Who is called a terrrorist? : An investigation of the use of the term terrorist

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate how the use of the words terrorist and terrorismhave changed from before 9/11 until today, and how it is being used presently, and finally ifthe use of the word is different depending on the ethnicity of the person who commits the act.The data for this study was gathered through articles published in The Guardian and SVTNyheter, and also through Google Ngram corpus and academic discourse. Google Ngramviewer is an online search engine that collects data about all the printed sources searched forbetween the years of 1500 and 2008.The study adopts a comparative approach which meansthat the articles with the most similar content, and only difference of ethnicity of the attackers,are being compared. The results suggest that there has indeed been a change in the use of theterm. Terrorism is today being used more frequently and as has been shown, commonly todescribe a person of Middle Eastern origin.