TERRORISM AND THE MEDIA
By Ahmed JEBRANE
Under the title “Theories of Prevention,” Ian Gough Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics noted in 2013 that such theories “are conspicuous by their absence.” Prevention regardless of the area it focuses on, is a difficult concept. How to establish a causal relationship between the impact of a set of precautionary interventions or preventive measures and an outcome that is a non-event, namely, in our case, the absence of acts of terrorism? After all, the same non-event outcome of the event could have happened anyway, without active interventions aimed at eliminating or mitigating the causes and without targeting the alleged drivers of radicalization, extremism and terrorism? While we are all interested in the future since we will be spending the rest of our lives there, we have very limited control