Citation

Cubukcu S, Forst B. Homicide Stud. 2018; 22(1): 94-116.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1088767917737808

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study investigates the extent of reporting and nature of biases in open-source (OS) terrorism databases. We compare OS accounts with official accounts on terrorism events in Turkey (1996-2012).

RESULTS indicate (a) substantial systematic discrepancy between OS and official accounts, which we attribute primarily to underreporting in OS accounts; (b) the discrepancy is not random--incident characteristics (victim/target, offender, and incident types, temporal and spatial factors) and rational factors (especially newsworthiness) matter; and (c) severity is the strongest predictor of the probability of OS coverage.

Language: en