Representation of islam and muslims in the british press
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Date
2016
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Publisher
university of Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
British media interests witnessed a turning point in the few last decades, whereby islam and muslims became a dart to direct its arrows through. This study attempts to confirm what is reported about the representation of Islam and muslims in the british media, that they are stigmatized and are confined to a specific rank of negative categories. Their representation becomes intensive in all types of media, especially when any local or global incident that involves Muslims takes place. The study seeks to detect a link between media coverage, in general and after a given event, with public's perception. These matters are to be achieved through analyzing one form of the british media, the print media. A headline analysis of different british newspapers is to be used to reveal their orientation towards Islam and muslims, and to identify the categories muslims are restricted to. Another headline analysis is utilized to examine coverage of Islam and muslims after the Paris attacks in two well known british newspapers, The sun and The Guardian, to conceive the changes that occurred on the representation. Representation of islam and muslims in the british press is extremely negative with different degrees depending on the newspaper, with being fixed to a set of unfavorable categories. After the Paris attacks, islam/muslim's coverage is more extreme in the extreme newspapers, and unexpectedly more positive in the liberal ones. The Paris attacks left behind a disturbing trauma on the muslim community in Britain, whereby anti-Muslim sentiments were/are heightened.
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Keywords
British media : representation islam, British media : representation muslims, British press