Democracy and Homeland Security: Strategies, Controversies, and Impact

Part I. Papers Presented in Panels 1–4

A Meta-Analysis of the Correlation Between Media Consumption and the 9/11 Jetliner Crashes and Public Opinion About Those Who Live Within and Outside the United States

Melissa Spirek, Bowling Green State University

"If this war on terrorism ends with nation-building only in Afghanistan and not in America, it will be no victory at all." (Friedman 2002, 144)

Increasing numbers of American viewers turned to the electronic news the morning of September 11, 2001.¹ At 8:45 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center's north tower. Television cameras broadcast live the plume of smoke and gaping hole in the north tower while morning show hosts speculated that a plane accidentally crashed into the building. At 9:03 a.m., commentary by news anchors such as CNN's Carol Lin and Katie Couric of NBC’s "Today Show" quickly changed to descriptions of the pilots' intentional attacks as United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center during the live broadcasts. This second jetliner crash was followed at 9:30 a.m. with breaking news coverage from the Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, where President Bush announced that the United States appeared to be the victim of a terrorist attack. Announcements were then made of the 9:43 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon and then finally the United Airlines Flight 93 crash into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.² The 9/11 hijackings served as a trigger with people turning to the media to learn about and even attempt to make sense of the United States being attacked.³

In times of national trauma like the events of 9/11, people in the United States turn to the media for information.⁴ This viewing and listening behavior has been repeatedly demonstrated with a variety of tragedies across the decades.⁵ The radio broadcast of the burning Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937 and the television broadcast of the space shuttle Challenger's explosion during takeoff in 1986 are two examples.⁶ The Columbia's explosion upon return to the United States in 2002 is a more recent example of a trauma being broadcast live. Even when the tragedy itself is not aired simultaneously over the airwaves to the national viewing or listening audience, as in the case of the John F. Kennedy assassination, reporters rush to the scene to provide as much information as they can as quickly as possible.⁷ This second scenario, where an event is not aired live but soon after a tragedy, has been the case a number of times in history. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Americans listened closely to their radios, is a second example.⁸ Terrorist attacks in particular have a long and complex relationship with the media.⁹ Given the importance of national tragedies in individuals' lives, it is not surprising that generations have even been identified by the common long-term memories of the tragic events they can recall when attempting to cope with a national crisis.¹⁰

Joshua Meyrowitz observed in his award-winning No Sense of Place that the electronic media provides the public with an immediate experience of a national trauma by collapsing time and geographic space from around the world.¹¹ For example, the Internet, radios, and television provided viewers and listeners with timely and intimate exposure to the national 9/11 tragedies as they unfolded. In the safety of their homes and offices, the Tuesday morning television viewers on September 11, 2001, first saw the collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Center at 10:05 a.m. and then the north tower at 10:28 a.m.¹² The television viewers were "there as it happened" while watching the breaking news from the safety of their homes and places of work.

Although millions of Americans safely watched the nineteen terrorists' odyssey, the breaking news reports' impact on the audience was a major concern to the federal government. President Bush made the broadcast announcement at 1:04 p.m. on September 11 that “the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.”¹³ Specifically, the Bush administration strove to increase patriotism while simultaneously stressing the point that “Our war is against evil. Not against Islam.” Put simply, Americans needed to focus their anger toward being patriotic and distinguish between the Muslim religion and those who were "against us and therefore supported terrorism in the world."¹⁴

This "us versus them" dichotomy is the focus of the current investigation. The question to be addressed is how media consumers view "us" within the geographic United States versus "them" outside the geographic United States. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between media consumption and public attitudes toward those living within and outside the United States. To investigate this topic, first the literature of public opinion and the media in a democracy will be briefly reviewed before the current investigation is advanced. Consistent with a quantitative framework, this study seeks to test the media effects hypothesis with the rigorous and systematic collection of data for a meta-analysis.

PUBLIC OPINIONS AND THE MEDIA IN A DEMOCRACY

The relationship between mediated images and public opinion in America's democracy continues to increase in its breadth and depth exponentially with its documentation in social scientific publications. The media effects hypothesis, the media influencing its audience, has been tested over sixty years. One of the early studies that linked public opinion and its relationship to media consumption within a democracy was Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet's The People's Choice.¹⁵ This milestone was among the first systematic and rigorous studies to reject the simplistic model of the media directly influencing public opinion. The Erie County panel survey documented that attitudes are crystallized by the selection of mediated content that are consistent with the audience member's views.

The need for researchers to recognize the complexity of the relationship between public opinion and media consumption within a democracy has been recognized with numerous theoretical frameworks across a wide range of social scientific studies.¹⁶ The main theme that emerges with these studies is that the question is not whether but how media content influences or is used by its audience. The uses and gratifications research program contributed to the shift in the social sciences from viewing the public as merely passive consumers of mediated content directly influenced by the media (i.e., hypodermic needle or direct effects model).¹⁷ Meta-analyses with functional theory and the third-person effect have each found salient links between media content and its impact on some audience members. Benoit, Hansen, and Verser reported that those who watched political debates were persuaded by the issues, whereas the third-person effect makes distinctions between those who are and are not influenced.¹⁸

The third-person effect argues that although the public will report that the media does not individually persuade the interviewee him/herself, the media nevertheless does influence "others."¹⁹ Perloff's work in particular has found support for the third-person effect in the political arena.²⁰ Yet another line of research that has documented a relationship between media consumption and an impact on the audience is George Gerbner's cultivation theory. For more than forty years this approach has pointed to the impact media has had in influencing people's beliefs and emotions because of the quantity and type of media content consumed.²¹

In summary, a variety of theoretical frameworks provide explanations for the observed relationship between media consumption and its relationship to public opinion. This media effects hypothesis, that the media will influence its audience, provides the framework for tackling a systematic and rigorous study of the available quantitative research that was produced because of the 9/11 tragedy. In the past, researchers have documented public opinion by recording how the media influenced the public's opinions with measurements of cognitions, affect, and behaviors. This rich line of research provides justification for conducting a meta-analysis to review the relationship of consuming mediated images of 9/11 and the opinions of the American public.

CURRENT INVESTIGATION

Meta-analyses have made a significant contribution to the scholarly literature by completing critical studies that transcend a single discipline's focus while exploring salient issues that are interdisciplinary in nature. This is why a meta-analysis across disciplines was embraced for the current study. The purpose of this investigation is to complete a meta-analysis of surveys of adults' media consumption of the events of 9/11 and public opinion as documented in the interdisciplinary social science literature. Specifically, the assessment of the significance and the degree of correlation between adult media consumption and public opinion about those living inside versus outside the United States will be computed.

The current meta-analysis of the mediated events of 9/11 allows for the accumulation of the research findings of attitudes toward those living within and outside the United States generated from 2001 through 2003. Did the media once again appear to confirm public attitudes, or in a global village did an array of media choices influence opinions in the tradition of a third-person effect? The sampling frame for the meta-analysis is the Social Sciences Citation Index, Educational Research Information Center, and Dissertation Abstracts. Dissertations and conference papers are included to increase the likelihood that data that is not statistically significant will be included. All articles and dissertations utilizing a quantitative methodology and consistent conceptualizations of the independent and dependent variables are included in the sample. Parameters of publication were from January 2001 to December 2003. Whatever the study's outcome, a systematic overview of the literature will begin to shed light on media consumption of this global tragedy and the public opinions within the United States that emerged as a result.

RQ1: What is the overall level of support for the relationship between the media consumption of the events of 9/11 and the perceptions of those living outside the geographic United States?

RQ2: What is the overall level of support for the relationship between the media consumption of the events of 9/11 and the perceptions of those within the geographic United States?

METHOD

Sample

Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Education Research Information Center (ERIC), and Dissertation Abstracts (DA) are the three databases reviewed for this study. SSCI is multidisciplinary with a database "covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It indexes more than 1,725 journals spanning 50 disciplines."²² ERIC was included because of its collection of social scientific conference papers presented at academic conferences, whereas DA "is the single, authoritative source for information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses."²³ Doctoral dissertations, academic conference papers, and master's theses were included in response to charges that only statistically significant results are reviewed with samples of social scientific refereed published journal articles. These selections were made to decrease the likelihood of a type I error because of the bias of publishing mostly statistically significant results.²⁴

The same search procedure was followed with each database. The keywords of "September 11, 2001" and "9/11" were used in combination to generate the broad samples. Studies that did not focus specifically upon the four jetliner crashes in the United States were removed from these searches (not searchers). For example, all studies on 911 emergency telephone calls were removed, as were studies that made passing reference to 9/11 tragedies. For example, vague references were sometimes made to the world being "different" since the four jetliner crashes. The specific events of September 11, 2001, were not directly related to these studies.

The investigations that comprised the final sample for the exploration met four criteria. First, the study was a quantitative study that had to contain some measure of 9/11 mainstream media exposure (self-report survey or experimentally controlled) in addition to some measure of effect (attitudes or knowledge about others either within or outside the United States). Content analyses of media channels, such as those of newspapers and/or television programs, were removed if only results of the message were presented. Second, this investigation included studies that focused upon events after and not merely before September 11, 2001. This requirement was inserted to strengthen the argument for causality and time sequence.²⁵ With the third criteria, article types identified by the SSCI as editorials or as book reviews, as opposed to articles, were eliminated.²⁶ The final criteria required that the participants or interviewees be within the territorial United States at the time of the interview and the interviewee could not be the author him/herself (i.e., auto-ethnography). Only quantitative studies were included. This limitation was imposed because of the statistical demands for meta-analysis.

Independent and Dependent Variables

Conceptualization for the independent variable of media consumption included any form of media use that included any combination of the following concepts: media, newspaper, computer, Internet, magazine, television, email, radio, and pager. Both broad (e.g., hours of media consumption) and individual (e.g., exposure to one of President Bush's broadcast speeches) conceptualizations comprised this variable. The dependent variable of attitudes and/or knowledge of those outside the geographic United States included national (e.g., Afghanistan) and group (e.g., Arabs) and individual references (e.g., President Bush).

RESULTS

Statistical Analysis

Research Question 1

The broadcast conceptualizations of the independent and dependent variables were embraced to include studies as opposed to rejecting them. The need for this step was reinforced when the studies found failed to meet the criteria needed to conduct a meta-analysis. Specifically, the majority of studies were found to be qualitative as opposed to quantitative when the individual investigations were drawn. Despite the thorough review of three electronic databases, inclusion of proceedings, and the inclusion of edited reviewed volumes of survey research, only content analyses of media and qualitative studies emerged when studying the variables of media consumption of 9/11 and attitudes or knowledge about others outside the geographic United States. As noted earlier but worthy of emphasis is that this finding emerged despite adding databases that included investigations that did not have statistically significant results (e.g., dissertations). And although not appropriate for meta-analyses, the content analyses that did emerge were interesting in and of themselves.

Research Question 2

In a similar vein, despite increasing the population framework, only one study met the criteria required for conducting the meta-analysis—for examining the criteria of mainstream media consumption and national attitudes or knowledge about those living within the United States. This is especially devastating given that Hunter, Schmidt, and Jackson argue that a sample of two is sufficient and their description of testing two studies was completed for this investigation.²⁷ The one study that met the criteria was completed by Schubert, Stewart, and Curran.²⁸ And in this one study the authors reported that "[i]n short, there is no evidence in these data to support the media effect hypothesis for the 9/11 rally situation (p. 574)."

An example of the challenges found in each of the three databases is represented in Table 1. This set of studies that was generated for consideration for inclusion in the meta-analysis and the reason for rejection are provided and highlighted. This DA database subset of articles was generated with the concepts September 11, 2001, and the media concepts listed above. Table 1 shows the limited number and range of the studies that utilize quantitative research with media exposure, attitudes, and knowledge about those within and outside the United States in connection to September 11, 2001.

Table 1. Decision Rules for Potential DA Meta-Analysis Studies
Study Type	Author	Title	Year	Reason for Rejection
Dissertation 001	Virginia Gil-Rivas	Parental Contributions to Adolescents; Psychology Adjustment Following the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001	2003	No attitude or knowledge Measurements of dependent variables
Dissertation 002	Sandor Begh	Hacking for Democracy: A Study of the Internet as a Political Force and Its Representation in the Mainstream Media	2003	Content analysis of media
Dissertation 003	Zain Allaudin	The Internet as a Potential Corrective Emotional Experience: Exploring the Use Of Chat Rooms by Young Adult Asian-Indians Living in the United States	2003	Qualitative
Dissertation 004	Pamela D. Rothman	The Influence of the Quality of Adult Attachment and Degree of Exposure to the World Trade Center Disaster on Post- Traumatic Stress Symptoms in a College Population	2003	No attitudes or knowledge Measurements of dependent variables
Dissertation 005	Ali Abdullah Alkahtani	The Post September 11 Portrayal of Arabs, Islam, and Muslims in the Washington Post and the New York Times: A Comparative Content Analysis Study	2002	Content analysis of newspapers
Dissertation 006	Richard Eugene Barry	Sense of Safety: An Exploration of a Gay and Lesbian Community	2003	Qualitative
Dissertation 007	Marie Anne Fortini	French Youth Perceptions of American Culture and Society in Relation to the Amount of United States Movies and Television Series Watched	2003	Sample not within the U.S.
Dissertation 008	JoVictoria Goodman	Mapping Civic Debate Following September 11, 2001: Civic Courage, Social Cartography and Curriculum Theorizing	2003	No self-report data (not a survey or experiment)
Table 1 (continued)
Study Type	Author	Title	Year	Reason for Rejection
Dissertation 009	Brian Robert Calfano	Terror in the Air: Biological Weapons Terrorism, and Asymmetric Threats to United States National Security in the Twenty-First Century	2003	No self-report data (not a survey or experiment) with knowledge of attitude Measurements of dependent variables
Dissertation 010	Kathleen Miriam Leask Capitulo	Ethnography of Perinatal Grief Online	2002	9/11 passing reference Qualitative
Dissertation 011	Timothy Edward Flood	Changing Voices: Teaching the History of Rhetoric Through Film	2002	Qualitative and fails to measure independent and dependent variables
Dissertation 012	Alexander Dennis Korzyk, Sr.	A Conceptual Design Model for Integrative Information System Security	2002	Not a survey or experiment with focus on 9/11
Dissertation 013	Oliver Proust	Government Surveillance vs. the Right to Privacy on the Internet in the Post-September 11th Era	2002	Law and policy No participants
Dissertation 014	Heinz Martin Rudolph	How Does the Community Power Structure Affect the Agenda-Setting of the News Media?	2002	Passing reference to 9/11
Dissertation 015	Paul Stiles Winterhalder	Right-Wing Extremism in the United States Before September 11, 2001	2002	All events prior to 9/11
Dissertation 016	Barbara Anne Conklin	A Constructivist Inquiry of the Meaning of Welfare Reform in Virginia	2001	Passing reference to 9/11

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

With special edition scholarly volumes being solely dedicated to the study of the events of September 11, 2001, and the impact these mediated events had on those living on U.S. soil, 2004 seemed an appropriate time to conduct a meta-analysis of what social scientists had learned about public opinion and media consumption in the years since the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a fourth jetliner.²⁹ Initial reviews of the databases appeared promising, with more than seventy articles appearing in the SSCI alone. What this initial review did not provide was the insight that although quantitative studies had indeed been conducted that focus entirely on 9/11, these studies either investigated topics explored with content analyses on mediated images or were qualitative studies. The remaining studies that emerged that were quantitative overall did not meet one of the three criteria necessary for conducting a meta-analysis. Typical of the SSCI database was the finding that either the independent or the dependent variable is included in the study but not both. Case in point is the Huddy, Feldman, Capelos, and Provost piece, which clearly presents an array of survey findings about perceptions of people within and outside the geographic United States but fails to record any media consumption variables. In proposing this study, I wrote that its completion, no matter what the results, would provide valuable insight as to the state of affairs of the social scientific literature as to how public opinion was being potentially shaped by the media. Instead, the failure of quantitative social science research to investigate the documented complex relationship between watching the media events and forming opinions about the United States, and about Arabs, Muslims, French, allies, and the world in general, is missing. I embrace Robin Claire's observation in Organizing Silence that the power of this particular study is in the silence of or the missing quantitative social science literature.³⁰ This meta-analysis's silence is overwhelming as to what social scientists are not studying during a time of war—and censorship.

ENDNOTES

1. Bradley S. Greenberg, Linda Hofschire, and Kenneth Lachlan, “Diffusion, Media Use and Interpersonal Communication Behavior,” in Communication and Terrorism, ed. Bradley S. Greenberg (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2002), 3–16.

2. Bradley S. Greenberg, ed., Communication and Terrorism (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2002); and America Remembers: The Events of September 11 and America's Response, video, produced by Ken Shiffman and Brian Rokus (New York: CNN and Time Home Entertainment, 2001).

3. Melissa M. Spirek, Colleen Fitzpatrick, and Constance R. Bridges, “Tracking Media Consumption among Monitors and Blunting,” in Communication and Terrorism, ed. Bradley S. Greenberg (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2002), 75–84.

4. Stephen Earl Bennett, Staci L. Rhine, and Richard S. Flickinger, “The Things They Cared About: Change and Continuity in Americans’ Attention to Different News Stories, 1989–2002,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 9, no. 1 (2004): 75–99.

5. Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, Media Events (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Arthur G. Neal, National Trauma and Collective Memory (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharp, 1998).

6. Glenn G. Sparks and Melissa M. Spirek, “Individual Differences in Coping with Stressful Mass Media: An Activation-Arousal View,” Human Communication Research 15, no. 2 (1988): 192–216.

7. Bradley S. Greenberg and Edwin B. Parker, The Kennedy Assassination and the American Public: Social Communication in Crisis (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968).

8. Shearon Lowery and Melvin L. DeFleur, Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effects (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994).

9. Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, and States of Mind (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1998).

10. Neal, National Trauma and Collective Memory; Ulric Neisser, “New Directions for Flashbulb Memories: Comments on the ACP Special Issue,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 17 (2003): 1149–55.

11. Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

12. Why the Towers Fell: An Exclusive Investigation into the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, video, produced by Garfield Kennedy and Larry Klein (Boston: WGBH, 2002).

13. Shiffman and Rokus, America Remembers.

14. Ibid.

15. Joseph Harper and Thomas Yantek, eds., Media, Profit, and Politics (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003).

16. Ibid.

17. Barbara K. Kaye and Thomas J. Johnson, “Online and In the Know: Uses and Gratifications of the Web for Political Information,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 46 (March 1, 2002): 54–71; Allan M. Rubin, “Media Gratifications through the Life Cycle,” in Media Gratifications Research: Current Perspectives, ed. Karl E. Rosengren, Lawrence A. Wenner, and Philip Palmgreen (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1985), 195–208; and Allan M. Rubin, “Audience Activity and Media Use,” Communication Monographs 60, no. 1 (1993): 98–105.

18. William L. Benoit, Glenn J. Hansen, and Rebecca M. Verser, “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Viewing U.S. Presidential Debates,” Communication Monographs 70, no. 4 (2003): 335–50.

19. Bryant Paul, Michael B. Salwen, and Michel Dupagne, “The Third-Person Effect: A Meta-Analysis of the Perceptual Hypothesis,” Mass Communication & Society 3, no. 1 (2000): 57–85.

20. Richard M. Perloff, “Perceptions and Conceptions of Political Media Impact: The Third-Person Effect and Beyond,” in The Psychology of Political Communication, ed. A. N. Crigler (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 177–97.

21. George Gerbner et al., “Charting the Mainstream: Television's Contributions to Political Orientations,” Journal of Communication 32, no. 2 (1982): 100–127; and George Gerbner et al., “Political Correlates of Television Viewing,” Public Opinion Quarterly 48 (Spring 1984): 283–300.

22. Institute for Scientific Information Citation Databases (ISI Web of Science), http://cite.ohiolink.edu/isi/help/helptoc.html - ssci, retrieved January 26, 2004.

23. UMI, ProQuest Digital Dissertations, “About ProQuest Digital Dissertations” page, http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/about_pqdd, retrieved January 26, 2004).

24. Ali Abdullah Alkahtani, “The Post-September 11 Portrayal of Arabs, Islam, and Muslims in the Washington Post and the New York Times” (Ph.D. dissertation, Howard University, 2002); and David Domke et al., “Insights into U.S. Racial Hierarchy: Racial Profiling, News Sources, and September 11,” Journal of Communication 53 (2003): 606–23.

25. Lawrence R. James, Stanley A. Mulaik, and Jeanne M. Brett, Causal Analysis: Assumptions, Models, and Data (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1982); and Mark W. Lipsey and David B. Wilson, Practical Meta-Analysis (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2001).

26. ISI, Citation Databases, http://cite.ohiolink.edu/isi/help/helptoc.html - ssci, retrieved January 26, 2004.

27. John E. Hunter, Frank L. Schmidt, and Gregg B. Jackson, Content Analysis: Cumulating Research Findings across Studies (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982).

28. James N. Schubert, Patrick A. Stewart, and Margaret Ann Curran, “A Defining Presidential Moment: 9/11 and the Rally Effect,” Political Psychology 23, no. 1 (2002): 559–88.

29. Neisser, “New Directions for Flashbulb Memories,” 1129–55.

30. Robin Clair, Organizing Silence: A World of Possibilities (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998).

References

Alkahtani, Ali Abdullah. The Post-September 11 Portrayal of Arabs, Islam, and Muslims in the Washington Post and the New York Times.” Ph.D. dissertation, Howard University, 2002.

Bennett, Stephen Earl, Staci L. Rhine, and Richard S. Flickinger. “The Things They Cared About: Change and Continuity in Americans' Attention to Different News Stories, 1989–2002.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 9, no. 1 (2004): 75–99.

Benoit, William L., Glenn J. Hansen, and Rebecca M. Verser. “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Viewing U.S. Presidential Debates.” Communication Monographs 70, no. 4 (2003): 335–50.

Clair, Robin. Organizing Silence: A World of Possibilities. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. Media Events. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Domke, David, Philip Garland, Andrew Billeaudeauz, and John Hutcheson. “Insights into U.S. Racial Hierarchy: Racial Profiling, News Sources, and September 11.” Journal of Communication 53 (2003): 606–23, http://joc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/53/4/606.

Friedman, Thomas L. Longitudes & Attitudes: Exploring the World after September 11. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002.

Gerbner, George, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, and Nancy Signorelli. “Charting the Mainstream: Television's Contributions to Political Orientations.” Journal of Communication 32, no. 2 (1982): 100–127.

———. “Political Correlates of Television Viewing.” Public Opinion Quarterly 48 (Spring 1984): 283–300.

Greenberg, Bradley S., ed. Communication and Terrorism. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2002.

Greenberg, Bradley S., Linda Hofschire, and Kenneth Lachlan. “Diffusion, Media Use and Interpersonal Communication Behavior.” In Communication and Terrorism, ed. Bradley S. Greenberg, 3–16. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2002.

Greenberg, Bradley S., and Edwin B. Parker. The Kennedy Assassination and the American Public: Social Communication in Crisis. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968.

Hanson, Christopher. “No Neutral Corner: The American News Media After 9/11.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 80, no. 3 (2003): 731–35.

Harper, Joseph, and Thom Yantek, eds. Media, Profit, and Politics. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2003.

Huddy, Leonie, Stanley Feldman, Theresa Capelos, and Colin Provost. “The Consequences of Terrorism: Disentangling the Effects of Personal and National Threat.” Political Psychology 23, no. 3 (2002): 485–509.

Hunter, John E., Frank L. Schmidt, and Gregg B. Jackson. Content Analysis: Cumulating Research Findings across Studies. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982.

ISI. Citation Databases. ISI Web of Science. http://cite.ohiolink.edu/isi/help/helptoc.html - ssci (retrieved January 26, 2004).

James, Lawrence R., Stanley A. Mulaik, and Jeanne M. Brett. Causal Analysis: Assumptions, Models, and Data. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1982.

Kaye, Barbara K., and Thomas J. Johnson. “Online and In the Know: Uses and Gratifications of the Web for Political Information.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 46 (March 1, 2002): 54–71.

Kennedy, Garfield, and Larry Klein, producers. Why the Towers Fell: An Exclusive Investigation into the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers. Video. Boston: WBGH, 2002.

Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Lipsey, Mark W., and David B. Wilson. Practical Meta-Analysis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2001.

Lowery, Shearon, and Melvin L. DeFleur. Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effects. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Neal, Arthur G. National Trauma and Collective Memory. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharp, 1998.

Neisser, Ulric. “New Directions for Flashbulb Memories: Comments on the ACP Special Issue.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 17 (2003): 1149–55.

Paul, Bryant, Michael B. Salwen, and Michel Dupagne. “The Third-Person Effect: A Meta-Analysis of the Perceptual Hypothesis.” Mass Communication & Society 3, no. 1 (2000): 57–85.

Perloff, Richard M. “Perceptions and Conceptions of Political Media Impact: The Third-Person Effect and Beyond.” In The Psychology of Political Communication, ed. A. N. Crigler, 177–97. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Reich, Walter, ed. Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, and States of Mind. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1998.

Rubin, Allan M. “Media Gratifications through the Life Cycle.” In Media Gratifications Research: Current Perspectives, ed. Karl E. Rosengren, Lawrence A. Wenner, and Philip Palmgreen, 95–208. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1985.

———. “Audience Activity and Media Use.” Communication Monographs 60 (1993): 98–105.

Schubert, James N., Patrick A. Stewart, and Margaret Ann Curran. “A Defining Presidential Moment: 9/11 and the Rally Effect.” Political Psychology 23, no. 1 (2002): 559–88.

Shiffman, Ken, and Brian Rokus, producers. America Remembers: The Events of September 11 and American's Response. Video. New York: CNN and Time Home Entertainment, 2001.

Social Sciences Citation Index, http://www.ohiolink.edu/resources/show_details.php?db=x_ssci (retrieved January 4, 2004).

Sparks, Glenn G., and Spirek, Melissa M. “Individual Differences in Coping with Stressful Mass Media: An Activation-Arousal View.” Human Communication Research 15, no. 2 (1988): 192–216.

Spirek, Melissa M., Colleen Fitzpatrick, and Constance R. Bridges. “Tracking Media Consumption Among Monitors and Blunting.” In Communication and Terrorism, ed. Bradley S. Greenberg, 75–84. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2002.

UMI. ProQuest. Digital Dissertations. “About ProQuest Digital Dissertations” page. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/about_pqdd (retrieved January 26, 2004).