In contemporary political discourse, issues are deliberately framed as “security threats,” thereby justifying extraordinary measures in response (Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998). This process of securitisation is intensified by the rapid expansion of communication technologies in the 21st century (Jowett & O’Donnell, 1989). Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde (1998) outline that securitisation involves framing an issue as an existential threat through speech acts, providing justification (rhetorical and material) for exceptional political or social actions.
Post-structuralist theorists such as Foucault (1980) and Derrida (2003) highlight that securitisation is not merely rhetorical but intrinsically tied to power relations and the construction of social realities. Hansen (2017) synthesises these perspectives, emphasising how discourse functions across theoretical frameworks, united by core commitments: language as productive, discourse as structuring meaning, and critical theory’s foundation in constructivism.
This constructivist framework is crucial for understanding the securitisation of a range of issues, notably terrorism. For instance, media narratives surrounding the War on Terror framed terrorism as an existential threat, thereby legitimising extraordinary policies and military interventions on a global scale.
Furthermore, Booth (1991) urges a broader, more ethically grounded understanding of security—one that connects it to emancipatory goals and critically questions whose security is prioritised and at what cost?
The Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks marked a pivotal moment in global politics. With the declaration of the “War on Terror” (Bush, 2001), terrorism was institutionalised as a defining security concern; reshaping foreign policy, national identity, and public perception across borders. This wasn’t just political rhetoric; it became the foundation for extraordinary state action (Sproule, 1991), justified through a narrative that painted terrorism as an existential threat.
But this narrative didn’t build itself.
The 21st century’s communication revolution amplified this. The rapid expansion of digital platforms and communication technologies played a central role in circulating and entrenching the terrorism-security frame (DiMaggio, 2019). As coverage snowballed, so did the sense of urgency and fear, exponentially intensifying terrorism’s portrayal as an imminent danger (Jowett & O’Donnell, 1989). Citizen journalism sharpened this effect, enabling real-time narratives that shaped public opinion beyond traditional media boundaries (Newman, 2009).
In this context, media outlets became powerful agents in securitising terrorism. Their framing of events and language choices elevated the “War on Terror” to a national and moral imperative (Breakfast, Kwitshi & Johnson, 2022).
But how do we make sense of this framing on a deeper theoretical level?
Poststructuralist theory offers a valuable lens. Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge (1980) exemplifies how language and authority shape what we accept as ‘truth’. When media frame terrorism in ways that align with state power, they reinforce dominant narratives justifying sweeping actions like the Iraq invasion. Derrida (1978), through the lens of deconstruction and the concept of the “binary other,” reveals how this discourse divides the world into “us” and “them,” often fuelling Islamophobic sentiment.
This poststructuralist critique doesn’t reject securitisation theory; it deepens it. As Hansen (2017) argues, discourse is not merely reflective but constitutive: it structures meaning, legitimates power, and carries ideological weight.
Moreover, with the rise of digital platforms, traditional and alternative media now operate in tandem—co-producing the securitised narratives we consume (Newman, 2009). These platforms don’t just reflect security discourse; they shape it, often reinforcing state-sponsored messaging in subtle but powerful ways (Sproule, 1991; DiMaggio, 2019).
Case Study 1 : How Media Framed the “War on Terror” (2001–2006)
Reese and Lewis (2009) offer a compelling case study showing securitisation theory in action through their analysis of news coverage from September 2001 to 2006. Using interpretive analysis, they explored how the media framed the “War on Terror” during this critical period.
Their study identifies three key discursive tools that helped cement the War on Terror as a dominant cultural narrative:
Transmission – The media circulated government language by frequently quoting or paraphrasing presidential statements, making “the War on Terror” a shorthand for complex security policies (Reese & Lewis, 2009). For example, headlines and reports often treated Bush’s rhetoric as straightforward fact, like “Bush has made the war on terrorism the central focus of his administration.”
Reification – Abstract ideas like “terrorism” were treated as concrete, undeniable facts, making policies seem inevitable. Media echoed moralistic presidential language, reinforcing terrorism as an evil threat, with quotes such as “This is civilization’s fight” (Bush, 2001).
Naturalisation – Over time, the frame became so ingrained it felt like common sense or social reality. Bush’s linking of Hurricane Katrina to terrorist celebration illustrated this, personifying the War on Terror as an unstoppable, natural force (The White House, 2006).
In short, Reese and Lewis portray the mechanisms at play; how media not only reported the War on Terror but actively helped create and maintain it as a powerful security narrative shaping public perception and policy.
Enter fOUCAULT;
While securitisation theory explains how the “War on Terror” was discursively constructed as an existential threat (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998), post-structuralist thought, particularly Foucault’s (1980) theory of power/knowledge, deepens our understanding of the ideological machinery behind such framings. It is not that terrorism was portrayed as dangerous, it was rendered intelligible as a self-evident, naturalised truth.
The naturalisation of terrorism curated an environment in which military interventions such as the invasion of Iraq, were framed as unavoidable responses to an existential threat (Beydoun, 2022). In this process, media did not simply echo state discourse; it produced and sustained it (Reese & Lewis, 2009). The press functioned as a vehicle for what Foucault calls a regime of truth—a constructed narrative accepted as objective reality, despite being shaped by entrenched power relations (Foucault, 1980).
Reese and Lewis’s (2009) interpretive analysis of U.S. news coverage illustrates this dynamic clearly. Their study elucidates how media discourses operated through transmission, reification, and naturalisation. Journalists frequently adopted the Bush administration’s language, most notably the phrase “War on Terror”—transmitting official narratives as if they were neutral fact (Reese & Lewis, 2009; Sproule, 1991). Reification then gave those abstract narratives moral and political weight: terrorism was not just discussed, it was condemned as inherently evil, a logic reinforced by presidential soundbites (Bush, 2001).
Foucault’s theory becomes most visible in the final stage: naturalisation. Here, the War on Terror evolved from a political response to an accepted truth. Media coverage no longer questioned the logic of war; instead, it embedded the conflict within broader ideological narratives, presenting it as a timeless and necessary fight between good and evil. Foucault (1980) warns that these “truths” are not neutral—they are produced through discourse, shaped by those in power, and used to legitimise state action.
In this way, Reese and Lewis (2009) offer more than a media analysis, they reveal how news texts function as ideological artefacts, reinforcing what Foucault (1972) would call a discursive formation. Through repetition and circulation, these texts do more than inform they shape individual consciousness. And in shaping that consciousness, they also shape policy. The Iraq invasion was no longer framed as a contested decision—it became obligatory.
This Foucauldian lens is critical to understanding the real-world effects of discourse. What is portrayed as “truth” in media never truly reflects reality—it creates it, guiding public perception and legitimising political outcomes (Foucault, 1980; Reese & Lewis, 2009). By reinforcing binary oppositions between a civilised “us” and a dangerous “them,” media discourse aligns with Derrida’s (2009) critique of the racialised and dehumanised “Other” (Rahim, 2021). This ideological framing, sustained through language, reveals how power and knowledge converge to shape what we come to believe—and accept—as real.
Case Study 2: How Language Helped Securitise Islam After 9/11
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the media and political leaders across the West began to frame terrorism using a powerful narrative; one that increasingly blurred the line between Islam and terrorism. As Jackson (2007) explains, this wasn’t a random shift. It was shaped by the assumptions and authority of terrorism studies as a field, which gained prominence post-9/11. The discourse of “Islamic terrorism” became common, reinforcing the idea that the War on Terror was effectively a war against Islam itself.
This framing aligns with traditional securitisation theory developed by Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde (1998), which explains how issues become national security concerns through speech and representation, rather than objective threats alone.
Wahhabism, Media, and the Construction of Threat:
A key part of this narrative focused on Wahhabism; a conservative Islamic movement originating in Saudi Arabia. Although Wahhabism is a reformist call to return to early Islamic principles, it became frequently linked with global terrorism in Western media (Dillon, 2009). Salama (2011), using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, studied how media language shaped these associations.
Her findings highlight two main linguistic strategies that played a central role in securitising Islam:
1. Over-Lexicalisation: Flooding Discourse with Dysphemisms:
Salama (2011) found that media discourse used over-lexicalisation, the excessive repetition of synonyms or near-synonyms, to describe Islam-related subjects—especially Wahhabism. This meant using emotionally charged dysphemisms like “radical,” “extremist,” “violent,” and “fundamentalist” in a way that constantly reinforced negative imagery. These word choices stripped away theological nuance and helped paint Islamic ideologies as inherently violent (Jackson, 2007).
2. Re-lexicalisation: Redefining Islamic Terms
In addition to flooding coverage with negative labels, Salama (2011) notes how re-lexicalisation played a major role. Neutral or religiously rooted terms such as “jihad” or “Wahhabism” were redefined through media use. Their meanings shifted from spiritual or theological to dangerous and militant. This kind of conceptual gerrymandering, as Salama describes it, allowed the media to recast Islamic concepts as threats aligned with terrorism (Jackson, 2007).
Who Pushed Back?
There were attempts to challenge this framing. For example, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef claimed that the rise of terrorism was the result of foreign conspiracies—not a product of Wahhabi ideology (Rabasa et al., 2004). Yet, these claims were largely ignored or dismissed in Western narratives, which continued to push the link between Islam and global terror (Jackson, 2007).
why it matters.
This media-driven securitisation of Islam had real-world consequences. As Salama (2011) and Jackson (2007) both argue, such narratives helped justify extraordinary political measures—from expanded surveillance to military interventions. Reese and Lewis (2009) describe this as part of a broader strategy where public opinion was shaped to see Islam as a persistent threat to global security.
By manipulating language, the media wasn’t just reporting on terrorism, they were helping to construct what terrorism meant, who was seen as a threat, and which groups deserved suspicion.
The Terrorist Next Door?
While traditional securitisation theory (Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998) explains how Islam was framed as a threat after 9/11, to understand the deeper ideological work at play, a poststructural perspective provides a layer of nuance. Salama’s (2011) analysis of how the media linguistically constructed Islam as inherently dangerous sets the stage, however poststructural theory from thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault uncovers the mechanisms of power beneath such language.
Dividing the World: The Binary Logic Behind Islamophobia
Poststructuralism, particularly as articulated by Derrida (2003), reminds us that meaning is created through binary oppositions: “West” vs. “Islam”, “civilised” vs. “barbaric”, “us” vs. “them”. These binaries are not objective or neutral, they’re constructed to maintain hierarchies of power (Foucault, 1980). In media portrayals post-9/11, Islam was cast in the role of the ‘Other’—a cultural and existential threat to the liberal West.
These oppositions legitimated political actions by morally framing the War on Terror as a battle between good and evil. Bush’s famous line—“Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”—epitomises this binary thinking (Breakfast, Kwitshi, & Johnson, 2022).
Conceptual Gerrymandering and the Weaponisation of Language:
As Salama (2011) shows, the media employed dysphemisms, harsh, emotionally loaded terms like “extremist,” “fundamentalist,” and “radical”—to describe Wahhabism and Islam more broadly. This over-lexicalisation, alongside re-lexicalisation (redefining words like “jihad” and “terrorism” to imply violence), restructured Islamic concepts to fit a securitised narrative. These are what Derrida (2003) calls “plays of power”; strategies of language that don’t just reflect reality, but shape it.
As Hansen (2017) and Jackson (2007) argue, this language collapses the vast diversity within Islamic thought into a singular identity: the terrorist. In doing so, it enacts epistemic violence, erasing difference and reinforcing Western dominance (Derrida, 2003). From here the term “terrorist” becomes what poststructuralists call a floating signifier, a word whose meaning shifts based on context but is consistently mapped onto Arab and Muslim identities (Rahim, 2021). This flexibility is precisely what makes it powerful: it can be invoked anytime, anywhere, to justify state action.
Autoimmunity: Undermining Democracy in the Name of Security
Derrida’s (2003) concept of autoimmunity deepens the critique: in trying to defend itself from an imagined external threat, the liberal democratic state ends up attacking its own foundational values—freedom, equality, openness (Rahim, 2021).
The “Special Registration” program introduced in 2002, which forced men from Arab and Muslim countries to register with the U.S. government and be fingerprinted (Crawford, Graves, & Katzenstein, 2021). Such practices didn’t merely protect citizens, they institutionalised suspicion, disproportionately targeting Muslims and Arab communities.
As Hansen (2017) argues, securitisation doesn’t just reflect existing Islamophobia—it produces it. By repeatedly associating Islam with violence and casting Muslim identities as inherently “Other,” this discourse creates a systemic framework that justifies extraordinary surveillance, racial profiling, and militarisation (Jackson, 2007).
And yet, as Derrida warned in his 2003 interview with Borradori;
“we must not consider everything that has to do with Islam… as one homogeneous whole.”
But that is precisely what securitised discourse does—it homogenises, weaponises, and ultimately dehumanises (Beydon, 2022).
A poststructural lens reveals that securitisation is not just a strategic or political tool—it’s a linguistic mechanism of power. Through media narratives, binaries, and redefined meanings, entire populations were recast as existential threats. In the process, liberal democracies not only distorted Islamic identities, but also undermined their own democratic principles.
Final Thoughts: When Security Becomes a Weapon of Words”
Securitisation theory helps us understand how the War on Terror was framed—but it doesn’t fully explain why. As Booth (1991) critiques, it misses the deeper power dynamics and the broader social terrain where these narratives take root. While it focuses on elite actors and formal declarations, it overlooks the everyday, ideological work that constructs threats through language and repetition (Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998).
That’s where post-structuralism steps in. With thinkers like Foucault (1980) and Derrida (2003), we understand that security isn’t just declared—it’s constructed. Through discourse, binaries, and the creation of the Islamic “Other,” the War on Terror became not just a policy, but a story—one that reshaped global politics, legitimised invasions, and normalised surveillance and Islamophobia (Hansen, 2017; Salama, 2011).
Of course, post-structuralism isn’t perfect. It tends to sideline material and geopolitical realities. But rather than invalidate it, this reveals the need for a layered approach. When we blend securitisation theory’s focus on political framing with post-structuralism’s critique of language and power, we uncover something more profound: Narratives, not just nations, define who the enemy is.
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