Collective sense-making in times of crisis: Connecting terror management theory with Twitter user reactions to the Berlin terrorist attack

Recent terrorist attacks have increased the need to examine the public's response to such threats. This study focuses on the content of Twitter messages related to the 2016 terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market. We complement the collective sense-making perspective with the terror management theory (TMT) perspective to understand why people used Twitter in the aftermath of the attack. We use structural topic modeling to analyze our...