The official definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d) is as follows:
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetuated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
Components of this government definition are seen throughout the academic literature on the subject of terrorism. These definitions range from the limited to the all inclusive. In a questionnaire sent out to leading terrorism scholars by Alex Schmid, the following responses were given to the question "Whose definition of terrorism do you find adequate for your purpose?"
| Authors Mentioned | Number of Citations |
| There is no adequate definition |
10 |
| My own definition is adequate |
9 |
| No answer |
5 |
| Walter |
4 |
| Thornton |
3 |
| Crenshaw (Hutchinson) |
3 |
| Wilkinson |
3 |
| Jenkins (& Johnson) |
3 |
| U.S. Nation Advisory Committee Justice |
3 |
| (Name on submitted original was illegible.) |
2 |
Table 1123
Several of the more popular definitions of terrorism are quoted below in order to show the common thread of violence and political intent in the academic definitions of terrorism.
Terror is a symbolic act designed to influence political behavior by extranormal means, entailing the use or threat of violence.124
. . .the use or threat of use, of anxiety-inducing extranormal violence for political purposes by any individual or group, whether acting for or in opposition to established governmental authority, when such action is intended to influence the attitudes and behavior of a target group wider than the immediate victims and when, through the nationality or foreign ties of its perpetrators, its location, the nature of its institutional or human victims, or the mechanism of its resolution, its ramifications transcend national boundaries.125
. . .terrorism- the attack on an individual to frighten and coerce a large number of others- is as old as civilization itself. It is the recourse of a minority or even of a single dissident frustrated by the inability to make society shift in the desired direction by what that society regards as 'legitimate' means. It is primarily an attack on the rule of law, aimed either to destroy it or (as in more recent times) to change it radically to conform to the terrorist's idea of society. (. . .)Terrorism is not precisely the same as violence, to coerce governments, authorities or populations by inducing fear. Television has enormously expanded their ability to do so.126
Terrorism is a method of combat in which random or symbolic victims serve as instrumental targets of violence. These instrumental victims share group or class characteristics which form the basis for their selection for victimization. Through previous use of violence or the credible threat of violence other members of that group or class or put in a state of chronic fear (terror). This group or class, whose members' sense of security is purposively undermined, is the target of terror. The victimization of the target of violence is considered extranormal by most observers from the witnessing audience on the basis of its atrocity. The time (e.g. peacetime) or place (not a battlefield) of victimization or the disregard for rules of combat accepted in conventional warfare. The norm violation creates an attentive audience beyond the target of terror; sectors of this audience might in turn form the main object of manipulation. The purpose of this indirect method of combat is either to immobilize the target of terror in order to produce disorientation and/or compliance, or to mobilize secondary targets of demands (e.g. a government) or targets of attention (e.g. public opinion) to changes of attitude or behavior favoring the short or long-term interests of the users of this method of combat.127