Wednesday, April 21, 2010

My humble appeal

As I said in my first blog entry, the concern about how different subgroups within a society are treated has been growing in me steadily for some time now. Given that people are often treated according to the opinion others have of them, it is important to look at how this opinion is formed. I am not discovering America when I say we (at least in the "Western" world) live in the age of media, influence of which on our worldview has been well documented (Harris 28). Although it needs to be said we are not helpless victims of some kind of media propaganda - there are other factors that play a role in our socialization and worldview formation - the impact of the way media portray different groups within the society must not be underestimated. Hence the subject of my blog.

Since 2001, the year when I started to pay a closer attention to the media's obsession with the Muslim world, a lot has changed in this regard. The stories depicting Muslims as lunatic religious fundamentalist willing to blow themselves (and those around them) up in the name of their God seem to be appearing less frequently now than they did shortly after the attacks of 9/11. Yet, according to many analyses of U.S. media, Arabs (and by association Muslims) are still among the groups portrayed most derogatorily (Harris 76).

The purpose of my blog is not to analyze the individual stories where members of Islam appear in one role or another. Nor is it to develop theories about the possible agendas of the various media outlets who run these stories. What I am hoping to accomplish with this blog is to spark a discussion on this topic, to prompt the visitors of my website to perhaps think about the topic differently, to open their eyes and minds more widely to what they hear, see, and read in the media about Muslims and the Islamic faith in general, and to process this information more critically.

There is one more point I would like to make: by no means do I advocate a sheltering of any group from negative media coverage. In fact, I regard it as a natural product of the concept of free speech and by extension, free press. The answer to the problem of a more or less biased media content and delivery, which I call for in this blog, is an increase in public's media literacy. Blogs like this one can help to expose a certain issue that otherwise could go unnoticed or largely ignored by vast segments of the media audiences. Next step is then to for the audiences, that is for us, to assume a more active approach to the way we collect and interpret media messages. This entails not relying on a single source or a few sources, but multiple diverse sources of information, followed by a critical processing thereof. A passive consumption of carefully cooked up stories that are served to us by the media will not do if we do not want to fall prey to framing and/or other media devices affecting public opinion.

The question of media portrayal of Muslims is no different. On these pages you will keep finding links to relevant stories as they appear in various media outlets, most of the time supplemented with my comments. I too am not fully objective, nor do I claim to be. I intend this blog to be a little watchdog, a watchpuppy of mostly the mainstream media; a source against which you can compare your own observations about the topic. With that I conclude my today's entry, and am off to watch some news. See you soon!

Source:
Harris, Richard Jackson. A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication. Mahwah, N.J.:
     L. Erlbaum Associates, 2004. Print.

4 comments:

  1. Hey,
    It is nice of you that you want to defend muslims, but the way you do it simply will not do.Posting examples of negative muslim representation in the media is not an argument against negative muslim representation in the media. There is nothing wrong with negative representation as such and you fail to explain why the examples you give should not be happening.

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  2. Hi 21070, thank you for your comment. As I said in one of my other feedbacks, I do not argue that Muslims should not be shown in negative contexts at all - in fact, I have no problems with that if such a link is relevant and proven. I see the problem somewhere else: in inconsistency in media portrayals/reporting involving Muslim and non-Muslim villains. The former being identified by their faith which is often implicitely or explicitely linked to the violent action more frequently than the latter.

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  3. Hey, thx for your reply,
    now that we seem to be on the same page, let me explain what i meant. How do u decide if the link is relevant or proven? You cant just claim it to be irrelavant without any explanation or evidence.
    And even if the link was not proven, that still does not autoamticaly make it wrong to make that link. I think a bit of analyis would make you argument much stronger. 21070

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  4. Dear MLS, I think the Word could use more bloggers like you! Your posts, articles and videos show the mood towards Muslims that the media creates. I am personally not islamophobic, but that does not mean that such people aren’t out there. And why some people have negative or at least not positive connotations with Muslims, because of the media’s negative portrayals. I am not saying that they should be reported only in a positive way, but when they are portrayed negatively it should be justified. I really liked your input and comparisons to Christians… so true.

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