Abstract
In the 21st century media has become the dominant source of knowledge of Islam and Muslims and selectively decides what the West should know about Islam and what should be hidden. However, the underlying assumption is that, the media as an institution forming stereotypes depends on the local socio-cultural context. The goal of this paper – to find out how media (as the mediator) forms values, world view of a society, creates stereotypes in different cultural environments through analysis of Muhammad cartoons. The objectives are: to define the concepts of Neo-Orientalism, Muslimophobia and Islamophobia; to find out the connection between media representations and negative images of Islam and Muslims in the society; to reveal the main stereotypes of Muslims and Islam in online media in 4 different countries by analysing the case of Muhammad cartoons. The conducted qualitative and quantitative content analysis confirmed the hypothesis that in the specific cultures the same event is presented in different ways while forming value based orientation for a specific audience. Western media seeks to portray Muslims as terrorists / Islamists that are against West, their values and any possibility of integration in Western societies. Meanwhile, Lebanon and India (Kashmir) media does not portray orientalism and Islamophobic views, because audiences are dominated by Muslims. However there are noticeable manifestations of Occidentalism - resistance to the West and the Islamophobic portrayal of public in media. Moreover, information serves as a public mobilization function, so there are reasons to believe that violent protests in Kashmir and Lebanon could have been encouraged by the media.
Highlights
In 21st century, media became the main source of information
120 publications were analyzed with qualitative content analysis; 30 publications from 4 different countries
Stereotypes are usually created by using specific language, so it is thought, that this usage might artificially create the hostility among all groups in the society
Summary
In 21st century, media became the main source of information. [1], noticed the gap between the reality portrayed in media and the reality itself. The press emphasizes its mission to inform people by telling facts, presenting problems, giving different views, but the stories can be interpreted in subjective way and be given only to particular audience. The media points a particular problem, creates images of social figures, constantly presents objects and phenomenon how people should think [2]. There is not enough research done in order to claim these statements as facts. In 21st century, media does not put enough attention to particular social groups’ stigma – there is not much published research, related with marginalization of Muslims’ societies
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