This project aims to develop an interdisciplinary methodology to analyse people’s attitudes to and expectations of government policies and actions in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks.

In the moments following terror attacks, citizens take to social media to share their personal responses in which they articulate ideas about national identity, immigration and race. Indeed, citizens are often much more openly critical in times of heightened emotion.

The data generated by this project will expand the repertoire of resources for Australian governments as they respond to the public during these times. The comment cited above, for example, was posted on Facebook on 15 March 2019, in response to the terror event in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.  With Australia’s geographical proximity to New Zealand, and with the terrorist identified as an Australian citizen, the event sparked significant national interest regarding the impact of culturally motivated terrorism on everyday lives and also regarding the legitimacy of government policy/action during such crises.

Despite the embeddedness of social media in everyday social interactions, very little research has been conducted using a multimethod tool of analysis to explore public responses to terrorism expressed on social media, and how this connects with critical expectations of law. This project aims to fill that gap by drawing together scholars from law, psychology, business and linguistics to qualitatively analyse the public expression of peoples’ thoughts and feelings regarding the topics of legality, democracy and government policy. As a pilot study, the project will use qualitative discourse analysis methodology to understand public social media responses to the recent Christchurch mosque attacks.