Analysis Critical Perspectives: Media Notes: Islam -

Critical Perspectives: Islam - 

Definitions:

• Hegemony: The values of one social group being enforced upon another.
• Mediation: Intervention in a dispute in order to resolve it (influenced by social, economic, political and other factors).
• Representation: The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way by the mass media. 
• Collective Identity: A social group who shares a set of norms and values. 
• Orientalism (Edward Said): A way of seeing that exaggerates and or distorts differences of people from the orient cultures to that of Europe and the USA. Oriental people are assumed to be exotic, backward, uncivilised and possibly dangerous. 
• Demonisation: The process of making someone or something the demon/ villain of a story or situation. 
• Hypodermic Syringe Model: Passive audiences receive daily does of media controlling their perspectives.
• Decoding Approach: Active audiences can decode their own messages from the media.
  Uses and Gratification Approach: Active audiences use the media for their own needs which include: Entertainment, Information, Socialisation, Identity.
• Monolithic: Large and slow to change.
• Bloc: A group of countries or political parties with common interests who have formed an alliance.
• Encoding: The intended message.
• Decoding: The message that can be inferred. 

Examples:

• Hegemony: Rupert Murdoch owned newspapers enforcing biased political beliefs. Altering the media to ensure it agrees with their personal beliefs/ a vested interest. 
• Mediation: Political policies, Theresa May's new grammar school policy. 
• Representation: Fold devils of Islamic culture post 9/11.

Notes - 

Orientalism: Edward Said:

• A society in which Muslim lives are apparently not as important as lives of other Europeans, Americans (The Occident).
• Sees Muslims as uncivilized and inherently violent.
• Societies in West are being socialized believing that Islam is inferior, savage and irrational system of beliefs, with extremist followers more then ready to kill in the name of their God. 
• Post-colonialism explains demonization of Islam with concepts of orientalism, imperialism and (neo)colonialism. 
• West needed justification for subordination of East, thus depictions of Orient as inferior, undeveloped and uncivilised. 
• These inaccurate and Eurocentric cultural representations have persisted and developed into stereotypes we are very familiar with today and represent an important foundation of current conflicts in western societies as well as around the world. 
• Demonisation of Islam serves the imperialistic ambitions of political elites in West, which act on behalf of capitalist greed and multinational businesses.

Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims and Islamphobia: Head 2014:

The report identified eight patterns of behaviour that characterise Islamophobic attitudes: 

• “Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.” 
• “It is seen as a separate ‘other’. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them. 
• “It is seen as inferior to the west. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.” 
• “It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supporting of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilisations.” 
• “It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.” 
• “Criticisms made of ‘the west’ by Muslims are rejected out of hand.” 
• “Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.” 
• “Anti- Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal”.

Laws on Burkhinis and Islam Clothing:

• Dutch "Burqa Ban" now employed in France and Belgium.
• 2016 Burkhini removal on French beach.

Other:

• Nigerian Muslim converts who killed military Lee Rigby. 
• http://harvardpolitics.com/world/portrayals-violence-abroad-dehumanization-home/

The Sun Representation - 

The favoured UK newspaper, which plays a large role in hegemony of the people via the hypodermic syringe model, holds biased views that are in kinship to the ideologies of "Orinetalism" as theorised by Edward Said. These views present Muslim people as possibly dangerous due to their "sympathies" with a terrorist group. The Muslim people belong to a collective identity due to their culture although Islam is significantly different from terrorist organisations such as the Jihadi's. This newspaper is trying to create a moral panic by using the public's manipulated answers to demonise fellow Muslims. For instance, the questions themselves fail to mention the terrorist organisation of the "Jihadi's" featured in the headline; the questions were deliberately ambiguous to mislead the misconstrue the inserts to the mass public who then form an opinion the same as that of the newspaper due to their position as a passive audience. Additionally, the word "fighters" could be an organisation against terrorist groups but this is not even addressed within the newspaper article. Furthermore, the statistics were rounded up to make a more impacting headline to influence the people. Additionally, the meaning of the word sympathy could have been interpreted differently by each individual involved in the phone interview and therefore the idea of sympathy for fighters could vary hugely. To further this,  whilst the statistics for Muslims were 1 in 5 the same test was conducted with non-Muslims who showed sympathy 1 in 7 times. The mediation of this newspaper was sensationalised to express a specific viewpoint that matched the bias of the newspaper owner. 

Media Interpretation/ Representation of Islam - 

Muslim Women in Media - 

Charlie Hebdo - 

These images are extremely offensive, even though they are considered satire, due to their nature of going beyond dark humour and simply being disgusting in what they believe is entertainment. The original photograph of the drowned child refugee, Aylan Kurdi, off the coast of Greece was allowed on newspapers because it served as a potent reminder of the ever occurring issue of deaths caused by unsafe journey's to Europe as a result of the difficulties of home countries. The satire is lost and becomes instead an insult to refugees through the photograph of a dead child who died trying to reach Greece and therefore safety. However, the only justification that I can give this image is the subtle criticism of the western world in its unsympathetic cause, simply watching on as people struggle for their lives thinking little more than about our capitalist society and what we shall have for lunch or how we can save money. Furthermore, the Charlie Hebdo company was later attacked after a cartoon about the Prophet Muhammad. 

The second image, the translation being "Proof that Europe is Christian", "Christians walk on water - Muslim children drown".  This one appears less directly critical of the West's handling of the refugee crisis and instead from even more of a racist standpoint. This image is difficult because it appears to be placing one religion against another culture and therefore more implicitly saying that the Christian religion, much like the medieval ideas, is considered superior and the one true religion compared to Islam. The encoded message may have been a political statement about the handling of refugees but it can more easily be decoded as racism and Islamphobia which is evidenced by the protests of the public in response to these cartoons; any attempted mediation by the company was lost and, if not intended to be, appears anti-Muslim. This could be linked to Edward Said's theory of Orientalism where the need to assert Western values over others has led to depictions of the Asian countries and people as less developed or even as uncivilised and able to understand the norms and values of another culture. 

The Mediation of Islam

http://harvardpolitics.com/world/portrayals-violence-abroad-dehumanization-home/

The issues of media is that mediation in subjects is often one sided and biased; the few media owners decided which information they wish to pass on to the masses so that they can instead remains to inject them directly with a hypodermic syringe of their own morals to create a society that are practically clones. However, some of the masses can take matters into their own hands, with access to the internet, more information can be shared freely. The Charlie Hebdo attack was widely published as international news, the attack was considered a terrorist attack and many vigils and campaigns took place soon after; one of these being the "Je Suis Charlie" campaign. However, the reporting of the death of three young Muslims in a white terror attack was kept quite by a media which did not want their belief systems challenged. Most owners of the media are white middle to upper class males and therefore would not want information condemning their collective identity shared whilst that is intact what they do with every other social group within society. 

However, the only justification for the covering of these attacks could be the death count. The Charlie Hebdo attack resulted in 12 casualties whilst the Chapel Hill attack resulted in 3. Once again, though this brings about the question of the value of Muslim lives matter, Black lives matter and other ethnic minority groups. Campaigns such as #blacklivesmatter and #muslimlivesmatter have been vital in bringing a new discussion of otherwise unreported media events as it is a media institute of the masses rather than the few. 

Islam Post 9/11 - 

Facts:

• As of 2010, Christianity was by far the world's largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth. 
• Islam was second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23% of the global population.

Muslims Have Six Main Beliefs:

• Belief in Allah as the one and only God
• Belief in angels
• Belief in the holy books
• Belief in the Prophets
• Belief in the Day of Judgment
• Belief in Predestination

Dr Chris Allen Research:

• 4% of the British public claim that they know 'nothing or next to nothing about Islam’ 
• 64% of the British public claim that what they do know is ‘acquired through the media’
• Research from 2006 suggests that the press coverage relating to Muslims and Islam in British National newspapers had increased by approximately 270% over preceding decade 
• 91% of that coverage was deemed negative 
• 84% of press coverage represented Islam and Muslims either as ‘likely to cause damage or danger’ or as ‘operating in a time of intense difficulty or danger’