Project 6: Global Approaches to Cybersecurity Start Here As a cybersecurity professional, it is important for you to not only understand the organizational and national human and technical factors, bu

Cybersecurity Economic Issues

The growing threats and occurrences of cybersecurity incidents have resulted in potentially significant economic effects. These impacts arise first from the cost of both implementing cybersecurity measures consistent with an entity's risk tolerance and with maintaining an appropriate security posture to guard against future threats. Next, given the potential for successful cyberattacks in spite of best efforts to protect against them, entities must be prepared to protect assets and plan for associated liability issues.

According to Gartner, an IT research and technology company, in 2018 organizations spent $114 billion worldwide on information security, and that figure was projected to increase to $124 billion by the end of 2019, representing an 8.7 percent expected growth (Gartner, 2018). While these costs largely do not represent a significant percentage of total IT budgets, they do reflect a recognition that security does have a cost, and these costs must be considered as a key business decision.

The cost of information security is one consideration, but a growing concern is also the financial impact of losing sensitive corporate or customer personal information due to a breach. Ponemon Institute's 2019 Global Cost of Data Breach study reports that the average total costs for such losses is about $8.9 billion. Ponemon reports health care and financial services information breaches are considerably more costly than those in other industries (Bluefin, 2019).

These economic impacts have raised the profile for cybersecurity liability insurance. The lack of actuarial data specific to cybersecurity, however, has made the risk of cyber losses difficult for insurance underwriters to quantify. Therefore, cyber insurance policies are more specialized and as a result, more expensive. Factors that are considered in developing an organization's insurance profile include the attributes (e.g., size, scope) of business needing to be protected, the number of customers, and the type of data collected and stored (NAIC, 2016).

References

Gartner. (2018, August 15). Gartner forecasts worldwide information security spending to exceed $124 billion in 2019. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-08-15-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-information-security-spending-to-exceed-124-billion-in-2019

Bluefin. (2019). Highlights from IBM Security and the Ponemon Institute’s 2019 Cost of Data Breach Study [Blog post]. https://www.bluefin.com/bluefin-news/highlights-ibm-security-ponemon-institutes-2019-cost-data-breach-study/

National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). (2016, July 20). The national system of state regulation and cybersecurity. http://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_cyber_risk.htm

Cybersecurity Cultural Issues

The cultural implications of cybersecurity include history, religion, economic structure, government structure, and societal values and norms. Together, they form the foundation for both understanding a culture's response to cybersecurity (including actors, incidents, policies and laws) and determining how best to engage with a given culture on issues of cybersecurity importance. "Differences in approaches to cybersecurity are not limited to privacy but also extend to patterns of national historical governance...and to regional cooperation" (Palmer et al., 2016).

History, particularly on issues of privacy and intelligence, have significant influence over cybersecurity approaches. For example, since the 1970's, Brazil's Doctrine of National Security emphasizes Brazil's independence and autonomy from a technology and security perspective, respectively (Palmer et al., 2016) This historical perspective has influenced subsequent decisions on a separate and independent email infrastructure for government communications. Across Europe, the prevailing view is that the protection of privacy is a human right. This perspective is now reflected in the EU's NIS Directive, adopted in 2016. This directive on the security of network and information systems has a strong emphasis on privacy protection (European Commission, 2016).

Government structures also affect approaches to cybersecurity, particularly in whether and even how nations legislate, issue policies, and consider responsibilities and penalties. Democratic nations are more likely to approach cybersecurity from a perspective of determining how existing laws might either apply or be modified to accommodate changes, and by using existing legislative and executive processes. Such nations are more likely to have higher regard for personal privacy, as reflected in their societal norms and behaviors.

Countries run by a single party or entity (e.g., Communist countries) are more likely to have more restrictive, punitive, and less transparent approaches to cybersecurity. Consistent with their governing practices, punishments are likely to be swift and severe, but such countries are also more likely to use rogue malicious cyberactors to work on behalf of their national interests. From a perspective of societal values, these countries also generally have less regard for personal privacy.

References

Palmer, A., Martins de Almeida, G., Breteau, L., Hoare, O., Liew, S., Le Toquin, J., & Rickert, T. (2016, May/June). A global perspective on cybersecurity:Cultural and regional views that influence cybersecurity policy. Minority Corporate Counsel Association. http://www.diversityandthebardigital.com/datb/may_june_2016?pg=26#pg26

European Commission. (2016, July 28). The directive on security of networks and information systems (NIS directive). https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/network-and-information-security-nis-directive

Cyberterrorism

Cyberterrorism is a politically motivated act that uses cyberspace to cause widespread fear, uncertainty, violence, intimidation, loss of life, and economic damage. A distinction should be made between cybercrime and cyberterrorism. Actual cyberterrorism results in widespread violence. Examples might include hacking into the control system of a dam to cause loss of life and destruction of property, or hacking into the cockpit controls of an aircraft to cause it to crash.

Media coverage of cyberterrorism, particularly in mainstream outlets, is constantly evolving. What remains consistent is that in cyberterrorism, as in so many other realms, perceptions can profoundly influence reality. In order for cyberterrorism to be perceived by the general public as a threat to security, it must be presented as one. Thus, the reporting on cyberterrorism has become the subject of scrutiny by experts in the field.

Constructing Cyberterrorism as a Security Threat: A Study of International News Media Coverage

Abstract

This article examines the way in which the English language international news media has constructed the threat of cyberterrorism. Analyzing 535 news items published by 31 different media outlets across seven countries between 2008 and 2013, we show that this coverage is uneven in terms of its geographical and temporal distribution and that its tone is predominantly apprehensive. This article argues that, regardless of the "reality" of the cyberterrorism threat, this coverage is important because it helps to constitute cyberterrorism as a security risk. Paying attention to this constitutive role of the news media, we suggest, opens up a fresh set of research questions in this context and a different theoretical approach to the study of cyberterrorism.

Introduction

This article reports findings of a research project on media constructions of cyberterrorism. Examining a total of 535 English language items published in 31 different news outlets across seven countries between 1 January 2008 and 8 June 2013, the project sought to examine a range of issues, including the volume and tone of media coverage of cyberterrorism; the geographical and temporal spread of this coverage; the imagery used; the level at which the coverage was pitched (e.g., was background knowledge needed?); whether sources were quoted, and if so which; the portrayal of cyberterrorists (e.g., as professionals, hackers, etc.); whether the coverage made reference to past (cyber or noncyber) events, and if so which; and who or what is said to be threatened by cyberterrorism (Chen et al., 2014). The aims of the research project were, first, to add empirical depth to conceptual accounts of the importance of media reportage within cyberterrorism discourse (see, amongst others, Conway, 2005; Weimann, 2004; Stohl, 2006) and, second, to explore the processes by which the term cyberterrorism is constructed and given meaning within the mainstream news media.

In this article—the first of three reporting our findings—our focus is the volume and tone of the media coverage, and its geographical and temporal distribution. The article will show unevenness in terms of both the temporal spread of the news items (with a marked increase in coverage from October 2010 onwards) and their geographical distribution (with a greater number of items published in UK outlets than those located within other countries). By contrast, our research identified far greater consistency in the tone of this coverage, with many more items manifesting concern over the cyberterrorism threat than skepticism toward it. The article concludes by arguing that, by demonstrating the role the news media plays in constructing a discourse that presents cyberterrorism as a security threat, our findings open up a range of fresh research questions in this area.

Cyberterrorism and the International News Media

Recent scholarship on cyberterrorism has focused largely on questions of definition, threat assessment and response (Examples include Chen et al., 2014; Jarvis et al., 2014; Jarvis & Macdonald, 2014). Whilst each of these issues has generated diverse opinions, these debates share a common underlying assumption: that claims about cyberterrorism should be assessed or critiqued for the accuracy with which they reflect or represent reality. In this article we point to a different theoretical approach— one which recognizes that news media has a constitutive rather than correspondential relationship to the "reality" of cyberterrorism. Instead of asking whether media coverage of cyberterrorism accurately reflects reality, our concern is instead to explore the role of the news media in constructing cyberterrorism as a real security threat.

Methodology

This project is the first systematic study of this size that focuses specifically on cyberterrorism (the study by Bowman-Grieve [2015] examined a selection of 100 Anglo-American media sources published between 1996 and 2013, using the concept of moral panics). The 31 news outlets examined in our research were of three sorts: broadsheet newspapers, tabloid newspapers, and the websites of media corporations (the 31 sources selected were ABC News, Al Jazeera, The Australian, Australian Financial Review, The Australian Telegraph, BBC, Boston Globe, Channel 4 News, China Daily, CNN, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Fox News, The Guardian, The Herald Sun, The Independent, LA Times, The New York Times, Reuters, Russia Today, Sky News, South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, The Sun, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph, The Times of India, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The West Australian). A keyword search was conducted around the terms cyber terrorism, cyberterrorism, and cyber terror for each news outlet, generating a total of 535 relevant items. These items included a wide and varied spread of content, ranging from news stories relating to current affairs in the country of origin or abroad, technology news and discussion thereof, opinion pieces and editorial reflections, items related to culture and the arts—including reviews of movies with fictional representations of cyberterrorism (for instance, cyberterrorism featured prominently in discussion and reviews on the 23rd film in the James Bond franchise–Skyfall–that was released in cinemas internationally at the end of 2012)—and special reports or other features using this terminology. While all of the news stories generated from this keyword search referred explicitly to cyberterrorism, it was not uncommon for other elements of the cybersecurity lexicon—cyberwar, cyberespionage, cybercrime, etc.—also to be present. Where such examples are cited in this article, this is not meant to imply they are synonyms for cyberterrorism. Instead, this reflects the lack of clear distinction between said concepts and the flexible manner in which many of these media outlets employed such terms.

The study focused on items published between 1 January 2008 and 8 June 2013. These dates were selected for two reasons. First, because this provided sufficient data through which to explore developments in reportage on cyberterrorism: a total of 1986 days of media content. And second, because this period incorporated key events of potential relevance to cyberterrorism and media coverage thereof. These included the 2008 cyberattacks on Georgia, the 2010 revelations of the Stuxnet attack, the 2010 publication of the UK's National Security Strategy, and the November 2011 release of the UK's Cyber Security Strategy: Protecting and Promoting the UK in a Digital World.The 31 news outlets were selected for this research for reasons of accessibility and pluralism. These included: the provision of a searchable online archive; diversity of political perspective and type of media company; diversity of geographical origin to facilitate comparison across and beyond the Anglosphere; and reasons of language, such that the news content was provided in the medium of English.

Table 1 shows the total number of news items that appeared in each of the news outlets over the course of our research time frame. As this indicates, there was significant variation in the coverage given to this topic by each of these outlets. The top eight on the list accounted for 258 of the 535 items (equivalent to 48 percent of the total). The bottom eight, in contrast, account for just 35 items (7 percent). Also significant is the geographical distribution across this period of time: Of the top eight outlets, four were UK broadsheet newspapers and another was the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC's) online news site. The same trend is apparent in Table 2, which shows the number of news items published in each of the US, UK, and Australian newspapers in our sample. A total of 313 items appeared in these 18 newspapers (61 percent of the total). Of these, more than half were published in a UK newspaper (55 percent).

Table 1: Number of News Items by News Outlet

Outlet

Total number of items that mentioned cyberterrorism

The Guardian

The Telegraph

Fox News

Reuters

BBC

The Washington Post

The Independent

Financial Times

Russia Today

The Australian

CNN

The Sun

The Times of India

Australian Telegraph

Australian Financial Review

The New York Times

China Daily

The Wall Street Journal

The Sydney Morning Herald

Daily Mail

The Straits Times

Channel 4 News

Al Jazeera

Sky News

ABC News

LA Times

South China Morning Post

USA Today

Boston Globe

The West Australian

The Herald Sun

Total

535

Table 2(a): Anglophone Newspaper Items by Country of Publication (UK)

Newspaper

Total number of items

The Guardian

The Telegraph

The Independent

Financial Times

The Sun

Daily Mail

Total

172

Table 2(b): Anglophone Newspaper Items by Country of Publication (Australia)

Newspaper

Total number of items

The Australian

Australian Telegraph

Australian Financial Review

The Sydney Morning Herald

The West Australian

The Sun Herald

Total

Table 2(c): Anglophone Newspaper Items by Country of Publication (US)

Newspaper

Total number of items

The Washington Post

The New York Times

The Wall Street Journal

LA Times

USA Today

Boston Globe

Total

The geographical focus of media coverage of cyberterrorism was as uneven in its distribution as in its origin. As Table 3 shows, more items focused on the US than any other country. Indeed, the number of items that focused on the US, UK, and Australia was more than double the number concentrating on all other countries combined (353 compared to 174). Table 4 probes this unevenness further by asking what proportion of the news items focused on their country of publication. So, for example, all seven of the news items that focused on Singapore were published in the Singaporean The Straits Times. Similarly, only one of the 39 news items that focused on Australia was not published in Australia. Yet while 87 percent of the items that focused on the UK were published there, only 52 percent of the items that focused on the US were published in the US. And the majority of items relating to cyberterrorism that focused on China (69 percent) and Russia (83 percent) were not published in these countries.

(Several news items within our sample had a strong focus on more than one country. Where this was the case, both countries have been included.)

Content Analysis: Focus and Apprehensiveness of News Coverage

Our analysis of the tone of the coverage across this diverse media content began by examining the extent to which each story focused specifically on cyberterrorism. A threefold classification was employed, with items categorized according to whether cyberterrorism was their primary focus, their secondary focus, or a topic mentioned in passing without any detailed discussion or analysis. As chart 1 shows, a total of 83 items (16 percent of the dataset) had cyberterrorism as their primary focus, with a further 317 (59 percent) having it as their secondary focus. There were 135 items (25 percent) that mentioned cyberterrorism without examining the concept in detail.

Table 3: News Items by Primary Geographical Focus

Geographic focus Number of news items

170

144

Australia

China

South Korea

India

Israel

North Korea

Iran

Singapore

Russia

Pakistan

Mexico

Europe

Japan

Estonia

Ireland

Middle East

Algeria

Georgia

Hong Kong

Indonesia

Morocco

Palestine

Saudi Arabia

Somalia

Spain

Zimbabwe

General international focus

No geographical focus

Table 4: Geographical Focus of News Items by Country of Publication

Country Total number of items primarily focused on this country

Percentage of these items that were published in this country

170

52%

144

87%

Australia

97%

China

31%

India

86%

Singapore

100%

Russia

17%

Chart 1: Proportion of News Stories With Cyberterrorism as Their Primary or Secondary Focus

The next stage of the analysis concentrated on the 400 news items that had cyberterrorism as either their primary or secondary focus. Each story was coded and placed into one of the following six categories: concerned; concerned with elements of skepticism; balanced; skeptical; skeptical with elements of concern; or neither (there were various reasons for placing a story in the last of these categories, such as the type of piece, with purely descriptive pieces not corresponding to any of the prior five categories). The results of this analysis are displayed in Chart 2.

Chart 2: Proportion of News Stories That Were Concerned, Skeptical, Balanced, or Neither

A total of 268 news items—two-thirds of those with a primary or secondary focus on cyberterrorism—evidenced a marked concern with the threat posed by cyberterrorism. A further 33 items (8 percent) demonstrated concern with elements of skepticism: the second most fearful category within our schema. Equally striking are the small numbers of items that were skeptical about cyberterrorism posing any threat at all—only eight (or 2 percent) of the 400 analyzed—skeptical with elements of concern (four in total; 1 percent) or balanced (26 in total; 7 percent). As this suggests, news coverage—at least within our sample—was predominantly apprehensive in tone throughout the five-year period on which we focused.

Table 5 investigates the tone of the news media coverage further by showing a breakdown of the items we explored by news outlet, by type of news outlet and by their origin in the Anglosphere or otherwise.

Table 5: Concerned, Sceptical, Balanced or Neither, by News Outlet

News Outlet Total number of news items which had cyberterrorism as a primary or secondary focus Concerned Concerned with elements of scepticism Balanced Skeptical Skeptical with elements of concern

Neither

The Guardian

(56%)

(21%)

(9%)

(7%)

Fox News

(72%)

(3%)

(8%)

(18%)

The Telegraph

(70%)

(23%)

(3%)

The Washington Post

(56%)

(4%)

(40%)

BBC

(65%)

(4%)

(9%)

(22%)

The Independent

(78%)

(22%)

Financial Times

(73%)

(5%)

(23%)

CNN

(45%)

(10%)

(35%)

The New York Times

(44%)

(56%)

The Australian

(93%)

(7%)

Russia Today

(31%)

(15%)

(31%)

(15%)

(8%)

The Wall Street Journal

(77%)

(8%)

Daily Mail

(75%)

(8%)

Reuters

(73%)

(9%)

The Sydney Morning Herald

(45%)

(36%)

(18%)

Australian Financial Review

(90%)

(10%)

The Sun

(70%)

(10%)

Channel 4 News

(89%)

(11%)

China Daily

(67%)

(33%)

The Straits Times

(89%)

(11%)

Australian Telegraph

(100%)

ABC News

(50%)

(33%)

(17%)

LA Times

(67%)

(17%)

Sky News

(80%)

(20%)

The Times of India

(100%)

Aljazeera

(33%)

USA Today

(67%)

(33%)

Boston Globe

(100%)

The West Australian

(100%)

South China Morning Post

N/A

The Herald Sun

N/A

Tabloids

(81%)

(6%)

Broadsheets

240

163

(68%)

(9%)

(5%)

(3%)

(0%)

(15%)

News channels

129

(62%)

(8%)

(10%)

(1%)

(2%)

(17%)

Anglophone

362

245

(68%)

(9%)

(6%)

(2%)

(0%)

(16%)

Non-Anglophone

(61%)

(5%)

(13%)

(3%)

(8%)

(11%)

Overall total

400

268

(67%)

(8%)

(7%)

(2%)

(1%)

(15%)

A number of interesting points arise from this data. First, the five tabloid newspapers included in the sample were responsible for just 31 of the items identified in our research: a very modest average of 6.2 items per outlet over this period. This compares to averages of 14.1 items per broadsheet newspaper and 14.3 items per broadcaster. This indicates that if there is a dominant news media discourse on cyberterrorism, it is not solely the product of tabloid hyperbole. At the same time, however, whilst the predominant tone of the entire sample was apprehensive, this tone was particularly acute in the tabloid newspapers. Of their 31 items, 25 (81 percent) were concerned and a further two (6 percent) were concerned with elements of skepticism. Moreover, none of the 31 tabloid items was skeptical or skeptical with elements of concern. Third, the proportion of items that were classified as concerned or concerned with elements of skepticism was lower for the broadcasters than for the broadsheet newspapers. In total, 70 percent of the items from broadcasters fell into one of these two categories, compared to 77 percent of those from the broadsheets. Moreover, the broadcasters had a higher proportion of balanced items (10 percent, compared to 6 percent for the tabloids and 5 percent for the broadsheets). Fourth, the non-Anglophone sources had a lower proportion of items that were concerned or concerned with elements of skepticism (66 percent in total), a higher proportion of items that were balanced (13 percent) and a higher proportion that were skeptical or skeptical with elements of concern about the threat posed by cyberterrorism (11 percent). The cumulative import of these findings is that Anglophone newspapers—particularly tabloids but broadsheets too—tended to strike a more apprehensive tone than broadcasters and non-Anglophone sources.

Chronological Analysis

Moving on to the temporal spread of the dataset, Chart 3 shows the number of news items that were published each month, from January 2008 to June 2013. As the chart shows, a far greater number of items were published in October 2010 (35 in total) than in any of the other months covered by our study. There were two factors that contributed to this large number of items. The first was the release of the UK's National Security Strategy on 18 October 2010, which identified international terrorism and cyberattack as two of the top-tier threats facing the UK (HM Government, 2010). This was accompanied by the associated decision to invest an additional £650 million in cybersecurity at a time when cuts where being made to other aspects of the defense budget in the name of austerity. These developments generated a total of 22 news items mentioning cyberterrorism from October 17-20, 2010. As table 6 shows, although most of these were published in the UK (17, 77 percent), there was also some media coverage from the US and Australia.

Chart 3: Number of News Items, by Month of Publication

Table 6: News Items 17-20 October 2010, by News Outlet

News Outlet Number of news items

Channel 4 News

The Telegraph

The Guardian

Al Jazeera

Daily Mail

The Sun

ABC News

BBC

Fox News

The Independent

The Wall Street Journal

Total

The general tone of these items is also significant. As Table 7 shows, of the 16 that discussed cyberterrorism in sufficient detail to enable classification within October 2010, none demonstrated a skeptical or balanced view of the threat posed by this phenomenon. On the contrary, a total of 13 items (81 percent) were classified as concerned and a further 2 (13 percent) as concerned with elements of skepticism. In fact, the tone of some of this coverage was dramatic. One headline published in the UK's most widely read newspaper warned of the need to "Fight cyber war before planes fall out of sky" (Wilson, 2010). Another— headlined "Why Britain is desperately vulnerable to cyber terror"—presented a detailed description of a digital "Pearl Harbor" in which:

Power cuts scythed through Britain, plunging cities into darkness … The nationwide panic meant supermarket shelves emptied and petrol stations ran out of fuel … There was no TV, no radio, and no mobile networks. After a fortnight, there were riots, and the military, which was itself crippled by mysterious communications glitches, was called in. (Hanlon, 2010)

Table 7: News Items 17–20 October 2010, by Concerned, Skeptical, Balanced, or Neither

Tone Number of news items

Concerned

Concerned with elements of skepticism

Balanced

Skeptical

Skeptical with elements of concern

Neither

Did not discuss cyberterrorism in detail

Total

This was followed by the foreboding statement that "This terrifying scenario may seem like a science fiction movie. But it is exactly the sort of possibility currently being considered at the highest levels in government as part of the National Security Strategy" (Hanlon, 2010).

The second factor that contributed to the large number of items mentioning cyberterrorism in October 2010 was the revelations concerning Stuxnet. Stuxnet is of particular importance as one of the first known malwares to cause physical damage to critical infrastructure (Farwell & Rohozinski, 2011; Langner, 2013). Allegedly developed by the CIA in cooperation with the Israeli government, Idaho National Laboratory, and other US agencies (Gorman, 2012), it was introduced to the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in Iran by USB flash drive, causing 1,000 centrifuges to fail. The first mention of Stuxnet in the 31 news outlets in our study came on 23 September 2010 in a piece published in the UK's Financial Times, headlined "Warning over malicious computer worm." In October 2010 there were a total of 11 news items that specifically mentioned this attack. As with coverage of the UK's National Security Strategy, discussion of Stuxnet was also characterized by considerable apprehensiveness of tone. A story on 1 October —headlined "Security: A code explodes"— warned that Stuxnet had taken worries about cyberwarfare to a different plane. The image accompanying this story was a picture of a grenade (Blitz et al., 2010). Three days later the same newspaper warned that comparing the cyberthreat to the nuclear arms race was, if anything, "a little too comforting" (Rachman, 2010). The story continued; this was because "Anyone can play at cyberwarfare. The tools can be bought on a local high street and the command-and-control bunker can be a spare bedroom" (Rachman, 2010). This time the accompanying image was a picture of three military tanks resembling computer mice.

During the same period, another newspaper published in Australia stated that half of all companies running critical infrastructure systems have reported politically motivated cyberattacks, adding, "A global survey of such attacks—rarely acknowledged in public because of their potential to cause alarm—found companies estimated they had suffered an average of 10 instances of cyberwar or cyberterrorism in the past five years at a cost of US $850,000 … a company" (Walters, 2010). Two days later this newspaper also quoted Eugene Kaspersky, who described Stuxnet as a "turning point," arguing, "I am afraid this is the beginning of a new world" (Welch, 2010). The South China Morning Post, meanwhile, even lamented the fact that "Unlike Britain and the United States, neither the mainland nor Hong Kong has an established multiagency government structure that could coordinate various agencies to react quickly to cyberterrorism" (South China Morning Post, 2010). In fact, the first news item in our sample that specifically mentioned Stuxnet and was classified as balanced was not published until June 2011: a story by the UK's BBC on the possible "hacking" of the International Monetary Fund (BBC News, 2011). Up to that point, a total of 21 items had mentioned the attack in Iran, all of which were concerned (18 items) or concerned with elements of skepticism (three items) about the threat posed by cyberterrorism.

While there were far more news items that mentioned cyberterrorism in October 2010 than any other month in the period of our study, the events reported during this month had a lasting impact on news media coverage of cyberterrorism. The change is twofold. First, as chart 3 shows, following October 2010 there was a marked increase in the general level of items mentioning cyberterrorism. In the 33 months prior to October 2010 there was an average of 4.8 items per month. This more than doubled in the 32 months that followed, during which there was an average of 10.6 items per month. Second, in the period following October 2010 there was a marked increase in the number of news items published that demonstrated a concern with the threat of cyberterrorism. This is shown in chart 4.

As chart 4 demonstrates, in the 33 months prior to October 2010 there were a total of 73 items that were concerned, an average of 2.2 per month. By contrast, in the 32 months that followed there were a total of 174 items that were concerned, an average of 5.4 per month.

Chart 4: Number of Concerned, Sceptical, Balanced and Neither News Items Before and After October 2010

Conclusion

The above discussion sketches some of the key developments within the coverage—or construction—of cyberterrorism and its threat in the English language international news media between 2008 and 2013. Two broad findings of importance to contemporary discussions of cyberterrorism emerge from this research. The first finding is that—in purely quantitative terms—there is a considerable amount of international media content that focuses on cyberterrorism: a phenomenon that some (although not all) academic researchers argue has yet to occur (Conway, 2004). In the deliberately narrow parameters of our research—whereby some variant of cyber and terrorism or terror had to be present in the story for its inclusion in our sample—an average of one story making reference to cyberterrorism was published every 3.7 days. As we have seen, the distribution of this coverage was far from uniform and many of the items we explored only mentioned cyberterrorism in passing. That said, this clearly evidences a significant amount of media interest in this new form of terrorism.

The second core finding is that much of the media coverage considered in our research expresses real concern over the current or future threat posed by this phenomenon. This concern contrasts with some of the more skeptical academic perspectives which frequently question whether would-be cyberterrorists have the means, motive, or opportunity to engage in this type of activity (Conway, 2014; Denning, 2012; Giacomello, 2004; Lewis, 2002). It does, however, correspond rather more closely to a recent survey of researchers working on this topic in which 70 percent of those surveyed stated that cyberterrorism either does constitute, or potentially constitutes, "a significant threat" (Macdonald, Jarvis, Chen, & Lavis, 2013). This is important, we argue, because news coverage has a constitutive rather than corresponding relationship to the "reality" of cyberterrorism: It is actively involved in the production of this potential security threat. Danger, as David Campbell wrote, "is not an objective condition" (Campbell, 1998, p. 1). It is a product of framing and interpretation, in which meaning is given to the world via language, images and other discursive practices: be they pictures of hand grenades, discussion of hypothetical "doomsday" scenarios, or headlines about "malicious computer worms." Thus, whether or not there exists a "real" threat of cyberterrorism (if such a question could ever even be answered), media (and other) depictions thereof are important in their own right. This is, not least, because when they become widely circulated and reproduced, dominant narratives of threat—around cyberterrorism, and, indeed, anything else —can, very quickly, take on the appearance of, "an external 'reality' which seems to confirm it as truth and commonsense" (Jackson, Jarvis, Gunning, & Breen-Smyth, 2011, p. 144).

In our future research, we will seek to build on the analysis presented here by exploring more specific aspects of findings from this project. This will include, first, looking at the voices of authority cited in news coverage of cyberterrorism in order to ask who is seen to speak the "truth" about this threat and how such voices work to augment or mitigate it; second, investigating how the figure of the "cyberterrorist" is represented and what types of target cyberterrorists are seen to threaten; and, third, looking at the use of historical and other metaphors in media attempts to make sense of this security challenge and how these connect to visual images in this coverage. Our hope in this article, however, is that by charting some of the ways in which English language news media has constructed cyberterrorism as a security threat we have demonstrated the importance of such a research agenda.

About the Authors

Lee Jarvis is senior lecturer in international security at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and director of the UEA's Critical Global Politics research group. His recent books include Counter-Radicalisation: Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2015, edited with Christopher Baker-Beall and Charlotte Heath-Kelly); Critical Perspectives on Counter-terrorism (Routledge, 2015, edited with Michael Lister) and Security: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave, 2015, with Jack Holland).

Stuart Macdonald is associate professor in law and deputy director of the Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology at Swansea University. He is coeditor of Cyberterrorism: Understanding, Assessment, and Response (New York, NY: Springer, 2014), with Lee Jarvis and Thomas Chen. His recent project on security and liberty was funded by the British Academy. He has held visiting scholarships at Columbia University Law School, New York, and the Institute of Criminology at the University of Sydney.

Andrew Whiting lectures in the Department of Criminology at Swansea University. He is currently completing his PhD, which investigates the construction of cyberterrorism within Internet security industry discourse. Since undertaking his doctorate he has had his work published on a range of topics that reflect his research interests, including terrorism, cyberterrorism, and radicalization.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Swansea University's College of Law and the Bridging the Gaps program for their support for the research upon which this article is based. We gratefully acknowledge Jordan McErlean and Alicia Payne for their excellent research assistance, and David Mair and Lella Nouri for their helpful suggestions throughout the project.

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Constructing Cyberterrorism as a Security Threat: A Study of International News Media Coverage by Lee Jarvis, Stuart Macdonald, and Andrew Whiting from Perspectives on Terrorism is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the