Tom Mills

The terror experts and the mainstream media: the expert nexus and its dominance in the news media

Academic writing on ‘terrorism’ and the availability to the mainstream media and policy-makers of terror ‘experts’ have increased exponentially since 11 September 2001. This paper examines the rise of terror expertise and its use in one particular public arena – the mainstream news media. Using a combination of citation analysis and media analysis, the paper presents a ranking of the most influential terror experts in the mainstream news media in the Anglophone world. It is shown how what has been called an ‘invisible college’ of experts operates as a nexus of interests connecting academia with military, intelligence and government agencies, with the security industry and the media. The paper then takes a small number of case studies of some of the most prominent experts who exemplify the dominant trend in the field and examines the networks in which they are embedded. The last part of the paper uses the data generated to re-examine theories of ‘terrorism’ and the media, of ‘propaganda’ and ‘terrorism’, and of ‘source–media’ relations. It is suggested that the study of terror experts shows the need to study and theorise the media in a wider context by focusing on the relations between media content and production processes and wider formations of power. In so doing, the paper attempts to connect studies of media and terrorism to wider studies of terror and political violence.

Counterinsurgency and terror expertise: the integration of social scientists into the war effort

In this paper the authors draw upon the tradition of Power Structure Research to analyse the increased interpenetration of the military and the social sciences, particularly the recruitment of anthropologists and the adoption and adaptation of counterinsurgency strategies. It is argued that such actors should be understood not as disinterested ‘experts’ but as being organically embedded in a military–industrial–academic complex. The paper considers a number of contemporary examples as well as considering the historical roots of these trends. It is argued that this interpenetration violates the ethical norms of the academy and the moral and social responsibilities of intellectuals.

Teaching about terrorism in the United Kingdom: how it is done and what problems it causes

This article presents some of the findings of research on issues surrounding teaching terrorism and political violence at UK higher education institutions. It reports the results of a survey of UK institutions of higher education on their responses to government and other pressures in relation to terrorism. The data show a minority of universities have developed systems, policies or procedures for ‘preventing violent extremism’, while a significant number have developed close cooperation and collaboration with state counterterrorism policies raising potential issues of academic freedom. This article then examines three high-profile cases – incidents where universities, lecturers and students have come under political and legal pressures over the content of terrorism courses or accusations of ‘radicalisation’ on campus. It suggests that these pressures can be and sometimes are resisted, but that they have on occasion effectively narrowed the scope of academic freedom in practise with the danger that a further chilling effect follows in their wake.

Introduction: teaching and researching terrorism – pressures and practice

This special section has come about as a result of a series of activities convened by the Teaching about Terrorism Working Group. The group was established in 2008 and held its first meeting at Strathclyde University in September of that year. The group focused on pedagogical issues faced by academics engaged in the delivery of courses on ‘terrorism’, political violence and associated subjects. The group offered a forum for discussion of these contested issues and encouraged a wide participation from academics and teachers in this area. After securing some support from the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) of the UK Higher Education Academy, the group held a series of further meetings, including a seminar in Manchester in 2010, and hosted a panel at the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference in April 2011. The group was originally founded following the arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza in Nottingham in May 2008. The founding statement noted the issues that the group felt to be of note:

The tolerable cost of European Union regulation: leaving the EU and the market for politically convenient facts

European Union (EU) law-making has played a key role in promoting social equity in the UK through safer working conditions, enhanced rights for workers, and by reducing environmental pollution. Concerns over its effect on business competitiveness have long been a major driver of Euroscepticism, underpinning criticism of the EU by influential opinion formers within British conservatism. The Leave Campaign argued that EU laws damage the UK economy by imposing unnecessary costs on British business, claiming that EU regulations cost the UK economy £33.3 billion per year. This paper examines the reliability of, and assumptions that underpin, aggregated estimates of the costs and benefits of EU-derived regulation, and considers how the economisation of public policy influences understanding of the social value of regulation. It brings together the findings of studies that have evaluated the accuracy of the estimated costs and benefits in formal impact assessments and analyses impact assessments of EU-derived policy instruments aimed at regulating working conditions. Our findings suggest that aggregated estimates represent poor guides to understanding the social costs and benefits of social regulation and highlight the value of discarding impact assessment estimates of costs and benefits in the context of efforts to shape social policy post-Brexit.