9/11 built our information landscape

Twenty-five years on, the legacy of the Sept. 11 attacks continues beyond the initial physical and economic effects. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror” severely undermined trust in mainstream news media in the U.S. and around the world, laying the groundwork for today’s fractured, hyperpartisan information environment.

In the days and weeks after the attacks, American journalists faced a dilemma: maintain professional standards of objectivity, balance and impartiality or “rally round the flag” in support of the state. Many chose the latter, and a powerful mood of patriotic sentiment echoed around U.S. newsrooms. Journalists and news anchors wore stars-and-stripe pin badges, while networks adopted slogans such as “America Under Attack” for evening news bulletins.

Veteran news anchor Dan Rather captured this patriotic tone during an emotional interview with late-night host David Letterman: “George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions … wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where.”

In an address days after the attacks, Bush set the narrative that would define much of the post-9/11 era: “Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom — the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time — now depends on us. Our nation — this generation — will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage.”

This messaging, labelled the “war on terror” narrative by scholars, helped justify America’s massive, decades-long military response to the attacks.

Newsrooms, rather than acting as critical watchdogs, arguably echoed this narrative. Study after study has shown how journalists aligned with the government’s framing, as news organizations significantly increased their use of terms such as “war,” “terror” and “freedom” in their reporting.

This is an example of what media scholars have labelled re-institutionalisation. This is when a small group of political sources take control of the narrative in the aftermath of a crisis, imposing their interpretation onto the media.

Such patriotic reporting was not confined to the U.S. News outlets in the U.K., Spain and Germany adopted strikingly similar patterns of coverage.

One theme found across international media was an association between Islam and terrorism. In the years after 9/11, terror attacks in the U.S. were said to receive 357 per cent more news attention if the perpetrator was identified as Muslim. This is despite evidence that attacks by right-wing extremists have been far more common in the U.S. since at least 2001. Similar patterns emerged in the U.K. and Europe.

How news consumption has changed since 9/11

Almost 90 per cent of U.S. citizens received their news about 9/11 from their televisions. But things have changed in the quarter century since.

An initial spike in U.S. news readership after 9/11 gave way to fatigue, with younger Americans today either consuming less news or even avoiding it entirely. The emergence of new technology during the 2000s is said to have accelerated these changes. Today, levels of trust in news remain near record lows across western democracies.

For many — particularly ethnic minorities — perceptions of bias in news coverage of the attacks and invasion of Iraq damaged the credibility of news organizations. Research in the U.S., U.K. and Australia has shown how negative attitudes toward mainstream media have led people to “actively disengage” from traditional sources and seek alternative modes of political participation.

The first signs of this disengagement could be seen within weeks of 9/11. As journalists rallied around the flag, grassroots counternarratives and conspiracy theories emerged to speculate on the “true” motives behind the attacks. These bottom-up accounts ranged from claims that the U.S. had “staged” 9/11 to broader, often antisemitic fears around the emergence of a sinister, “one-world government.”

While there is debate over how widespread such conspiracy theories were at the time, research suggests they helped Americans simultaneously process the trauma of 9/11 and explore connections that were absent from mainstream accounts. In so doing, however, scholars claim they helped feed a growing loss of trust in mainstream news media.

For younger generations the memory of 9/11 — and the subsequent breakdown in trust — has become less shaped by formal news coverage and more by the emergence of online subcultures, dark humour and internet memes.

One example can be found in the conspiracy-turned-meme “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.” First popularized as a genuine argument by “9/11 truther” conspiracy theorists, the phrase has become an online joke used widely to mock conspiratorial thinking.

Research suggests that dark humour can function as a coping mechanism for alienated younger generations when navigating hyperpolitical media environments. It can lower the barrier for entry, allowing people to become active creators of political content, rather than passive consumers.

At the same time, however, critics argue that the use of these seemingly benign formats can help strengthen online communities and normalize extreme political views. As a result, it can further undermine trust in mainstream institutions. Indeed, much online content invokes the same kind of base Islamophobia seen during the early years of the “war on terror.”

An age of disinformation

Coverage of 9/11 offers a case study in how mainstream media can inadvertently engineer its own decline. By setting aside basic journalistic norms in favour of patriotic consensus and top-down, fear-driven narratives, news organizations helped transform public skepticism about the reasons behind the terrorist attacks into deep-seated cynicism.

The conspiracy theories that emerged in the aftermath of 9/11 helped lay the foundation for the modern “disinformation age,” from the emergence of QAnon to COVID-19 denialism.

Twenty-five years on, we live in the information landscape that 9/11 built: one where institutional authority is routinely rejected, trust is fragmented along partisan lines, and the line between news, political grievance and viral infotainment has been permanently blurred.

» Jared Ahmad is a lecturer in journalism, politics and communication at the University of Sheffield.

» This column was originally published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca