Terrorism as Failed Political Communication

Some terrorist acts are meant to communicate something beyond the violence they cause. They are a form of political communication that should be studied as such. To identify the acts we consider politically communicative, we develop a typology of primary objectives that ranges from strategic goals to such communicative statements as moral condemnation. We examine why, as a form of political communication, terrorist acts typically fail. Terrorism fails as political communication because it is violent; because targeted audiences often have little prior awareness of the group’s grievances; because it is sometimes a complex communication; and because governments and media frame issues in a way that sidelines the act’s communicative content. In promoting a better understanding of the message, and why it fails, we hope to make this component of terrorism a more robust subject of study for political communication scholars

The Critical Moral Voice on American Newspaper Opinion Pages

This article examines diversity of content on the opinion pages of 25 different U.S. newspapers and news magazines in the weeks leading up to the 2003 U.S. attack on Iraq. It seeks to answer 3 questions. (a) Who are the authors writing these opinion pieces? (b) How are different author types distributed across different periodicals? and (c) Does author type play any role when it comes to contributing moral content to public debate? These questions are important, especially when it comes to macromoral matters like war. J. Habermas (1989) expected a properly functioning public sphere to debate such matters in a moral way. This study examines which voices contribute to that end

Round table: is the common ground between pragmatism and critical realism more important than the differences?

One theme of this special issue is an incitement to reconsider the relationship between pragmatism and critical realism. While their advocates sometimes come into conflict, there are also clearly borrowings and overlaps between the traditions, and we therefore invited scholars with feet in either or indeed both camps to discuss their relationship. The discussion was conducted virtually, with participants submitting initial contributions, reviewing each other’s submissions, and then responding to each other in their second round of contributions