Islamophobia in non-Western media: A content analysis of selected online newspapers

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Isyaku Hassan ◽  
Mohd Nazri Latiff Azmi
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
Negative Tone ◽  
Conflict Frames ◽  
Western Media

This study explores the reproduction of Islamophobia in selected non-Western online newspapers: Nigeria’s Punch and Vanguard and Malaysia’s The Star and New Straits Times. News articles (n = 599) focusing on Islam were collected using internet-based search and content analyzed. Selected newspapers tended to reproduce Islamophobia through conflict frames, negative tone and terms in negative contexts, so non-Western, not only Western, news media portray a negative image of Islam.

scholarly journals Investigating the Use of Language in Islam-related News: Evidence from Selected Non-Western Online Newspapers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isyaku Hassan ◽  
Mohd Nazri Latiff Azmi ◽  
Aliyu Abdullahi
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Sensitivity Training ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
Exchange Program ◽  
The Media ◽  
Negative Tone

The manner in which language is utilized in reporting Islam is disheartening. This is because sensationalized language, especially in the news media, could reinforce negative stereotypes. As such, those who rely on the media to understand Islam are likely to develop negative preconceptions about the religion. This study aims to investigate how the non-western online newspapers use language in news coverage of Islam. Content analysis was used to collect and analyze the data. Using purposive sampling, Punch and Vanguard were selected from Nigeria while The Star and New Straits Times were selected from Malaysia. A total of 599 Islam-related news articles were collected from the selected newspapers using internet-based search from November 2015 until September 2016. The findings showed that almost half of the overall Islam-related articles conveyed negative tone toward Islam while very few conveyed positive tone. This shows that the language used in news coverage of Islam is inappropriate and sensational. Hence, there is a need to enhance the reporters’ knowledge and writing skills through inter-media exchange program, exposure to different religious, social and cultural lives, workshops, seminars, conferences, as well as sensitivity training and retraining on reporting religions.

The coverage of Africa in Ghanaian newspapers: The dominant Western voice in the continent’s coverage

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 146488491988731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Negative Tone ◽  
Western Media ◽  
Ethnographic Content Analysis

A growing literature has emerged that is contesting the validity of Africa’s negative Western media representation as a myth and empirically non-existent. This article examines how four national newspapers in Ghana reported the continent. About 13,228 corpus belonging to these top four national newspapers, over a period of 2 years, were quantitatively examined for sources utilised. Based on a 2-week constructed sampling technique, 180 articles reporting Africa were further analysed for the subjects and tone of the coverage, and the dominant themes of representation. The ethnographic content analysis revealed that the coverage of the continent in these newspapers is dominated by themes of war, crime, killings, crises, terrorism and omission of progress. The African story was mostly narrated through the subject of politics and with a predominantly negative tone. I argue that the continent’s negative proxy self-coverage confirms the evasive spread of Afro-pessimism considering that Western global news organisations accounted for over 80 per cent of the reportage as sources.

South African newspaper coverage of COVID-19: A content analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herman Wasserman ◽  
Wallace Chuma ◽  
Tanja Bosch ◽  
Chikezie E. Uzuegbunam ◽  
Rachel Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
English Language ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Front Page ◽  
News Stories ◽  
African Media ◽  
Negative Tone

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led to unprecedented media coverage globally and in South Africa where, at the time of writing, over 20,000 people had died from the virus. This article explores how mainstream print media covered the COVID-19 pandemic during this time of crisis. The news media play a key role in keeping the public informed during such health crises and potentially shape citizens’ perceptions of the pandemic. Drawing on a content analysis of 681 front-page news stories across eleven English-language publications, we found that nearly half of the stories used an alarmist narrative, more than half of the stories had a negative tone, and most publications reported in an episodic rather than thematic manner. Most of the stories focused on impacts of the pandemic and included high levels of sensationalism. In addition, despite the alarmist and negative nature of the reporting, most of the front-page reports did not provide information about ways to limit the spread of the virus or attempt to counter misinformation about the pandemic, raising key issues about the roles and responsibilities of the South African media during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study shows that South African newspaper coverage of COVID-19 was largely negative, possibly to attract audience attention and increase market share, but that this alarmist coverage left little possibility for citizens’ individual agency and self-efficacy in navigating the pandemic.

scholarly journals The Portrayal of Muslim Women in Western Media. A Content Analysis of the New York Times and The Guardian

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faiswal Kasirye
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Framing Theory ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
The Guardian ◽  
Western Media

<p>Women in general have been marginalized and represented with all sorts of images in the media. Specifically, when it comes to how muslim women are pictured especially in the western media, there have been different portrayals that researchers have come across during their multitudes of research studies. The present study is another addition to the already available literature on how muslim women are portrayed in the western media by content analyzing the portrayals in the New York times and the Guardian of the United Kingdom. In particular, the study seeks to examine the ways in which Muslim Women are portrayed in the New York Times and the Guardian’s news coverage as well as determining the frames that the two news organizations use in portraying Muslim women in coverage of their news stories regarding their affairs. The study adopted a qualitative content analysis and uses the framing theory to guide the discovery of the findings. 49 stories portraying muslim women in the different ways were discovered after perusing through the two online news organizations. The findings of the study indicate that muslim women in the two sampled news media are portrayed as terrorists specifically because of their dress code where on several occasions the news organizations refer to them as Al-Qaida’s and extremists in the way they practice their religion. Therefore, the major portrayal of muslim women lies on the negative aspects that are reported in the organization’s media stories. In addition, among the dominant themes in the two news media regarding the way the frame their stories while reporting on muslim women include being financially oppressed, terrorists, extremists, un educated, house wives and sexual objects for men. In the end, framing theory is also supported in the study.</p>

scholarly journals A Pragmatic Analysis of Islam-related Terminologies in Selected Eastern and Western

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zein Bani Younes ◽  
Isyaku Hassan ◽  
Mohd Nazri Latiff Azmi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Arab World ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Al Jazeera ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Guardian ◽  
Western Media

The mass media are blamed for constructing a negative image of Islam through the use of Islam-related terms in reporting terrorism. It is presumed that when Islam-related terms are used without regard to their original connotations, they are likely to lose their original meanings and begin to take on altered meanings created by the media. Therefore, this study aims to explore the use of Islam-related terminologies in selected eastern and western mass media outlets in relation to their semantic and linguistic interpretations. The study employed a qualitative approach in which content analysis was used. Using purposive sampling, The Jordan Times and Al-Jazeera were chosen from the eastern Arab world while The BBC and The Guardian were chosen from the western media. total of 368 news articles focusing on Islam and Muslims were collected from the selected news media outlets using internet-based search from March 2018 until October 2019. The findings showed significant differences (P = 0.000/P &lt; 0.05) exist between the selected eastern and western mass media outlets in using Islam-related terminologies. The terms are used more frequently in the western media outlets than in the eastern media outlets. Further analysis of the findings revealed that the selected media outlets use Islam-related terminologies, such as “Islamist” and “Jihadist”, in negative contexts. The use of Islam-related terminologies in the selected media outlets could be influential in making the audience to perceive Islam as a religion of terrorism. The negative use of Islam-related terms could be minimized through training of journalists on news coverage of religion, provision of proper guidelines on religious reporting and ensuring that these guidelines are strictly followed. It was envisaged that this study would be useful to the media outlets, particularly in the process of news gathering, production, and dissemination.

scholarly journals Dementia in Media Coverage: A Comparative Analysis of Two Online Newspapers across Time

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (19) ◽  
pp. 10539
Author(s):  
Atiqur sm-Rahman ◽  
Chih Hung Lo ◽  
Yasmin Jahan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Online News ◽  
Social Perceptions ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
Negative Tone ◽  
Insight Into

The news media, specifically online newspapers, is one of the powerful transmitters of discourse due to its rapid accessibility that contributes to social beliefs and attitudes that often shape our perceptions on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The media portrayal of dementia is largely heterogeneous, but there is certainly an association between the influence of online news coverage and the social perceptions of dementia that need to be understood more broadly. In this study, we examined the portrayal of dementia in two online newspapers (The New York Times and The Guardian) that might have an influence on dementia discourse by comparing the content and form of the news coverage on dementia across time. This study was guided by three interconnected theoretical understandings: cultivation theory, agenda-setting theory, and spiral of silence theory. A total of 291 published articles featuring dementia from 2014 to 2019 were included in this study and a content analysis of the articles provided insight into the dementia-related news coverage. Our results showed that both newspapers have a decreasing trend in publishing articles related to dementia over time. In addition, dementia-related (modifiable) risk factors as principal news content was significantly associated with the year of publication. Despite a weak association between story categories and newspapers, the majority of articles reported preventive measures as the main story category. Although both newspapers featured more articles with a less negative tone across time when reporting on dementia, derogative wording, as discourse, was commonly used to address the illness. We have provided some insight into understanding how online newspapers potentially affect subjective representations of dementia as well as perpetuate dementia discourse. Finally, we suggest that future study may benefit from establishing a linkage between the depiction of dementia in online newspapers and the contextualization of dementia within cultures.

scholarly journals MEMAHAMI HEGEMONI MEDIA MASSA BARAT DAN STRATEGI PEMBERITAAN TERHADAP DUNIA ISLAM

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Nurdin Nurdin
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Media Ownership ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Muslim People ◽  
False Report ◽  
Online Sources ◽  
Western Media

Western mass media is considered unfair and subjective in delivering news.  Instead previous studies show that those western mass media have unfairly broadcasted news related Muslim people, limited studies have been carried out to show how those media broadcast the news and who control those media. This study, therefore, tries to understand how western media broadcast news related Muslim people and who control those media. This study employed content analysis in which the data was gathered from online sources and scholar journals. The findings show that western media use some strategies in broadcasting news such as making early claims during broadcasting, present false report and negative image, and use unproper language. The conclusion is that unfair news broadcasting related Muslim countries could be happened due to Jews domination in western mass media ownership and management.  The limitation of this studi is that the data was merely gathered from online sources. Future research need to be carried out within broader context by involving journalists and communities.

scholarly journals The Portrayal of Muslim Women in Western Media. A Content Analysis of the New York Times and The Guardian

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faiswal Kasirye
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Framing Theory ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
The Guardian ◽  
Western Media

<p>Women in general have been marginalized and represented with all sorts of images in the media. Specifically, when it comes to how muslim women are pictured especially in the western media, there have been different portrayals that researchers have come across during their multitudes of research studies. The present study is another addition to the already available literature on how muslim women are portrayed in the western media by content analyzing the portrayals in the New York times and the Guardian of the United Kingdom. In particular, the study seeks to examine the ways in which Muslim Women are portrayed in the New York Times and the Guardian’s news coverage as well as determining the frames that the two news organizations use in portraying Muslim women in coverage of their news stories regarding their affairs. The study adopted a qualitative content analysis and uses the framing theory to guide the discovery of the findings. 49 stories portraying muslim women in the different ways were discovered after perusing through the two online news organizations. The findings of the study indicate that muslim women in the two sampled news media are portrayed as terrorists specifically because of their dress code where on several occasions the news organizations refer to them as Al-Qaida’s and extremists in the way they practice their religion. Therefore, the major portrayal of muslim women lies on the negative aspects that are reported in the organization’s media stories. In addition, among the dominant themes in the two news media regarding the way the frame their stories while reporting on muslim women include being financially oppressed, terrorists, extremists, un educated, house wives and sexual objects for men. In the end, framing theory is also supported in the study.</p>

The Portrayal of Islam and Muslims in Western Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Cultura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Saman REZAEI ◽  
Kamyar KOBARI ◽  
Ali SALAMI
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Global Village ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Western Media

With the realization of the promised global village, media, particularly online newspapers, play a significant role in delivering news to the world. However, such means of news circulation can propagate different ideologies in line with the dominant power. This, coupled with the emergence of so-called Islamic terrorist groups, has turned the focus largely on Islam and Muslims. This study attempts to shed light on the image of Islam being portrayed in Western societies through a Critical Discourse Analysis approach. To this end, a number of headlines about Islam or Muslims have been randomly culled from three leading newspapers in Western print media namely The Guardian, The Independent and The New York Times (2015). This study utilizes “ideological square” notion of Van Dijk characterized by “positive presentation” of selves and “negative presentation” of others alongside his socio-cognitive approach. Moreover, this study will take the linguistic discourses introduced by Van Leeuwen regarding “representing social actors and social practices” into consideration. The findings can be employed to unravel the mystery behind the concept of “Islamophobia” in Western societies. Besides, it can reveal how specific lexical items, as well as grammatical structures are being employed by Western media to distort the notion of impartiality.

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