Students’ Knowledge And Awareness Of Western News Reporting On Islam And Muslims

Abstract

Many previous studies have examined how the representation of western media in reporting news related to Islam and Muslim communities, especially in the Middle East which has eventually led to the negative depiction and impact to the world. Therefore, this study was conducted to look at the other side of this issue by measuring the level of knowledge, awareness and its impact towards news related to Islam and Muslims as reported by the western/international media among the students of Public Universities in Malaysia. The objectives of this study are threefold; 1) to identify the level of knowledge among public University students about news reporting on Islam and Muslims by western media; 2) to identify the level of awareness among public University students pertaining to news reporting on Islam and Muslims by western media; lastly 3) to investigate the implications of knowledge towards awareness among public University students. The quantitative methodology was applied by distributing the questionnaire to 101 respondents randomly. Our results highlight that respondents were found to have a high level of knowledge and awareness towards the issue of news reporting and the level of knowledge is positively and significantly related to level of awareness. Other than that, this study also has a significant impact between level of knowledge towards level of awareness.