Following the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, Madrid and London, state
agencies have been bound up with the problem of how to effectively communicate the
risk of terrorism to the general public. This article charts the UK government's
attempts to engage in this process and illustrates how the communication of the
terrorist risk meshes into broader cultural formations of crime and (in)security.
Our analytical framework utilizes the risk society as the scene in which
governmental strategies are parcelled up and unpacked. It is posited that the
framing of the terrorist problem through the political discourse of ‘new
terrorism’ has built upon and escalated a cultural climate of fear and
uncertainty. At the level of political communication, it will be elucidated that
media representations of the terrorist threat have served to further embed
discourses of responsibilization. In our view such processes not only articulate a
reduced notion of safety, they also pave the way for the simplistic construction of
a non-white ‘terroristic other’ that has negative consequences
for ethnic minority groups in the UK.
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