9/11, the War on Terror, and the Sociology of Mass Media explores the cultural and political impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with particular emphasis on the media's role in constructing meanings in the wake of the tragedy. The carefully selected readings within this anthology tell the story of how 9/11 was "created"--that is, how the story of the event was told, and how it was not told. In providing students with a comprehensive overview of the various narratives constructed in the aftermath of a defining moment in U.S. history, the book sheds light on how government and media can shape stories, and how those stories contribute to our social reality. The book begins with a selection of articles and chapters that offer students a thorough explanation of the attacks themselves, as well as the effects they had on politics and other official publics. The readings in Part 2 of the text explore society's reaction to 9/11 and the wars it produced, with emphasis on the response of popular culture. Part 3 provides an understanding of the social and historical reasons as to why the attacks happened, both from the perspective of U.S. foreign policy and the terrorists who enacted the attack. The anthology closes with a section that takes a look at the lasting effects of the attacks, exploring cultural impact and the changing landscape of terrorist threats. By encouraging students to rationally explore and ask questions about an event that many feel they've been unable to examine critically before, 9/11, the War on Terror, and the Sociology of Mass Media allows them to exercise their citizenship, nationally and globally. This anthology is well suited for intermediate courses in the sociology of mass media and mass communication, as well as courses in terrorism and cultural sociology.

Explores how young people from communities targeted in the War on Terror engage with the “political,” even while they are under constant scrutiny and surveillance Since the attacks of 9/11, the banner of national security has led to intense monitoring of the politics of Muslim and Arab Americans. Young people from these communities have come of age in a time when the question of political engagement is both urgent and fraught. In The 9/11 Generation, Sunaina Marr Maira uses extensive ethnography to understand the meaning of political subjecthood and mobilization for Arab, South Asian, and Afghan American youth. Maira explores how young people from communities targeted in the War on Terror engage with the “political,” forging coalitions based on new racial and ethnic categories, even while they are under constant scrutiny and surveillance, and organizing around notions of civil rights and human rights. The 9/11 Generation explores the possibilities and pitfalls of rights-based organizing at a moment when the vocabulary of rights and democracy has been used to justify imperial interventions, such as the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maira further reconsiders political solidarity in cross-racial and interfaith alliances at a time when U.S. nationalism is understood as not just multicultural but also post-racial. Throughout, she weaves stories of post-9/11 youth activism through key debates about neoliberal democracy, the “radicalization” of Muslim youth, gender, and humanitarianism.

This is an excellent source which puts students in the heart of the contemporary discussion and encourages them to form opinions. It is a great resource for seminars as well as gateways to research. - Paul Matthews, University College Birmingham "An excellent text that covers not only how the media cover acts of terrorism but also how terror groups can manipulate the media." - David Lowe, Liverpool John Moores University Have the media contributed to exacerbating the political, cultural and religious divides within Western societies and the world at large? How can media be deployed to enrich, not inhibit, dialogue? To what extent has the media, in all its forms, questioned, celebrated or simply accepted the unleashing of a ′war on terror′? Media and Terrorism: Global Perspectives brings together leading scholars to explore how the world′s media have influenced, and in turn, been influenced by terrorism and the war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11. Accessible and user-friendly with lively and current case studies, it is an essential handbook on the dynamics of war and the media in a global context.

Throughout the world, the mass media are responsible for shaping the form and content of experiences. In this book, David L. Altheide examines how the mass media, including news and popular culture, have cast terrorism, propaganda and social control post 9/11. Altheide shows how fear works with terrorism to alter discourse, social meanings, and our sense of being in the world. Emphasis is placed on the different institutional interventions and how these particular stories become framed and inform the wider media narratives of terror. The author argues that post 9/11 we are witnessing the emergence of new communication formats that not only constitute counter-narratives, but also shape future communicative experience. The text is suitable for scholars and students interested in the ongoing relationship between the media and terror post 9/11.

Following the 9/11 attacks, approximately four million Americans have turned eighteen each year and more than fifty million children have been born. These members of the millennial and post-millennial generation have come of age in a moment marked by increased anxiety about terrorism, two protracted wars, and policies that have raised questions about the United States's role abroad and at home. Young people have not been shielded from the attacks or from the wars and policy debates that followed. Instead, they have been active participants—as potential military recruits and organizers for social justice amid anti-immigration policies, as students in schools learning about the attacks or readers of young adult literature about wars. The War of My Generation is the first essay collection to focus specifically on how the terrorist attacks and their aftermath have shaped these new generations of Americans. Drawing from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and literary studies, the essays cover a wide range of topics, from graphic war images in the classroom to computer games designed to promote military recruitment to emails from parents in the combat zone. The collection considers what cultural factors and products have shaped young people's experience of the 9/11 attacks, the wars that have followed, and their experiences as emerging citizen-subjects in that moment. Revealing how young people understand the War on Terror—and how adults understand the way young people think—The War of My Generation offers groundbreaking research on catastrophic events still fresh in our minds.

This is a major new collection of essays on literary and cultural representations of migration and terrorism, the cultural impact of 9/11, and the subsequent ‘war on terror’. The collection commences with analyses of the relationship between migration and terrorism, which has been the focus of much mainstream political and media debate since the attacks on America in 2001 and the London bombings in 2005, not least because liberal democratic governments in Europe and North America have invoked such attacks to justify the regulation of migration and the criminalisation of ‘minority’ groups. Responding to the consequent erosion of the liberal democratic rights of the individual, leading scholars assess the various ways in which literary texts support and/or interrogate the conflation of narratives of transnational migration and perceived terrorist threats to national security. This crucial debate is furthered by contrasting analyses of the manner in which novelists from the UK, North Africa, the US and Palestine have represented 9/11, exploring the event’s contexts and ramifications. This path-breaking study complicates the simplistic narratives of revenge and wronged innocence commonly used to make sense of the attacks and to justify the US response. Each novel discussed seeks to interrogate and analyse a discourse typically dominated by consent, belligerence and paranoia. Together, the collected essays suggest the value of literature as an effective critical intervention in the very fraught political aftermath of the ‘war on terror’. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.