What Does the “Terrorist” Label Really Do? Measuring and Explaining the Effects of the “Terrorist” and “Islamist” Categories

Many scholars and practitioners claim that labelling groups or individuals as “terrorists” does not simply describe them but also shapes public attitudes, due to the label's important normative and political charge. Yet is there such a “terrorist label effect”? In view of surprisingly scant evidence, the present paper evaluates whether or not the terrorist label – as well as the “Islamist” one – really impacts both the audience's perception of the security environment and its security policy preferences, and if yes, how and why. To do so, the article implements a randomized-controlled vignette experiment where participants (n = 481) first read one out of three press articles, each depicting a street shooting in the exact same way but labelling the author of the violence with a different category (“terrorist”/“shooter”/“Islamist”). Participants were then asked to report on both their perceptions and their policy preferences. This design reveals very strong effects of both the “terrorist” and “Islamist” categories on each dimension. These effects are analysed through the lenses of social and cognitive psychology, in a way that interrogates the use of the terrorist category in society, the conflation of Islamism with terrorism, and the press and policymakers’ lexical choices when reporting on political violence

Constructing the Islamic state : analysing the interplay between media and policy frames in the aftermath of the November 13th 2015 Paris attacks

This article analyses the imagined threat posed by the Islamic State in the aftermath of the November 13th Paris attacks and during the build-up to the December 2nd 2015 House of Commons vote to extend U.K. airstrikes to Syria. Combining Political Communications and International Relations approaches to framing analysis, and focusing on Britain’s three main television news providers (BBC, ITV and Channel 4), it seeks to question (1) how the Islamic State is framed, (2) who shapes those frames, and (3) what consequences arise from adopting certain ways of seeing and speaking over others? The analysis identifies three competing frames (labelled here as the “(Para)Military”, the “Elusive” and the “Extremist” frames), and their main advocates, and shows how, ultimately, U.K. news media tend to support an “elite”-centred understanding of the threat, thus legitimising calls for extending airstrikes into Syria. In so doing, the article provides two contributions to knowledge: first, empirical, by generating substantive new insight into the way the Islamic State was portrayed in the days and weeks following the Paris attacks, and in particular who shapes those portrayals; and, second, conceptual, via its blending of Political Communications and International Relations approaches to framing and their consequences

The genome of Tetranychus urticae reveals herbivorous pest adaptations

The spider mite Tetranychus urticae is a cosmopolitan agricultural pest with an extensive host plant range and an extreme record of pesticide resistance. Here we present the completely sequenced and annotated spider mite genome, representing the first complete chelicerate genome. At 90 megabases T. urticae has the smallest sequenced arthropod genome. Compared with other arthropods, the spider mite genome shows unique changes in the hormonal environment and organization of the Hox complex, and also reveals evolutionary innovation of silk production. We find strong signatures of polyphagy and detoxification in gene families associated with feeding on different hosts and in new gene families acquired by lateral gene transfer. Deep transcriptome analysis of mites feeding on different plants shows how this pest responds to a changing host environment. The T. urticae genome thus offers new insights into arthropod evolution and plant–herbivore interactions, and provides unique opportunities for developing novel plant protection strategies