Abstract
Since the events of 11 September 2001 there has been a steady increase in the number of studies published that deal with the representation of Islam and Muslims in the media. These have adopted different approaches to the subject and all together provide a detailed and longitudinal overview of patterns of coverage. In the UK this has included Poole and Richardson (2006), Moore et al. (2008), Morey and Yaqin (2011) and Baker et al. (2013). Flood et al., in their extensive empirical study of television coverage of Islam and its relation to global security discourse, contribute further to this body of knowledge in four main ways. This includes the multidisciplinary and transnational, comparative approach, the focus on television and additionally, the authors’ rejection of polarized positions in debates which argue that representations are either realistic or purely Orientalist constructs.
Taking the last point first, the authors attribute negative representational practices not to ‘systematic prejudice’ (p. 2) but to the complexity of being caught up in institutional news practices (i.e. particular broadcasting cultures) and the influence of the wider global security discourse (including the reality of events to which they refer) that are further mediated within different national contexts (with their own histories, politics, models of integration, etc) which, they argue, leads to tensions and differences in representation.
The comparative aspect is European. The study is based on an audiovisual and verbal analysis of one daily flagship evening news programme from the national broadcasters in France (France 2), UK (BBC 1) and Russia (Channel 1) over a two-year period, November 2006–October 2008, a crucial time, the authors suggest, in the reporting of Islam within a global security discourse. This specific methodological approach, they argue, allowed them to identify the particularities of nationally specific and transnational ‘content, form and structure of Islam-related television news’ (p. 2) – a category ‘broadly defined to capture a wide range of associations and implications that different media producers may make’ (p. 4).
Using an interdisciplinary approach, emanating out of politics, history, media and cultural studies, allows the authors to capture the intersection between politics, discourse, religion and identity allegiance, and media production. Their reflection focuses on four dimensions: the comparative – coverage of the Islamic threat; the identity dimension – what this tells us about the relationship between news, constructions of nationhood and European identity; the media dimension – the relationship between media and the states within which they broadcast and the impact of this on representations; and the transnational dimension – the transnational flow of meanings and how these contribute to constructions of Islam.
The book is organized into two parts. Part 1, as well as outlining the political historical contexts of the countries under study (Chapter 1), provides the empirical data emanating from the news channels within these countries. Chapter 1 pays attention to their foreign and domestic policies, particularly towards Muslim majority states, the global war on terror and how they have managed Muslim minorities in relation to these. Subsequent chapters analyse the output of each country in turn, the UK, France and Russia, whilst cumulatively making comparisons from one chapter to the next. This section is clearly written, presenting the data on patterns of coverage, followed by an analysis of the significance of these, illustrating with examples and signposting correlations.
The study found, not surprisingly given the time period in which the research was conducted, the continuation of a security discourse around Islam. Based on a search of 30,846 news items, 2781 items of Islam-related news were identified. Similarities and differences in the reporting of this news are related to context. The BBC (News at 10) and France 2 (Journal de Vingt Heures) are similarly public service broadcasters (PSB) channels based on liberal democratic principles which, the authors argue, compromises their impartiality. Hence, particularly in the UK, the news reinforces consensus politics. Here the preoccupation was with security issues (both at home and abroad) from a standpoint of anxiety. The result being that there were more news items and time given over to Islam related news than in the other countries (UK – Islam related items 16.84%, percentage of time spent on Islam related news 19.47%, France 5.9% and 6%, and Russia 8.2% and 7%, respectively). Islam related news was more likely to be higher up the running order and included longer bulletins than the other channels (although these were predominantly shorter than other news items it carried). All channels showed a decline in coverage, although France’s reporting was more even over the time period. Part of the reason for this is attributed to the withdrawal from Iraq, in which the UK had a major interest, from which France was more distanced and Russia used to criticize western foreign policies (and therefore featured regularly until this point).
Prominent topics in the UK were Iraq (26.5%), terrorism (20.7%), Afghanistan (14.7%) and the Israel/Palestine conflict (10.5%). The authors argue that Britain’s adherence to conventional news values and national interests led to a predominantly conflictual framework of reporting unbalanced by alternative content (although this should not be interpreted as unquestioning coalescence to state policies), conveying a negative impression of relations with Muslims within the UK and elsewhere.
France’s position, behind Russia, in terms of the importance placed on Islam related news is explained by a more detached stance to the ‘threat’ of Islam (not a participant in the Iraq war). Whilst the same topics dominated, this was in a slightly different order with Israel and Palestine receiving more attention due to the connection to North African countries with ties to France. More attention was given to ‘dialogue with Islam’ than the other countries based on, it is argued, the broadcaster’s remit to ‘sustain all of France’s resident cultures and religions’ (p. 86).
Russia’s Vremia took the intermediate position on Islam related news. News on Islam mainly acted as a foil to criticize western foreign policy and hence the same subjects dominated alongside the central topic of the Caucasus, about events taking place in Russian republics with large Muslim populations. Vremia’s role as a national state broadcaster (NSB) meant it acted as a form of political communication for the Kremlin and hence featured not only conflict in these areas but the positive and successful initiatives of central government in the region. This channel is therefore framed as compliant and complicit in its approach but not as a form of explicit propaganda as demonstrated by the Nazi model. Here, Afghanistan features less highly. It is suggested that this may be due to more concurrence with the West on this issue plus some avoidance due to sensitivities relating to the recent historical relationship between Afghanistan and Russia.
Part II, comprising Chapters 5 to 8, adopts a more theoretical cultural approach to transnational analysis using a Bakhtinian model of representation and so pays attention to the performative aspects of discourse (what it does) as well as the constative (what it says). If, the authors argue, representation is about the generation of meaning and these meanings are in perpetual circulation (not static), in a comparative transnational study such as this, it is important to study flows of meaning within institutions and across territories (intercultural flow). This section uses case studies to demonstrate how this plays out in representations of Islam. Chapter 5 shows how European news has managed the rise of Islamic extremism whilst Chapter 6 examines patterns of representation through genre – identifying several genres of Islamist terror news reports. Chapter 7 uses different articulations of the global war on terror to demonstrate intercultural flow. Here, I use Chapter 8, the reporting of commemorations of September 11, to demonstrate the authors’ analysis of the relationship between the universal and particular in the presentation of these events.
The authors argue that it is in the dialogic interaction of the global and local that events are reconfigured. September 11 is therefore re-enacted (along with its universal, even supranational, tendencies regarding the war on terror) but is also reframed through specifics such as questioning policy in Iraq which displaces the universal tendency. Hence, the national self is constituted through post 9/11 narratives of the Other (the US and al Qaeda). Therefore, the global narrative of the war on terror was never simply replayed but designated as an ‘American’ war on terror cast through, and creating, an alternative War on Terror canon based on various and shifting systems of ‘affiliations and disaffiliations’ (p. 225). Some examples of this placing of a national specific issue into a universal context are, in France, coverage of al Qaeda’s infiltration into French speaking Algeria whilst Russia used 9/11 as a model for the sacralization of Beslan (school siege, 1 September 2004). In both instances these events are symbols of the war on terror and displace it at the same time:
First, the media struggle for proprietorship of the universality embodied in the 9/11 narrative is reflected in constant modulations, inversions, appropriations and re-appropriations, evaluations and re-evaluations characterising the universal/particular dynamic that drives the meaning-making process. (p. 239)
Whilst it is not new to suggest that the global is translated through local processes, the authors adopt a complex theoretical framework based on a multidisciplinary approach and extensive research to illustrate how these processes are articulated in relation to Islam-related news. The value of transnational, comparative analysis is to demonstrate how the universal is reconciled with the particular in a context where news is no longer a solely local product but a product of global flows. The analysis is acutely reflexive, avoiding assumptions at every turn, therefore providing a sophisticated examination for those who wish to push this field of study beyond current debates.