Academic and lay beliefs about terrorism: a thematic comparison. Poster presented at the BPS Social Psychology Annual Conference, 'Social psychology in action: Theoretical debate and social impact', Winchester, England.

The academic literature on terrorism is voluminous and continues to expand on the basis of established academic language, set of knowledge claims and understandings of the subject. Although there have been a number of studies about the academic knowledge-production process within so-called Terrorism Studies field, little is really known about the public’s understanding of terrorism. Specifically, there are no psychology studies that we are aware of which investigate public beliefs about the nature, causes and solutions of contemporary terrorism. Given that the public receive most of their information about terrorism from the media and academics, and that terrorism and counter-terrorism measures are an important issue of public policy, this lacuna in the literature is puzzling and significant. Consequently, the primary objective of this study is to investigate how members of the public perceive and understand the subject of terrorism, and how public beliefs coincide and/or differ from established academic understandings of terrorism. The study is based on the thematic analysis of transcripts from focus group discussions consisting of members of the public. Identified themes are then juxtaposed with common arguments and statements within the established Terrorism Studies literature to determine points of convergence and divergence. The results from this pilot study are expected to provide the basis for the development of a more detailed research agenda that will map and analyse public understandings of terrorism. A secondary aim of the study is to make use of existing social psychology frameworks (e.g., Social Identity Theory; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) for interpreting public beliefs about terrorism, and to encourage greater dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration between social psychology, and political science, which has a well-established tradition of research on political violence.