Can news draw blood? The impact of media coverage on the number and severity of terror attacks

Using a new data set that captures the share of reporting on terrorism, we explore the nexus between terrorist attacks and the news. It turns out that terrorism mainly influences news reports through the number of incidents. Regarding the reverse causality, we provide evidence that the share of the news devoted to terrorism Granger-causes further terrorist activities. However, short-run and medium-run effects differ: media coverage on terror has no short-run impact on the number of terror attacks (two months), while it affects the severity of terror for up to ten months. These observations are consistent with the idea of competition between terrorist groups.