Resistance Fighters or Guerillas? Labeling ...

Whether a group is labeled as terrorists or freedom fighters depends on whom you ask and when you ask. This paper investigates the power of media labels to influence people’s perceptions, attitudes, and emotions towards the groups who were involved in the recent Iraq war. From 2003 through 2011 the Iraqi oppositional forces were labeled everything from terrorists, insurgents, guerillas, militants, Islamic extremists, resistance fights, to freedom fighters. The Los Angeles Times appreciated the power of these labels; they ordered their reporters to stop labeling the Iraqi oppositional forces as resistance fighters, instructing their reporters to instead label them as insurgents or guerillas. The current study, which was run prior to the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, investigates the relative power of these labels: resistance fighters vs. guerilllas. Results confirmed that the guerilla label produced diverging levels of support for the Iraqi oppositional forces depending on previously held views on the Iraq War, while the resistance fighter label helped to mask these preexisting differences.