Terror attacks carried out by Muslims receive more than five times as much media coverage as those carried out by non-Muslims in the United States, according to an academic study.

Analysis of coverage of all terrorist attacks in the US between 2011 and 2015 found there was a 449 per cent increase in media attention when the perpetrator was Muslim.

Muslims committed just 12.4 per cent of attacks during the period studied but received 41.4 per cent of news coverage, the survey found.

The authors said the finding suggests the media is making people disproportionately fearful of Muslim terrorists.

Scientists studied US newspaper coverage of every terrorist attack on American soil and counted up the total number of articles dedicated to each attack.

They found that the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, which was carried out by two Muslim attackers and killed three people, received almost 20 per cent of all coverage relating to US terror attacks in the five-year period.

In contrast, reporting of a 2012 massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that left six people dead and was carried out by Wade Michael Page – a white man, constituted just 3.8 per cent of coverage.

A mass shooting by Dylann Roof, who is also white, at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, killed nine people but received only 7.4 per cent of media coverage, while a 2014 attack by Frazier Glenn Miller on a Kansas synagogue left three dead but accounted for just 3.3 per cent of reports.

The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 10: Greece Greek Presidential Guards, or Evzones, take their place for a review by US President Barack Obama and his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos in Athens, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016. President Barack Obama arrived in Greece Monday morning on the first stop of his final foreign tour as president, the first visit to Greece by a sitting U.S. president since Bill Clinton in 1999 trip. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) AP The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 9: Denmark Shutterstock The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 8: Austalia The incident allegedly took place in a primary school in Sydney Getty Images The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 7: Sweden Ola Ericson/imagebank.sweden.se The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 6: Mexico People talk to relatives at a section of the wall separating Mexico and the United States, as photographed from Playas Tijuana, in Tijuana, Mexico, November 6, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. Reuters The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 5: Germany Afghan asylum seeker Shakira Sarwari, 27, and her two children, Mohammed, 17 months, and Setayesh, 7, are taken off a Munich-bound train in Salzburg, Austria, by German police Anthony Faiola/The Washington Post The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 4: Israel Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016. (Ronen Zvulun, Pool via AP) AP The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 3: US US police have shot 698 people in 2016 so far. Four times more black than white people have been shot Getty The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 2: France French policemen and security officers stand guard at the entrance of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on November 12, 2016, a few hours before the reopening concert by British musician Sting to mark the first anniversary of the November 13 Paris attacks. Rock star Sting reopens the Bataclan on November 12, the revered Paris concert hall where jihadists massacred 90 people, with a hugely symbolic show to mark the first anniversary of France's bloodiest terror attacks. Scores of survivors of the Bataclan assault -- the worst of the gun and suicide attacks across the city that night which left 130 dead -- will attend the concert, the dominant event in a weekend of otherwise low-key commemorations. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE LOPEZPHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images Getty The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 1: Turkey AP

All of the above attacks are considered to meet widely-used definitions of terrorism, according to researchers at Georgia State University.

The authors said their finding debunked Donald Trump’s suggestion, made in February, that the media is not reporting terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims.

“When President Trump asserted that the media does not cover some terrorist attacks enough, it turns out that he was correct,” they wrote. “However, his assertion that attacks by Muslim perpetrators received less coverage is unsubstantiated.

“Regardless of other factors, attacks perpetrated by Muslims receive a disproportionate amount of media coverage. In the present data, Muslims perpetrated 12.4 per cent of the attacks yet received 41.4 per cent of the news coverage.

“Whether the disproportionate coverage is a conscious decision on the part of journalists or not, this stereotyping reinforces cultural narratives about what and who should be feared.