Framing Cyberterrorism: A Content Analysis of The New York Times

The threat posed by cyberterrorism has grabbed the attention of the mass media. Concerned assessments of the cyberterrorism threat highlight infrastructural and sociopolitical vulnerabilities at risk of exploitation by appropriately resourced and intentioned actors. Approached thus, combined with figurative language within the framing of this threat cyberterrorism, emerges as a relatively straightforward danger of potentially catastrophic significance. This study aims to identify news related to cyberterrorism in The New York Times; to investigate issues highlighted which the term cyberterrorism is constructed; and, to determine types of cyberterrorism threats reported by the news media. This study applies quantitative content analysis method by using descriptive research design. A distinguishing characteristic of content analysis is its quantitative aspect. Quantitative content analysis consists of tabulating the occurrences of content units. Content analysis aims at statistical formulations, directed toward empirical problems and its statistical character is one of its most distinctive attributes. This study sketches some of the key developments within the coverage–or construction–of cyberterrorism and its threat in the New York limtedTimes between 2010 and 2016. This study believed that news framing of cyberterrorism issue was reasonably had shaped concerned thoughts amongst Americans and formed varying levels of anxiety, stretching from the concerned to the sceptical; different conceptions of the identity of would-be cyberterrorists.