Abstract
In this book, Baker, Gabrielatos, and McEnery seek to benefit from the large sets of data that can be explored with corpus techniques to provide a thorough examination of how Muslims and Islam are portrayed in the British press. The Introduction to the volume describes how, although other studies have focused on Islam and the media, this project is distinguished by the wide scope of its coverage, employing a corpus of 140 million words to explore the development of the representation of Islam in the British printed media over time. Both the multidisciplinary approach, combining techniques from corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, and a thorough commitment to self-reflexivity seek to safeguard the objectivity of their examination of this controversial topic.
In Chapter 2, ‘Sketching Muslims: the big picture’, the authors use the online tool Sketch Engine to describe the common contexts in which terms such as ‘Muslim’, ‘Islam’, or ‘Islamic’ appear. This large-scale analysis of collocational and grammatical behavior sheds light, for example, on the actions Muslims are typically held responsible for and the contexts in which Islam is discussed. Chapter 3, ‘Muslim or Moslem? Differences between newspapers’, contrasts the coverage of popular and quality newspapers. The authors discuss each of the sampled newspapers individually, pointing out both explicit and more subtle forms of bias. For example, the Daily Mail has insisted on using the word ‘Moslem’ rather than ‘Muslim’ despite opposition from the Muslim Council of Britain. This insistence on such problematic spelling is interpreted by the authors as unwillingness to cooperate.
Chapter 4, ‘The 9/11 effect: change over time’, traces how the portrayal of Muslims and Islam has changed over time, from 1998 to 2009. Two important findings are the tendency of British newspapers to increasingly personalize stories, focusing on Muslims rather than Islam, and the increased interest in the topic. In Chapter 5, ‘Welcome to Muslim World’, the authors examine collective terms (e.g. ‘Muslim world’ or ‘Muslim community’) that are used to represent the entire community in a monolithic way, as one group in tension with the rest of the United Kingdom and the West in general. The authors point out how this representation contradicts the results of surveys of British Muslims’ opinion regarding multiculturalism in the United Kingdom. Chapter 6 examines terms that describe the strength of belief among Muslims, such as ‘extremist’, ‘radical’, or ‘devout’. Both the diversity and frequency of such terms suggest that the British print media were ‘fascinated with extreme Islam’ (p. 174) even before 9/11.
Chapter 7, ‘From hate preachers to scroungers: who benefits?’, examines another frequent topic, especially after 7/7: that of Muslims claiming government benefits. They suggest that the purposefully disrespectful tone of these stories resonates especially well with working-class readers, who have a more direct interest in knowing who receives government support. Issues related to gender are discussed in Chapter 8, where the authors examine the representation of Muslim dress such as the veil and the burqa, showing that Muslim men are portrayed as oppressive, whereas Muslim women are portrayed as helpless and weak. Chapter 9 compares modern coverage with earlier representations of Islam from 1475 to 1970, with a special focus on the 19th century. While the overall tone of the representation is similar to that of modern times, the 19th-century press showed little domestic interest in Muslims, paid almost no attention to gender matters, and hardly discussed the veil.
Chapter 10 summarizes the findings and links them to the wider social and political context. Right-leaning tabloids represent explicit Islamophobic attitudes, with few journalists expressing negative or offensive views. Instead of attacking Islam as a violent religion, most newspapers resort to portraying Muslims in a negative way. Some newspapers, especially right-leaning tabloids, tend to focus on a small number of Muslims who are either extremists or seeking government benefits. The authors also note that Muslim women are usually portrayed as victims, whereas Muslim men are depicted as aggressive. While the authors emphasize the obvious bias of British newspapers against Muslims, they also blame extremists like Bin Laden for fueling these negative representations. This book ends with an emphasis on tolerance and acceptance.
The corpus evidence that the authors explore, together with the authors’ emphasis on self-reflexivity and a multidisciplinary approach, provides useful new insights into the representation of Islam in the British press. This makes Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes a worthwhile reference for researchers of discourse analysis, especially those interested in journalism, politics, and Islamic studies.