Why the news covers Western terror attacks more extensively than in other areas

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There are far more people in the UK who have relatives and friends in Western countries than those who have them in places like Syria or Nigeria. Therefore it is more relevant to the general population.

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There are far more people in the UK who have been to Western countries than Middle Eastern or African countries. Thus they feel a stronger connection with them.

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It's far more unexpected and shocking when a bomb goes off in a country which is generally very peaceful than it is when a bomb goes off in a country where one expects to hear incidents like this happening quite frequently.

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The implications of a terror attack happening in a peaceful country are generally much bigger. For example, a bomb going off in Syria has very little affect on the current political atmosphere. An Islamic terrorist attack in France or Belgium will likely cause a major rise in support of anti-immigration parties, at a time when millions of people are coming into Europe, and the EU is in disarray due to conflicting opinions about it.

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People in the UK feel more worried about attacks in the West because they feel if they can happen in a Western country, they are more likely to happen in our own.

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The Paris attacks were a direct attack on Western culture. They killed people at a rock concert, they attacked outside a stadium where a football match was being played, they gunned down people eating and drinking. ISIS hate Western culture and want to destroy it. Western people are generally interested in knowing when the culture they hold dear is being attacked.

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People feel a stronger connection with cultures that have values which are closer to their own. This is actually goes the core of how caring works. If we can't connect with something, we find it hard to care about it. If I told you that somewhere in the universe, an entire world full of intelligent life has just evaporated as it fell into a blackhole, you'd find it pretty impossible to care about it on an emotional level. It would very interesting, but I doubt you'd start crying about it. How much we feel connected to something is all important to how much we emotionally care about it.

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The news doesn't actually discriminate against non-Western countries. When that bomb went off in Bangkok last year, it got lots of coverage. But again, quite a lot of British people have been to Thailand; relatively few of them have been to Iraq. It's also a peaceful country, and quite a modern country which shares many values with our own. The news is simply interested in reporting what the highest number people are interested in; and people are interested stories they feel are more relevant to them.