Major media outlets and community representatives are being urged to be more thoughtful about the language used to describe terrorism.
The Federal Attorney General Mark Dreyfus says if politicians and journalists aren't careful in the way they use language, they can unfairly malign whole sections of Australian society.
Research has shown in recent times this has been the case in particular for Australian Muslims.
And Mr Dreyfus says inadvertently, it could play into the hands of extremists who are out to recruit vulnerable youth.
Counter-terrorism experts warn that so-called home-grown terrorism presents one of the biggest terrorist threats to countries such as Australia.
The Attorney General Mark Dreyfus acknowledges it's a very real threat and points to the terrorist plans that have been foiled by Australian authorities in recent years which have led to the trials and convictions of 23 people.
As part of its counter-terrorism strategies, the federal government wants to work with the community to prevent young Australians being radicalised by extremists.
Mr Dreyfus says emphasising the critical role language can play is part of this effort.
"Well if you use language that creates the feeling of us and them, that divides the community, that makes particularly younger people or let's say young members of Muslim communities feel excluded that creates a fertile ground for those who would encourage them towards violent extremism, that's why it's very important we do find language that is inclusive not exclusive, that is not language that divides."
The Australian Multicultural Foundation has conducted a research project called the Lexicon of Terrorism.
Executive Director Hass Dellal says the research shows how language has been used to create an 'us and them' which has been to the detriment of Australia's Muslims.
"Research on the representation of Muslims in popular Australian media whether it's in relation to asylum seekers, youth gangs or crime or Middle Eastern affairs or war on terror, often note that Muslims have been characterised as non-members of the Australian community, sort of relegating them to a space of the other, sort of alien and foreign and incompatible with Australian cultural values so I think it's really trying to define that and trying to be accurate about how you describe a person."
Doctor Anne Aly from Curtin University has a specialist interest in public and policy responses to terrorism.
She says terrorism is a form of communication with terrorists relying on the media to promote their propaganda.
Anne Aly says there are arguments for and against the media describing a terrorist act as Islamic terrorism.
"One side is if you name it and name what it is then it's a lot easier to define and deal with it. That's one side of the coin. The other side of the coin or the other argument to is that is that when you label it Islamic terrorism because the terrorist recruiters themselves use religion as a way of justifying what they do in order to recruit people to the cause, then you are feeding in to what it is that they want."
Hass Dellal from the Australian Multicultural Foundation says the downside to this approach is that Islam too often gets equated with terrorism.
"There's been a sort of a wholesale branding of Islam as a terrorist and violent religion. You know, terrorism and Islam now are indelibly linked in the minds of many people."
Attorney General Mark Dreyfus says some of the media coverage of the recent murder of a British soldier in London is a case in point.
"What's important here is not to use Muslim as the defining characteristic when it's simply not. It would be far better to say someone who has committed an act of terror that they, for example, claimed to be acting in the name of Islam as, for example, the dreadful murder of the soldier outside the Woolwich barracks, the alleged perpetrator of that murder who stood there with bloodied hands in front of cameras claimed to act in the name of Islam and you have to report that fact because that's the claim that he made. But it's not necessary to say a Muslim terrorist in respect of that event."
Hass Dellal, who is also the deputy chairman of SBS, says this debate about language is about encouraging accuracy and context and not political correctness.
"A lot of these people proclaim themselves, they come out a say we are the Islamic jihadists of whatever group and we're doing this in the name of Islam, and that's what you report, that's what they're saying, that's what you report but also putting some context around it, because they've already put the context in the name of Islam, they're not doing it in the name of all Muslims and I think that's the distinction here."
Doctor Anne Aly from Curtin University agrees it's possible for journalists to add context so that Islam itself isn't maligned.
"So while the terrorists want to call it Islamic terrorism so that it appeals to a mass audience of Muslims, the media can challenge that by specifying that it is not Islamic terrorism per se but, for example, militant Islamist or militant jihadi terrorism so that could be something to look at that would, I think, address both sides of the argument."
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