Media, migration and terrorism: Some correlations
Authors: Subotić Milovan , Mitrevska Marina 
Published: January 2025

Topics such as terrorism and uncontrolled migration have been prominent on the agenda for decades, frequently filling newspaper articles and boosting viewership on online platforms and social media. At the same time, media coverage of these issues is often saturated with elements of catastrophe and spectacle, leading even some within the academic community to adopt superficial and poorly documented analyses of these phenomena and their associated processes. This paper offers a modest contribution, not as a definitive truth but rather as a direction for analyzing these current and, according to the media, highly interconnected phenomena. How do terrorist attacks influence attitudes toward migrants? Such attacks' impact depends on the news reception's geographical location, indicating spatial conditioning. If terrorist attacks shape citizens' views on migration through a sense of immediate danger and fear, then proximity to the attack would be the primary conditioning factor. On the other hand, the local migration context of the news recipient can also significantly influence the effect. In homogeneous societies with little experience of immigration, citizens are more inclined to adopt discourses that link migration with terrorism, making these societies more susceptible to the adoption of negative attitudes. Beyond this spatial variable, as documented in research, the fact that the perpetrator of a terrorist act is Muslim significantly amplifies the news of the event itself, further generating prejudices against followers of the youngest monotheistic religion. Moreover, this wave of opposition to migration processes by right-wing populists in Europe is often associated with protecting against the Islamization of Europe (Subotić and Mitrović 2023, 123). When discussing the onset of the migrant wave toward Europe (which indeed correlated with numerous terrorist actions on European soil) and the last few years, during which there has been an increased influx of migrants alongside a significant reduction in the number of terrorist actions and their consequences, we must be aware of the statistical risk. More frequent migrant routes inevitably imply a greater likelihood that terrorists might infiltrate these groups or later join jihadist terrorism. However, there is no clear causal link despite this widely inferred correlation. More specifically, no clearly articulated or at least documented analysis indicates a consistent connection between the hypothesis that "terrorism causes migration" and the one suggesting that "migration causes terrorism." In the first case, the correlative element is certain and distinctly emphasized. The numerous actions of the terrorist organization that was at the peak of its power at the time - ISIS - undoubtedly contributed to the scale and intensity of the intense migratory pressure toward Europe. Additionally, the intensity of terrorist activities and the number of fatalities due to terrorism on European soil (primarily in France) during the most migrationintensive year, 2015, were notably high. However, it cannot be concluded that the increase in the number of irregular entries by as much as 80% compared to the average from the period of 2010 to 2014 led to the rise in terrorist attacks and/or fatalities in Europe by a similar percentage. The most recent cross-referenced data from the fourth consecutive year of increased migratory pressure toward Europe, combined with the occurrence or threat of terrorist acts, indicates quite the opposite. The average annual increase in the number of irregular migrants to Europe since 2021 is approximately 33%, while the number of terrorist activities has simultaneously decreased by nearly 35%. There is no doubt that immigration "contributes" to the spread of terrorism from one country to another. Still, it is unlikely that immigration alone would be a direct cause of terrorism. Furthermore, there is currently no empirical evidence to suggest that irregular immigrants (first-generation immigrants) are more prone to becoming terrorists. However, it must be noted that migration flows from countries where terrorism is more frequent do have a more significant impact on attacks in destination countries. Ultimately, all the findings suggest that, despite extensive political and media claims to the contrary, unauthorized immigration has not been a central driver of terrorist activities in recent decades.