Assessing Public Support for Terrorism Over Time
Public support for terrorism reflects people’s sympathy for terrorist groups or tactics; it is influenced by and, in turn, shapes terrorists’ campaigns as well as counter-terrorism measures. To date, long term trends of public opinion about terrorism have been assessed in case studies and through descriptive statistics. Systematic analyses that specify whether and how public support for terrorism has changed over time are not available. We addressed this gap in the literature and conducted time-series analyses of eight waves of data (2004 2011) from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey. Including responses from 15 Muslim majority countries (N =43255), we showed that the percentage of people who believed that suicide terrorism was justified decreased between 2005 and 2007 after which support remained at a lower level (one structural breakpoint). Results also highlighted that depending on how public opinion was operationalised, the same data could inform an opposing narrative about support for terrorism. Notably when analyses were replicated with a mean composite score of the answer options ‘often', 'sometimes‘ and ‘rarely justified’ the percentage of people who thought that terrorism was ‘ever justified’ was reduced in 2005 before increasing again in 2008 (two structural breakpoints). Pre-registration of studies is therefore crucial to avoid selective analyses.