Terrorist Attacks and Their Media Coverage as a Factor of Political Stability

In this paper, we investigated how terrorist attacks and their media coverage influence political stability. Media coverage was operationalized through the index of media openness. To do so, we used experimental research design, using regression discontinuity design and Arellano-Bond's dynamic models to avoid possible endogeneity problem. Results on the test sample showed that terrorism in general influences political stability positively. Open media by themselves also tend to positively affect political stability. Although the more media are open in conjunction with terrorism, the more they negatively influence political stability. The results of the study also showed that there is a threshold in the number of terrorist attacks below which terrorism tend to negatively affect political stability and above which terrorism starts to influence political stability in a positive way. The results are robust and therefore valid.