of victims".

The seven men were arrested in the central city of Arnhem and southern municipality of Weert on Thursday afternoon by anti-terrorism teams from the country's

Special Interventions Service (DSI).

Prosecutors believe the suspects wanted to carry out twin attacks involving a bomb and gun attack at an event and a car bomb detonated elsewhere.

48 "The suspects were in search of AK47s, hand guns, hand grenades, explosive vests and raw materials for several [car] bombs," prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors say they were allegedly seeking firearms training and were arrested in possession of five small handguns.

The National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) told local media in a statement that the arrests reflect the "realistic" risk of attacks in the country.

The threat level in the Netherlands is currently set at four out of a maximum five.

49 Appendix B: News Stories Used in all Four Treatment Groups

Group 1: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack

Seven men were arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, over an alleged plot to carry out what they describe as a major radical Islamic terrorist attack involving guns and explosives.

Police say the men were trying to source AK47s, hand grenades and bomb materials to carry out their attack.

The men, aged between 21 and 34, were arrested on Thursday. Three had been arrested previously for trying to travel to join radical Islamic militants.

Prosecutors say the man at the center of the group is a 34-year-old, who was convicted in 2017 for trying to travel to fight for an Islamic terrorist group.

They say they were tipped off about the plot in April 2018 by intelligence services, who said the main suspect wanted to target "a large event in New York City where there would be a lot of victims."

50 The seven men were arrested in a suburb in Cleveland on Thursday afternoon by

FBI’s Counterterrorism Division from the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF).

Prosecutors believe the suspects wanted to carry out attacks involving a bomb and gun attack at an event and a car bomb detonated elsewhere.

"The suspects were in search of AK47s, hand guns, hand grenades, explosive vests and raw materials for several [car] bombs," prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors say they were allegedly seeking firearms training and were arrested in possession of five small handguns.

Mohamed Shahid, the spokesperson for

Cleveland Muslim Forum and imam of the Parma

Masjid mosque, condemned such “vile and murderous” plots.

“We want to make clear that their violent, hate-filled intents do not represent Muslims,” he said. “They seek to divide our society and instill fear; but, we will not let it happen.”

The National Coordinator for FBI’s Counterterrorism Division told local media in a statement that the arrests reflect the "realistic" risk of radical Islamic terrorism in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security’s latest National Terrorism Advisory

System has issued an “elevated alert” warning the American public of “credible terrorism threat against the United States”.

51 Group 2: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack

Seven men were arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, over an alleged plot to carry out what they describe as a major terrorist attack involving guns and explosives.

Police say the men were trying to source AK47s, hand grenades and bomb materials to carry out their attack.

The men, aged between 21 and 34, were arrested on Thursday. Three had been arrested previously for trying to travel to join militants.

Prosecutors say the man at the center of the group is a 34-year-old, who was convicted in 2017 for trying to travel to fight for a terrorist group.

They say they were tipped off about the plot in April 2018 by intelligence services, who said the main suspect wanted to target "a large event in New York City where there would be a lot of victims."

52 The seven men were arrested in a suburb in Cleveland on Thursday afternoon by

FBI’s Counterterrorism Division from the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF).

Prosecutors believe the suspects wanted to carry out attacks involving a bomb and gun attack at an event and a car bomb detonated elsewhere.

"The suspects were in search of AK47s, hand guns, hand grenades, explosive vests and raw materials for several [car] bombs," prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors say they were allegedly seeking firearms training and were arrested in possession of five small handguns.

Mohamed Shahid, the spokesperson for

Cleveland Muslim Forum and imam of the Parma

Masjid, condemned such “vile and murderous” plots.

“We want to make clear that their violent, hate-filled intents do not represent everyone,” he said. “They seek to divide our society and instill fear; but, we will not let it happen.”

The National Coordinator for FBI’s Counterterrorism Division told local media in a statement that the arrests reflect the "realistic" risk of terrorism in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security’s latest National Terrorism Advisory

System has issued an “elevated alert” warning the American public of “credible terrorism threat against the United States”.

53 Group 3: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack

Seven men were arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, over an alleged plot to carry out what they describe as a major radical Islamic terrorist attack involving guns and explosives.

Police say the men were trying to source AK47s, hand grenades and bomb materials to carry out their attack.

The men, aged between 21 and 34, were arrested on Thursday. Three had been arrested previously for trying to travel to join radical Islamic militants.

Prosecutors say the man at the center of the group is a 34-year-old, who was convicted in 2017 for trying to travel to fight for an Islamic terrorist group.

They say they were tipped off about the plot in April 2018 by intelligence services, who said the main suspect wanted to target "a large event in New York City where there would be a lot of victims."

54 The seven men were arrested in a suburb in Cleveland on Thursday afternoon by

FBI’s Counterterrorism Division from the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF).

Prosecutors believe the suspects wanted to carry out attacks involving a bomb and gun attack at an event and a car bomb detonated elsewhere.

"The suspects were in search of AK47s, hand guns, hand grenades, explosive vests and raw materials for several [car] bombs," prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors say they were allegedly seeking firearms training and were arrested in possession of five small handguns.

Jonathan McDaniels, the spokesperson for

Cleveland Unity Forum and President of the Lake

Erie Civic Association, condemned such “vile and murderous” plots.

“We want to make clear that their violent, hate-filled intents do not represent Muslims,” he said. “They seek to divide our society and instill fear; but, we will not let it happen.”

The National Coordinator for FBI’s Counterterrorism Division told local media in a statement that the arrests reflect the "realistic" risk of radical Islamic terrorism in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security’s latest National Terrorism Advisory

System has issued an “elevated alert” warning the American public of “credible terrorism threat against the United States”.

55 Group 4: Cleveland Arrests Foil Major Terror Attack

Seven men were arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, over an alleged plot to carry out what they describe as a major terrorist attack involving guns and explosives.

Police say the men were trying to source AK47s, hand grenades and bomb materials to carry out their attack.

The men, aged between 21 and 34, were arrested on Thursday. Three had been arrested previously for trying to travel to join militants.

Prosecutors say the man at the center of the group is a 34-year-old, who was convicted in 2017 for trying to travel to fight for a terrorist group.

They say they were tipped off about the plot in April 2018 by intelligence services, who said the main suspect wanted to target "a large event in New York City where there would be a lot of victims."

The seven men were arrested in a suburb in Cleveland on Thursday afternoon by

FBI’s Counterterrorism Division from the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF).

56 Prosecutors believe the suspects wanted to carry out attacks involving a bomb and gun attack at an event and a car bomb detonated elsewhere.

"The suspects were in search of AK47s, hand guns, hand grenades, explosive vests and raw materials for several [car] bombs," prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors say they were allegedly seeking firearms training and were arrested in possession of five small handguns.

Jonathan McDaniels, the spokesperson for

Cleveland Unity Forum and President of the Lake

Erie Civic Association, condemned such “vile and murderous” plots.

“We want to make clear that their violent, hate-filled intents do not represent everyone,” he said. “They seek to divide our society and instill fear; but, we will not let it happen.”

The National Coordinator for FBI’s Counterterrorism Division told local media in a statement that the arrests reflect the "realistic" risk of terrorism in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security’s latest National Terrorism Advisory

System has issued an “elevated alert” warning the American public of “credible terrorism threat against the United States”.

57 Appendix C: Experiment Questionnaire

Attitude toward Muslims

On a scale of 1 to 7, rate the following statements (1=strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree):

1. If possible, I would avoid going to places where Muslims gather.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

2. Islam makes most people better than they would be otherwise.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

3. Islam is for people who cannot think for themselves.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

4. Muslims positively contribute to the society they live in.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

5. Islam only serves to increase tensions and hostility between groups of people.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

6. There is little good that comes from Islam.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

7. There are some important lessons to learn from Islam.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8. One positive aspect of Islam is that it helps bond people together.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

58 Muslim Contact

9. (a) In general, how much contact do you have with Muslims in your day-to-day life?

(1=none at all 7= a great deal).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

(b) If you have had personal contacts with Muslims, how would you rate your experience with them thus far? (1=very negative and 7= very positive).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Threat Perception

10. What is the likelihood of a terrorist attack occurring in America within the next 12

months? (1= very unlikely and 7= very likely).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

11. What is the likelihood of you becoming a victim of a terrorist attack? (1= very

unlikely and 7= very likely).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

12. What is the likelihood of a terrorist attack occurring near you? (1= very unlikely and

7= very likely).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

59 Media Consumption

13. How often, if at all, do you obtain news on television?

a. Never

b. Once a week or less

c. Several times a week

d. Once a day

e. Several times a day

14. How often, if at all, do you obtain news on radio?

f. Never

g. Once a week or less

h. Several times a week

i. Once a day

j. Several times a day

15. How often, if at all, do you obtain news online, not including social media?

a. Never

b. Once a week or less

c. Several times a week

d. Once a day

e. Several times a day

16. How often, if at all, do you obtain news from media printed on paper?

a. Never

b. Once a week or less

60 c. Several times a week

d. Once a day

e. Several times a day

17. How often, if at all, do you obtain news from social media?

a. Never

b. Once a week or less

c. Several times a week

d. Once a day

e. Several times a day

18. How closely do you follow news on terrorism? (1=not at all closely and 7= very

closely).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

19. On a scale of 1 to 7, rate the following statement: The spokesperson in the story

looked similar to me (1=strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

20. On a scale of 1 to 7, how would you rate the following sentence: The story I read was

very relevant to me. (1=strongly disagree and 7= strongly agree).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

21. On a scale of 1 to 7, how would you rate the following sentence: I do not like the idea

of organized religion (1=strongly disagree and 7= strongly agree).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

61 Knowledge Questions

22. How many pillars of faith are there in Islam?

a. Two

b. Three

c. Four

d. Five

23. How many times a day must a Muslim pray?

a. Two

b. Three

c. Five

d. Seven

24. Where do Muslims go for hajj?

a. Mecca

b. Medina

c. Ta’if

d. Amman

25. To which prophet was the Holy Quran revealed?

a. Prophet Isa

b. Prophet Ibrahim

c. Prophet Muhammad

d. Prophet Moosa

26. Who was Prophet Muhammad’s first wife?

62 a. Aisha

b. Fathima

c. Kadhija

d. Aamina

Demographics

27. Gender:

a. Male

b. Female

c. Other (please specify)

28. What is your age? ______

29. How would you describe your race? Select all that apply.

a. American Indian or Alaska Native

b. Asian

c. Black or African American

d. Hispanic or Latino

e. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

f. White

g. Other (please specify)

30. How would you describe your political preference?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very Liberal Moderately Moderate Moderately Conservative Very

Liberal Liberal Conservative Conservative

63 31. Which political party are you registered with, if any?

a. Democratic party

b. Republican party

c. Independent

d. Other party (please specify)

e. Not registered to vote

32. What is your religion?

a. Buddhist

b. Christian

c. Hindu

d. Jewish

e. Muslim

f. No religion

g. Other (please specify)

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