Why Public Views of Terrorism Don’t Match the Evidence, and What the Government Needs to Do to Keep People Safe
Similarly, 47.3% of Christian respondents felt more concerned about terrorist threats than in previous years. Just 27.9% of Muslim respondents and 29% of Sikh respondents said they felt more concerned about terrorism threats than a few years earlier.
Muslim (48.3%) and Sikh (44.7%) respondents largely felt less concerned about terrorism in 2022 compared to a few years earlier. A lower proportion of Jewish (22.4%) and Christian (33%) respondents felt less concerned about terrorism in 2022.
We need to better understand how these perceptions and differences in concerns have formed. They may be connected to societal polarization, and with different approaches and reactions to counter-terrorism measures.
Responding to Terrorism
These findings matter for how governments respond to, and prepare the public for, terror threats.
UK government counter-terrorism policy has recently come under scrutiny. A report by the independent commission for counter-terrorism law, published in November 2025, called for substantial changes to the current system. This included recommendations for a narrower definition of terrorism and an overhaul of the Prevent Duty, which requires public bodies to identify and report signs of radicalization.
The government’s national security strategy has also been criticized by the UK Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation for not taking online terror threats seriously enough.
One of the ways that governments respond to terror threats is through information campaigns intended to alert and educate the public on the current nature of threat. And yet, our data shows that public awareness of such campaigns is worryingly low – 83.5% of respondents aren’t aware of them at all. That rate declines further for those aged 50 and over.
Those who said they are aware of counter-terrorism information campaigns largely failed to recall what these campaigns actually are. Their answers gave incomplete, wrong or conflated campaign names and slogans.
One might wonder if multiple campaigns – Run, Hide, Tell (2015-onwards); See it, Say it, Sorted (2016-onwards); Action Counters Terrorism (2017-onwards) – have actually produced confusion rather than clarity among the public over the nature of terror threat and what to watch out for. Equally, they may have become such a ubiquitous background in our cities, that people are now paying little attention.
It is essential to address these misalignments between public understanding of terrorism and the current evidence. The public needs clear, easy to remember, and updated information about current threats. Without this, people will struggle to recognize current threats and attune their instincts on how to react to them correctly.
And, while the messaging needs to be coherent, attention needs to be paid to the evident diversity of experiences and views about threat and security measures. Given our findings on how different demographic groups perceive terrorism, the recent call for equality impact assessments of counter-terrorism measures is a timely one indeed.
Sara Fregonese is Associate Professor of political geography, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, University of Birmingham. Paul Simpson is Associate Head of School, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Plymouth. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
