REPORTING ISLAM: MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF BRITISH MUSLIMS

Elizabeth Poole (2002)

Context

Poole says in the preface that this book was due to go to press in September 2001. It is not however a book that has been overtaken by events; rather, it sheds further light on how we reached the present state of public understanding about Islam. Muslims have lived in Britain for at least 300 years, but the second half of the twentieth century saw a significant growth in numbers. The main period of immigration was the 1950s and 1960s. Immigration was slowed and then halted by a series of acts of parliament in the 1960s and 1970s. Many British Muslims are now British-born. There are also around 5000 converts to Islam. Amongst Muslims in Britain today there are more young and fewer old people than in the general population. Statistics show Muslims are disadvantaged compared to other groups on a wide range of indices (for example, unemployment, underachievement at school, risk of victimisation). In Orientalism (1978), Edward Said shows how Western writers have constructed an ideology of Eastern cultures as alien and to be defined in terms of opposition to Western culture and values. This idea can be reworked to account for later developments. For example, a study of representations of Islam by the Commission on British Muslims (1997) drew attention to the portrayal of Islam in an undifferentiated way, ignoring differences within Islam and changes over time.

Methods
Poole investigated the representation of British Muslims using three methods.

1. Quantitative analysis

Poole carried out a statistical content analysis of coverage of all stories related to Islam in two newspapers between January 1994 and December1996. She chose The Guardian and The Times and their Sunday equivalents, The Observer and The Sunday Times, for their different political standpoints, while expecting some similarities because of their shared status as quality newspapers.

2. Discourse analysis

To complement her quantitative analysis, Poole carried out a qualitative analysis studying, for example, word choice, image choice and sentence structure. This analysis involved, as well as The Times and The Guardian, two tabloids, The Daily Mail and The Sun. Poole chose stories that were prominent and were developed over a period of time, on the grounds that these were most likely to influence public understandings of Islam and Muslims.

3. Focus group interviews

The aim of these was to see how far the focus groups shared the newspapers discourse (way of thinking) that Poole describes and so understand how audiences construct meaning. The four focus groups were selected by purposive sampling and comprised people with similar social characteristics and from the same or similar social networks so that participants would feel comfortable disclosing opinions. The groups consisted of 16 to 18 year olds from in and around Leicester in the East Midlands, an area which has a history of good relations between ethnic communities. The two Muslim groups were single sex because the girls requested this to comply with cultural norms. The members of these groups were from economically disadvantaged city areas but were well-educated. The other two groups were non-Muslims, one with frequent contact with Muslims and the other with little or no contact. Each group was given four newspaper articles, each of which had been considered in the

analytical research. They were asked to write their reactions individually and then discuss in their focus group.

Key findings
Quantitative analysis Poole found that although there were significant differences between The Guardian and The Times, the two papers tended to cover the same limited range of issues. Muslims were not treated as part of British society; they rarely appeared in normal news stories. Coverage was limited to events which fitted assumptions about Muslim identities and affairs. In reporting marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims (such as Jemima Goldsmith to Imran Khan) articles emphasized cultural differences and suggested such relationships could not last. Reports about the election of a Muslim MP, Mohammed Sarwar, focused on allegations of vote-rigging. British Muslims beliefs and practices were made to seem strange. The ties which British Muslims have with other countries were emphasized to make them appear foreign, with loyalties elsewhere, and so potentially threatening. There were differences of emphasis and opinion within this dominant representation, and it is even contradicted at times (for example, by a minority of articles in The Guardian). Poole argues however that what counts is the overall picture. Discourse analysis Pooles qualitative analysis supports the data from the quantitative analysis. The coverage was negative overall, but not uniformly so. Muslims were reported either as passive or as acting negatively, as creating problems for the majority population, as disloyal and subversive if they asked for equal treatment and as acting on irrational beliefs and relying on customs and ritual. Focus group interviews Some of the articles clearly carried a dominant or preferred reading which readers were intended to take from them. Poole found that Muslim participants offered alternative readings, often oppositional, while the non-contact group accepted the preferred reading. The contact group tended to be more negative about Islam than the non-contact group. They had greater knowledge, being aware of some of the stories and issues, but interpreted these using liberal ideas of fairness and equality, which led to concerns about restrictions in Islam on individual freedoms and negative perceptions of backward customs. Some participants who had greater knowledge were able to reject the negative representations.

Links to key debates

This research shows how Islam is represented in very limited ways, with stories selected to fit news agendas and reported in ways that confirm existing ways of thinking. Islam is demonized, presented as a threat to us. The West and Islam are defined as opposites, propagating the idea of confrontation. Events are interpreted to fit the majority view. This is not a settled and fixed situation, however; Poole shows how the discourses change with events and how counter discourses occasionally feature. Poole also shows how media reporting influences perceptions. Although peoples most immediate source of knowledge derives from direct experience of their environment, the focus group interviews showed that even non-Muslims in a multicultural environment lacked the knowledge to develop ideas counter to those in the media.

Pooles research offers a way of beginning to understand how those representations shape our understanding, and how they can be challenged.

Evaluation
The research does not cover all of the media - it only looks at newspaper coverage of British Muslims and does not consider representations in the broadcast media. A further problem involves the use of focus groups. These are always artificial groups, put together for the purposes of the research, and in this case excluding other age groups. In focus group settings, too, individuals may keep quiet about views they think others may not agree with. Pooles research is timely though in its focus: it looks at how understanding of Islam was being influenced by the media in the period immediately before the events of 11th September 2001. The discourses she describes would later be developed to present the idea of British Muslims as a threat to the majority even more strongly.

Find out more

Poole, E. (2002) Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims. London: IB Tauris Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (1997), Islamophobia: a challenge for us all. London: Runnymede Trust (www.runnymedetrust.org/projects/commissionOnBritishMuslims) Hall, S. (1992) The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power, in Hall, S. and Gieben, B. (eds), Formations of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity and Buckingham: Open University Press Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Vintage