(En)gendering Cyberterrorism in the UK News Media: A Discursive Analysis

This chapter explores how the UK news media represents – or constructs – the threat of cyberterrorism. Drawing on original empirical research, it argues that the news media relies upon a relatively coherent discursive framework in which a vulnerable, passive and weak ‘self’ is juxtaposed with a proactive, resourceful and determined cyber-terrorist other. The chapter then argues that this construction is reflective of the gendered character of this discourse more widely in which news media round cyberterrorism is overwhelmingly: written by male and gender-less authors; reliant upon male and gender-less experts; focused on the actions of male characters; and far more frequently illustrated by images of men, architecture and technology than it is by images of identifiably female characters.