What is "terrorism"? What do we mean by describing an individual, a group, or an act as "terrorist"?

The most basic answer is that terrorism terrorizes, and thus any individual, group or act that causes others to feel terrified is terroristic in nature.

Such an answer is, of course, far too general to be of use, for then we would have to ask, for example, why the Charlie Hebdo deaths have been described in the media as caused by a "terror attack" while the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have not.

For, from a formalistic perspective, these deaths have much in common, including fear by others of being similarly attacked, social media campaigns organized to raise awareness about the issues underlying the deaths, and public protests to unite in defiance of the killers and what they represent.

So again, what is "terrorism" and why haven't the deaths of Brown and Garner been seen as "terroristic"?

Even if we use either the "orthodox" or "revisionist" definitions of terrorism provided by the just war theorist Jeff McMahan - terrorism is defined as an "intentional attack" as a "means of achieving political or ideological goals" against either "noncombatants" (orthodox) or against "those who have done nothing to make themselves liable to be harmed" (revisionist) - these definitions still seem to be applicable to both the deaths in Paris and to the deaths in Ferguson and New York.

The "goals" of the Charlie Hebdo killers have been discussed widely in the media, as focus on the prohibition against visually depicting the Prophet Mohammed. The killers of Brown and Garner have not been discussed in the media as having had any "goals" beyond those associated with policing, and thus the deaths of Brown and Garner have been seen not as "political or ideological," but rather as "tragic" - as the result of, at worst, "police brutality" or, at best, "the heat of the moment."

Yet from the perspective of people of colour, of those who see themselves as possibly ending up as the next Brown or the next Garner, policing is certainly "political or ideological" in nature, at least when it comes to policing people of colour. Hence, in much the same way that the social media campaign #JeSuisCharlie has been focused around the historical debates over whether Islam can be integrated into Western societies defined by free speech, the social media campaigns #BlackLivesMatter and #ICantBreathe have been focused around the historical debates over whether people of colour can be integrated into American societies defined by racism.

The answer then to the question of what is "terrorism" would appear to come down to who can be defined as "terrorist." In other words, from the perspective of the media, of those who define attacks and attackers as "terrorist" or not, the police simply are not - and cannot be - terrorists.

Religious extremists can be reduced to terrorists, to their effect on others, while their self-identity can be marginalized as irrelevant. Police extremists can be reduced instead to anomalies, to their statistical irregularity, while their effect on others can be marginalized as irrelevant. Both extremists can be seen as having in common a perverted understanding of what it means "to serve and protect," but the police can never be seen as terrorists. Police can terrorize, but police terror cannot be terrorism.

Likewise, it would appear that the answer involves another who - that is, who can be defined as "terrorized"? There are important parallels between the sudden appearance of military weapons and vehicles on the streets of Ferguson and the sudden appearance of military weapons and vehicles in the skies of Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, or any of the other battlegrounds in the "War on Terror."

As Nasser Hussain argues, the effect of drones policing the skies of these countries has been to terrorize the populace, and in particular the children, as they are made to feel that they are not only always being watched, but that they could be killed at any moment, resulting in a "fear and anxiety among civilians [that] is diffuse and chronic." Yet, the media does not report drone strikes from the perspective of those who bear witness to the strikes, and thus does not recognize that the people in these "terrorist" countries could themselves be victims of terror.

Similarly, the lack of media coverage of the recent attempted bombing of a chapter of the NAACP in Colorado Springs raised for many the question of whether people of colour could be identified as victims of terror, resulting in the social media campaign #NAACPbombing as an effort to fill the void created by the media ignoring what appeared to be - at least to everyone participating in the campaign - a terrorist attack. And given the timing between this attack and the attack in Paris, not to mention the enormous disparity in coverage between the two, this social media campaign quickly became about the question of why the Charlie Hebdo shooting was terrorism deserving worldwide media attention while the attempted NAACP bombing was neither terrorism nor deserving of even local media attention.

What we can learn from this situation is that, ultimately, the media not only plays a central role in defining "terrorism," but also in carrying out "terrorism." Terrorism is as much about the spectacle of the attack as it is about the attack itself, and thus terrorism requires an audience. One cannot terrorize if no one knows that they should be terrified. The blanket news coverage of terrorist attacks provides terrorists with both the spectacle and audience they need.

The role played by the media is most obvious in the coverage of the 9/11 attacks, as the perpetual reliving on every news channel and in every newspaper of the towers coming down, of people running for their lives, of first responders searching for survivors, kept the terror alive for days, weeks, and years after the actual attack. So long as these images were everywhere, terrorists did not need to appear anywhere. The media could sustain the terror without the terrorists.

Conversely, in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in the drone strikes in the Middle East and in the bombing of the NAACP, it is the lack of coverage by the media that helps to sustain the terror of these attacks. To be attacked and to be ignored is to be forced to realize the true meaning of the disparity between living and having one's life matter.

This is why #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter can never be equivalent statements and can instead only be perpetual mirrors for each other. The former is a call for the recognition that not all lives matter in the same way and to the same populations. The latter is instead the equivalent of a Hallmark card that says, "At least you have your health." In other words, the latter is a reminder of the privileged belief that to be alive is to matter and that to call attention to oneself must mean that one believes one's life matters more, while the former is a reminder of the terror of being surrounded both by persistent threats to one's life and by such privilege. To be alive does not matter as long as one's future is in the hands of another, for which reason there are fates worse than death, such as the diffuse and chronic fear and anxiety of never knowing if it is safe to leave one's house.

Terrorism thus has many forms, from religious extremism to police brutality, from drone war to rape cultures, but what they all have in common is the role of the media in defining their attacks and attackers as terroristic and their victims as terrorized. So what is "terrorism"? Ultimately, it appears to be simply whatever the media chooses to define as "terrorism" - which is in itself a terrifying idea.

Nolen Gertz is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University and author of The Philosophy of War and Exile.