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In recent decades, disruptive media events, such as major terrorist attacks, have gained increasing relevance in news coverage around the world. Despite the growing importance of such globally broadcast media events, little research to date has examined cross-national variation in event coverage or the predictors of this variation. This study examines news coverage about the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States across 51 countries to analyze whether the topical focus and emotional tone of news coverage about the attacks varied according to a country's proximity to the United States and the dominant role perceptions of its journalistic culture. We show that these macro-level predictors are associated in varying degrees with the country-level topical focus and emotional tone of reporting over the 30 days following this salient event. Moreover, our analysis also suggests that temporal developments may have uniformly structured much of this worldwide coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the teaching of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and their aftermath in history classrooms and museum settings. Particular focus is given to the idea of the U.S. as a home front for the War on Terrorism under the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. According to the author, performing a comparative analysis between the home front in the War on Terrorism and other wars in U.S. history can direct the focus of the discussion away from rhetoric and emotions. Details related to censorship, racial and religious tolerance, and perceptions of threat in World War II and the Cold War are presented. Other topics include national security, political conservatism, and media coverage of the 2001 attacks.

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