Simon Rousset

My research interests stem out of interdisciplinary research in Intercultural and International Communication and Critical Media Studies. I am interested in studying representation of acts of extreme violence marked as terrorism in media as it relates to questions about issues of identity at the racialized intersection of religion, sexuality, and nationality. I draw from studies in terrorism, moral panic, and orientalism as theoretical frameworks to examine the role of the national press in fueling a panic and in projecting onto Muslims, the burden of terrorism. I use various methods in the critical/interpretive paradigmatic approach to research, including methods of comparative thematic analysis and autoethnography. I am currently working on a comparative thematic analysis of the national newspaper representation of terrorism following the 13 November 2015 series of attacks that ended at the Bataclan concert hall in France and the 12 June 2016 mass shooting at Pulse in the U.S.A.