International Communication Gazette

This article reports a meta-analysis of 345 published studies to examine the media’s role in construction of a Muslim and Islamic identity. A quantitative analysis highlights the geographical focus, methods, theories, authorship, media types, and time frames of published studies. A qualitative analysis investigated the most prominent researched themes. Our findings suggest that a large majority of studies covered Western countries, while Muslim countries and Muslim media have been neglected. We also identified an evident lack of comparative research, a neglect of visuals, and a dearth of research on online media. We found that most studies investigated the themes of ‘migration’, ‘terrorism’, and ‘war’. Moreover, our meta-study shows that Muslims tend to be negatively framed, while Islam is dominantly portrayed as a violent religion. Implications of these findings are discussed.

This article examines the relationship between European (international) broadcasting and Islamist terrorism in Africa and positions media portrayal of Boko Haram within the larger picture of Europe’s relations with Africa. Two international broadcasters provide the basis for the analysis: France 24 and Deutsche Welle. The article compares and contrasts their discourse on terrorism to advance several arguments: 1) that through their respective portrayal of Boko Haram and Nigeria both France 24 and Deutsche Welle’s reporting is in line with their respective countries’ foreign policies towards Africa, 2) that discourse on both F24 and DW perpetuates the unequal relationship between African countries and Western powers, 3) that portraying terrorism in terms of ‘clash of civilisations’, as in the case of France 24, may unintentionally contribute to the strengthening of the extremist cause. This is due to the transformation of violent extremism into ‘new wars’. The concept, elaborated in the article, differently explains the logic of extremist behaviour and its relationship with media.

This study investigated the portrayal of the Arab Spring by conducting a qualitative framing analysis of editorials and columns in two elite U.S. newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post. Most opinion writers on the Arab Spring in the The New York Times and The Washington Post were either journalists from the news organizations themselves or ex-officials and scholars at various U.S. institutions. Thus, these papers reflected the viewpoints of political elites in portraying the Arab Spring. They largely advocated principles that accentuated the liberalism paradigm of international relations, such as democracy, international cooperation, and economic independence. These papers placed great emphasis on the possible impact of the Arab Spring on the U.S.’s continued deterrence of radical Islam and terrorism, but essentially none on the possible impact these events might have on the U.S.’s continued dependence on Middle East oil. The opinion journalism of U.S. elite papers is largely determined by journalists, ex-government officials, and scholars within the ʻmedia organizationalʼ and ʻsocial institutionalʼ levels, as well as American ideologies and interests on the ʻsocial systemʼ level.

In international communication, adaptation of messages to the audience’s values has been prominently studied. In advertising, a meta-analysis of experimental studies showed that ads with culturally adapted value appeals are generally more persuasive and better liked than ads with culturally unadapted value appeals. This general effect was not observed for studies with Western Europeans. One explanation may be that these studies did not examine individualism–collectivism, whereas adaptation to this dimension has been shown to be very successful. In this article, this explanation was tested. Six experiments were conducted in which participants from Belgium, the UK or the Netherlands judged an ad with an adapted, individualistic appeal or with an unadapted, collectivistic appeal. The experiments and a subsequent meta-analysis indicate that Western Europeans are not more persuaded by the culturally adapted than by the culturally unadapted value appeals based on individualism–collectivism. This result nuances earlier findings underlining the importance of cultural value adaptation.

The growing internationalization of Chinese telecommunication companies’ business operation beyond the shore of Asian region is reconfiguring the global markets of telecommunication, and information and communication technologies in terms of chain of distribution, competition, and partnership. This is particularly evident in the African telecommunication markets where Huawei is now challenging the European and American multinational companies’ market dominance in telecommunication infrastructures, network expansion, and equipment supply. This article examines the political economy of Huawei’s business strategies and engagement in the Nigerian telecommunication sector, which is the biggest telecommunication market in the West African region.