Empirical Essays on Public and Media Attitudes to Conflict Nathan Woolley
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Royal Holloway, University of London Department of Economics Empirical Essays on Public and Media Attitudes to Conflict Submitted by: Nathan Woolley Thesis submitted to the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Declaration I, Nathan Woolley, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed . (Nathan Woolley) Date: 1 Abstract The lens through which people observe and form judgements upon conflict and ter- rorism depends heavily on the media they consume as well as their personal circum- stances. This thesis is comprised of three empirical studies; the first two investigate how media reporting of armed conflict affects both the perceptions of news consumers and the completeness of media-based datasets, the third analyses the determinants of public support for terrorism. Chapter 1 studies the factors that drive variation in the intensity of media coverage that violent events receive and the impact this will have upon consumers of news media. This is achieved by using the unique Iraq Body Count (IBC) database. Conflict events accruing intense media coverage are those that have higher numbers of fatalities and injuries, use more newsworthy weapons (e.g. explo- sive violence) and occur on weekdays. Events occurring further from Baghdad receive a reporting intensity penalty, particularly among the international media. Chapter 2 considers the impact of heterogenous reporting on media-based conflict event datasets. Founders of such datasets select a subset of sources from the universe of news media outlets to be monitored. This source selection affects both the overall body count as well as the dataset's event type composition. The chapter also applies multiple sys- tems estimation (MSE) techniques to the Iraq case finding that IBC is likely missing a substantial number of events and that these are not randomly distributed across event types. The third chapter considers how an individual's support for terrorism against civilians is determined by their socio-economic and religious characteristics. The study uses 11 rounds of Pew's Global Attitudes Survey in five Muslim countries. Results show that support for terrorism generally declines as household income or religious commitment rises. Increased levels of education, however, may significantly increase support for terrorism in some countries. Finally, a concluding chapter draws out the implications from these three studies as well as the synergies between them. 2 Acknowledgements I am very grateful to many people who have assisted me on this PhD journey. Firstly, to Michael Spagat, my supervisor, who has been a constant source of encouragement and inspiration and without whose time and support this thesis would not have been possible. Also to my advisor, Juan Pablo Rud, for providing very useful feedback on my work throughout. The Department of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London has provided an excellent environment in which to research this thesis. I would like to thank Ija Tra- peznikova, Jonathan Wadsworth, Jesper Bagger and other members of academic staff who have helped shape this thesis through feedback, ideas and constructive criticism at various points during the process. I would also like to thank Annika, Florentyna and other PhD students in the department for their friendship and solidarity over the last four years. I would also like to place on record my thanks to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) who provided the funding which allowed me to carry out this research. I am immensely grateful to my parents for their constant support and sacrifice over 26 years which has enabled me to reach this point. Finally, thank you to my fianc´ee,Rebecca, for the love, patience and encouragement that you have shown me every day. This is for you. 3 Contents Introduction 13 1 Framing of a War 16 1.1 Introduction.................................. 16 1.2 Reporting of Conflict in the News Media.................. 18 1.3 The Iraq War................................. 22 1.4 Iraq Body Count Data............................ 23 1.4.1 Weapon Type............................. 25 1.4.2 Event Location............................ 27 1.4.3 Media Coverage Intensity...................... 29 1.5 Analysis and Results............................. 33 1.5.1 Models................................ 33 1.5.2 General Results............................ 34 1.5.3 Locational Effects.......................... 38 1.5.4 Weapon Type............................. 43 1.6 Conclusions.................................. 48 2 Assessing the Completeness of Media-Based Datasets 52 4 2.1 Introduction.................................. 52 2.2 Completeness Analysis............................ 53 2.2.1 Media-Based Datasets........................ 53 2.2.2 Dataset Creation Exercise...................... 57 2.2.3 Event Size............................... 58 2.2.4 Dataset Performance over Time................... 61 2.2.5 Weapon Type Distributions..................... 63 2.2.6 Geographical Distribution...................... 64 2.2.7 Regression Analysis......................... 65 2.3 Multiple Systems Estimation........................ 69 2.3.1 Data.................................. 71 2.3.2 Capture-Recapture Methodology.................. 72 2.3.3 Simple MSE Results......................... 76 2.3.4 Stratification Results......................... 80 2.3.5 Comparison With Other Data Types................ 86 2.4 Conclusions.................................. 92 3 Who Supports Terrorism? 97 3.1 Introduction.................................. 97 3.2 Motivation.................................. 99 3.3 Theoretical and Empirical Background................... 100 3.3.1 Income, Education and Terrorism.................. 100 3.3.2 Religious Commitment and Terrorism............... 105 3.4 Data...................................... 106 5 3.5 Country Backgrounds............................ 110 3.5.1 Indonesia............................... 111 3.5.2 Jordan................................. 111 3.5.3 Lebanon................................ 111 3.5.4 Pakistan................................ 112 3.5.5 Turkey................................. 112 3.6 Key Variables and Descriptive Statistics.................. 114 3.6.1 Temporal Changes.......................... 114 3.6.2 Education Level........................... 116 3.6.3 Income Level............................. 117 3.6.4 Religious Variables.......................... 119 3.6.5 Control Variables........................... 122 3.7 Results and Analysis............................. 126 3.7.1 Combined Country Regressions................... 126 3.7.2 Regression Results by Country................... 129 3.7.3 Revisiting Shafiq and Sinno..................... 134 3.8 Discussion and Conclusions......................... 135 4 Thesis Conclusions 141 Appendices 152 A Framing of a War 153 A.1 Supplementary Figures and Tables..................... 153 A.2 Technical Appendix (Excluded Observations)............... 164 6 A.3 Interview Transcript............................. 169 B Assessing the Completeness of Media Based Datasets 171 B.1 Supplementary Figures and Tables..................... 171 C Who Supports Terrorism? 178 C.1 Supplementary Figures and Tables..................... 178 Bibliography 190 7 List of Figures 1.1 IBC and SIGACTS Events by Location.................. 28 1.2 Average Number of Reports by Source Group over Time......... 32 1.3 Reporting of Events Inside and Outside of Baghdad by Event Size... 39 1.4 Ratio of Event Coverage between International and Iraqi Media..... 40 1.5 Reporting of Gunfire and Bombing Incidents by Event Size....... 44 1.6 Standardised OLS Coefficients by Weapon Type............. 45 2.1 Event Size Bias on Media Coverage..................... 59 2.2 Relative Completeness by Dataset Size................... 60 2.3 Relative Completeness by Pseudo Dataset................. 61 2.4 Relative Event Completeness over Time.................. 62 2.5 Weapon Composition by Pseudo Dataset.................. 63 2.6 Proportion of Events in Baghdad by Pseudo Dataset........... 64 2.7 Event Population Estimates from Two-Source Capture-Recapture.... 76 2.8 Event Population Estimates from Three-Source MSE........... 77 2.9 Latent Class Model Estimation Results.................. 79 2.10 IBC and MSE Event Count Over Time................... 83 2.11 IBC and MSE Estimated Event Weapon Type Composition....... 85 8 2.12 IBC and MSE Estimated Fatality Weapon Type Composition...... 86 2.13 Comparison of IBC+SIGACTS and MSE Estimates by Event Size... 88 2.14 Comparison of IBC, MSE and UCIMS Survey Weapon Compositions.. 91 3.1 Observations by Country and Year..................... 110 3.2 Justification for Suicide Bombing over Time................ 115 3.3 Justification for Suicide Bombing by Education Level........... 116 3.4 Justification for Suicide Bombing by Income Quartile........... 118 3.5 Justification for Suicide Bombing by Importance of Religion....... 120 3.6 Justification for Suicide Bombing by Frequency of Prayer........ 121 3.7 Justification for Suicide Bombing by Country Region........... 124 3.7 Justification for Suicide Bombing by Country Region (cont.)....... 125 3.8 Combined Country Regression: Justification for Suicide Bombing.... 127 A.1 Distribution of Coalition Media Group Variable.............. 153 A.2 Distribution of Iraqi Media Group Variable................ 154 A.3 Distribution of News Agencies Media Group Variable........... 154 A.4 Reporting of Gunfire and