Canadian press coverage of terrorism: The virgin terrorist vs. the Canadian jihadist?

Abstract

The violent and deadly rise of Incel attacks has disrupted Canada's domestic terrorism landscape by putting a spotlight on non-Jihadist extremism. In 2019, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service released a report which revealed an evolved overview of Canada's domestic terrorism landscape that redefined extremism to include: Ideologically-motivated violent extremism (IMVE). With the occurrence of four deadly Incel terrorist attacks between 2018 and 2020, Canada has experienced more Incel terrorism related deaths than those committed by their Jihadist counterparts. By examining the nexus between news media framings and terrorism, this research study seeks to contribute to the gap in terrorism studies on Incels and analyses the way in which the Canadian news media frames their attacks within the label of terrorism. Referencing Azeezah Kanji's 2018 study of news media framings of Muslim violence as a theoretical and thematic framework, this study employs a qualitative research design to answer the research question: In what ways does news media coverage of Incel attacks compare to the coverage of domestic Jihadist attacks? This study employs a combination of content and thematic analysis to a corpus of news media articles on four recent Incel attacks and compares its findings to Kanji's 2018 study....