My perception of terrorism has always been associated with the media, since the media has been where I had gathered the vast majority of the knowledge on terrorism itself. Up until the event of 9/11, I had no prior knowledge on terrorism at all, and I could still recall the day that I heard about the attack from Al Qaeda on the news channel in Taiwan. The world changed greatly after the continuous update on the attack; everyday, there would be a news regarding a terrorist attack in the world. During that period of time, I began to take in much information on what a terrorist group was; a non-government organization that targeted the government for different reasoning such as religion and ideas. Despite being more aware of terrorism, I did not feel that I would ever be a future victim from a terrorist group attack. Personally, the whole thing felt like news about the space such as landing on the moon. Even though it was happening in the real world causing a real impact; it was still so distant from the world that I live in everyday. To the maximum extent, it was more of an interesting topic to chat about with friends or family after watching the news at dinner.
Terrorism was not real to me, because I was never affected by its attacks. Even after the attack on 9/11, everything was still functioning the way it was before the event at where I live. However, after reading the articles, I identified two reasoning of why I was not influenced by any terrorist attacks: 1. I was not living in the U.S, thus, not the primary target, 2. I was not watching the U.S news reports. The first point has been how I always feel why I am affected in the minimum. The second point was raised after the two articles; even though I knew that the source of a news report is a very important factor when watching the news, I had never thought about the media could control its viewer in the way that Reynolds and Barnett presented. For