| Summary: | Terrorist attacks could have a lasting impact on both victims and witnesses, in the form of
heightened levels of distress and safety concerns. Affiliation with others has been noted to be
a basic coping response in the face of threatening, uncertain or stressful circumstances,
including terrorist attacks. Individuals higher in affiliation motivation are more likely to
partake in social activities, initiate social contact and establish warm and friendly relations
with others. Social media platforms such as Twitter have been frequently used as a means of
data collection with individuals increasingly leveraging on such media to communicate and
affiliate with others, as well as make sense of events. The current study thus aims to examine
if tweets gathered from a country more negatively impacted by terrorism would contain
higher levels of affiliation motivation compared to a country less affected by terrorism. A
total of 1,398 tweets were collected from four regions — Kabul and Istalif in Afghanistan, as
well as Tashkent and Dzhartash in Uzbekistan. Results suggest higher aggregate levels of
need for affiliation amongst Twitter users in Afghanistan compared to those in Uzbekistan.
Findings from this preliminary investigation are encouraging and reveal that affiliation
motive levels differ in countries differentially impacted by terrorism, which could be a
potentially useful insight for understanding post-attack recovery in communities most
affected by terrorism.
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