A Look at Media 10 Years After 9/11

As the country takes more steps to protect its citizens in the years after 9/11, one local expert says online sites for terrorist organizations continue to grow in a new media world. 

"The number of these sites continue to increase and the internet is being used as a tool to communicate extremist ideologies to people all over the world," says Professor Dana Janbek. "A lot of these sites are provided in multiple languages, including Spanish, French and English; they're targeting foreign speakers."

Janbek, who recently published the article Terrorism in the Age of the Internet: The Case of Muslim Arab Foreign Terrorist Organizations, is the co-author of the 2010 book "Global Terrorism and New Media: The Post Al-Qaeda Generation." Born in Jordan, Janbek is currently an assistant professor of public relations in Lasell's Communications Department and has worked in the Jordanian Embassy as well as the Middle East Institute.

As someone who speaks Arabic, Janbek spends time researching the websites, many of which had celebratory messages as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approached. 

"Basically what I’m interested in is to see what the information is on these sites and how they interact with people," Janbek says.

According to Janbek, the U.S. government has recently dedicated some resources to monitoring these terrorist websites, which can provide a lot of information about both the ideologies and communication process used by the terrorist organizations.

Over the years, Janbek explains that these terrorist websites have become more sophisticated, morphing from static resources with one-way communication to more interactive sites that allow users to have conversations. 

As the sites become more sophisticated, Janbek said the U.S. government may be able to pick up on more information through the multiple conversations, leading them to information about potential attacks. 

Post-9/11 American media

With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 seeming to engulf all media coverage for the last week, Janbek says it is important for the media outlets to look at wider, more global issues surrounding 9/11. 

In general, though, Janbek says the quality of international news coverage has declined over the last couple decades as media outlets continue to close foreign bureaus.

"Generally speaking, media has headed into the direction of a business and has a business model to follow," Janbek says. "At the end of the day, profit is more important, and that jeopardizes the quality of stories."

As for over-saturation in the current American media climate, generations since the Vietnam war have learned to grow up with more and more media coverage of war, Janbek says. Now with social media playing into news coverage, younger news junkies these days have information and photos coming from all directions.

"They are used to be saturated of images of news and whatever is happening," Janbek says. "This generation has grown up with this type of coverage." 

Social changes?

In the decade since the attacks, Janbek says discrimination against Arabs and Muslims -- or those who appear to be Arab or Muslim -- is still apparent in different forms of media. Some movies and television shows, for example, depict the villain of the plot to be Arab or Muslim, Janbek says. 

Moreover, Janbek says some Arab or Muslim businesses and homes are often targeted in attacks or vandalism.  

But, looking back over the last ten years, Janbek says the 9/11 attacks, while they were a tragedy, allowed some more moderate leaders in the Muslim world to speak up and denounce terrorism. The world, Janbek says, has had an opportunity to learn about what Islam is and what it means to be Arab.

"It has provided an education platform for all of us to learn," she says. 

The leaders of America and those in the "west", Janbek says, have also done their part in making progress in the decade since 9/11.

"We have to give a lot of credit to American leaders who have formed all kinds of organizations and initiatives to start a dialogue between what we call 'the west' and the rest of the world," Janbek says. "We have to give credit to these leaders who saw this as an intercultural dialogue."