Presenting a Strategic Model for Opposing Media Terrorism With a Social Capital Approach

Media terrorism refers to the media coverage of terrorist activities and actions in social networks and is an emerging type of terrorism that creates mass panic and terror by using media tools and excessive use of cyberspace. One of the important issues in curbing and encouraging terrorism is measuring the amount of social capital in a society, which plays a role in strengthening cooperation and creating norms in society. The aim of this research is to provide a strategic model for coping with media terrorism with a social capital approach. The research method was sequential exploratory mixed. First, the qualitative method of thematic analysis was applied among 14 experts (with scientific, research, managerial, and occupational backgrounds) with purposive snowball sampling and unstructured interviews. Then, the quantitative method was used among 298 experts in the fields of media, social capital, media terrorism, and social networks across the country to test the hypotheses. The results of the qualitative part of the study showed the category of "historical identification and structural conditions" as contexts and platforms, "media benefits and functions" as a causal condition, “social capital challenges of the emergence of media terrorism” as one of the challenging factors, and “interventions, regional, extra-regional and international networking” have played effective roles in choosing the strategy of media governance in the face of media terrorism. In order to deal with media terrorism, it is necessary to pay attention and identify the causal, contextual, international and challenging factors related to media terrorism so that managing the level of violence with hyper-realization in the media, proliferation of the grounds of violence with media coverage and psychological warfare and its methods in the media can be feasible.