The Framing of the Terrorist Threat in Health Contingency: Implications for Response

Abstract Terrorist attacks threaten the security of states and individuals, and often spur widespread state responses once they have occurred. Recent research has focused on health contingency in relation to terrorism and unveiled divergence in terms of how European countries approach this task. To understand more about this divergence, it is relevant to investigate how states define the issue of terrorism in contingency policies. The current study utilized theories of framing as part of policymaking and document analysis with a thematic analysis approach, to scrutinize to what extent terrorism was framed as a security issue in health contingency in relation to terrorist attacks in Norway and France, and how this affected policy outcomes. The analysis unveiled that a securitized frame was not prominent in the Norwegian approach to health contingency. In the French material, however, terrorism was described as a threat to national security. Second, terrorism response within the healthcare field was described as a form of “nonmilitary defense,” clearly positioning the healthcare system in the response to this national security threat. The framing of terrorism in policy documents was linked to diverging policy responses in the two countries. The most distinct difference is that victims of terrorism hold particular rights in France, but not in Norway. This entails that in France, the definition of terrorism, and whether specific events are defined as terrorism or not, in part become decisive for the help received.