Islamist terrorist attacks have become a salient threat to Western countries, and news coverage about such crimes is a key predictor of public emotional reactions and policy support. We examine the effects of two key characteristics of terrorism news coverage: (1) the victim’s religion and (2) first-person narratives that facilitate perspective taking. A quota-based experiment (N = 354) revealed that irrespective of the narrative type, news reports that mention the victims’ Muslim religion induce less anger and compassion, but more joy among non-Muslim news consumers. However, fear was equally induced by all news articles. As a consequence, fear, anger, and joy predicted support for more restrictive terrorism policies, while anger and compassion were related to more support for victim compensation.

伊斯兰恐怖袭击已成为对西方国家的重要威胁，有关此类犯罪的新闻报道是公众情绪反应和政策支持的关键指标。我们研究了恐怖主义新闻报道的两个关键特征的影响：（1）受害人的宗教信仰；（2）有助于观点理解的第一人称叙述。一项基于配额的实验（N  = 354）表明，无论是哪种叙事形式，提及受害者的穆斯林宗教的新闻报道都减少了愤怒和同情心，但在非穆斯林新闻消费者中却带来了更多的欢乐。但是，所有新闻文章同样引起了恐惧。结果，恐惧，愤怒和喜悦预示着人们将支持更严格的恐怖主义政策，而愤怒和同情心则与对受害者补偿的更多支持有关。