Terrorism – en begreppshistorisk analys

Sammanfattning: This conceptual-historical study examines the term terrorism and different variations of the word in the Swedish and Italian press between 1870 and 1960. The basis of the study is the research conducted in the field of terrorism in Sweden and internationally. The theoretical basis and inspiration for the study has been Reinhardt Koselleck and his theoretical and methodological ideas around conceptual history research. Koselleck's research on the term ”revolution” has also been used as a comparison. The practical methods used is a combination of remote reading and close reading. By searching the Kungliga Bibliotekets newspaper database and the italian daily newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Stampa, and then statistically processing and analysing the frequency and use of the word, an understanding of the change in the usage and meanings of the term has been acquired. By closely reading more than 300 articles throughout the period, a deeper knowledge of how the term and its usage in various social situation has been gained. This investigation shows that Koselleck's ideas on the democratisation, temporalisation, ideologisation and politicisation of concepts are applicable to the present study area and to different time periods. The study claims that the concept of terrorism was growing in usage in the Swedish press earlier than previous research have shown and that the concept early on had many different meanings in a wide range of social situations. The study also shows that the term terrorism has been used when there is some form of conflict between individuals, groups or nations, but not allways linked to violence. We also see how strong ideologically a term can be and its close link to the sender's opinion (or intention) about a particular event or process. The knowledge of the concept of terrorism could be further developed, for example by more detailed close reading of newspapers for a shorter period of time and/or more extensive sampling and statistical processing of the data.