Adrian Hänni, born 1980, is a doctoral student at the Institute of Social and Economic History at Zurich University. He has studied general history, economics and political philosophy in Zurich. He wrote his thesis about terrorism discourse during the first term of Ronald Reagan. Currently, the author is doing research on the discursive construction of the terrorist threat in the United States from 1886 to 1986. His research interests include present history and in particular that of news services.