Candidate Number: 90554

Mechanisms and Agency: Implementation of

Ethnocentrism through the Media

“Today, bookstores in the U.S. are filled with shabby screeds bearing
screaming headlines abut Islam and terror, Islam exposed, the Arab threat and the
Muslim menace, all of them written by political polemicists pretending to knowledge
imparted to them and others by experts who have supposedly penetrated to the
heart of these strange, Oriental peoples over there who have been such a terrible
thorn in “our” flesh. Accompanying such warmongering expertise have been the
omnipresent CNNs and FOXs of this world, plus myriad numbers of evangelical and
right-wing radio-hosts, plus innumerable tabloids and even middle-brow journalists,
all of them recycling the same unverifiable fictions and vast generalisations so as to
stir up “America” against the foreign devil.” (Edward W. Said 2003 pg. xv …(1))
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Ethnocentrism is an explanatory description of a system of relatedness for group
perceptions about the ‘other’, and the specific case of ethnocentrism describing the East
from the position of the West is historically explained by Orientalism. Neo-Orientalism
and the rise of ant-Arab-Muslim feelings are reconsidered by looking at the agency that is
furthering the facets of ethnocentrism itself. Because ethnocentrism is at the basis of
Orientalism, ethnocentrism makes the historical continuation of Orientalism appear
‘natural’, but in actual fact it is artificial and constructed by the same Western power that
maintains this perspective of the East.
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Ethnocentrism is an attitude or outlook in which values derived from one’s own

cultural background are applied to other cultural contexts, where different values are
operative. The ethnocentric attitude is representative of an outlook that can take account
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of multiple points of view but nevertheless regards those of other cultures as incorrect,
inferior and immoral. (2)

Groups can develop collective symbol systems that arouse the ethnocentric
emotions shared by individuals in a population. (2) I will try and show that symbols
(9/11) and stimuli (9/11 and other terrorist events) can be used or created and associated
with the out-group, the neo-Orientalist situation is still that of the ‘rational’ west against
that of the ‘irrational’ East, however this time it includes the concept of conflict and today
this is especially valent.

Social scientists have, for more than a century (2), been primarily interested in
collective actions and institutions that could be termed ethnocentric; actions and
institutions augmenting order, solidarity and co-operation within a group or violence and
antagonism between groups, and in the connections between such actions and the
ethnocentrism of attitude and ideology.
Concerned with relations among groups defined by religion, race, ethnicity and
language, social scientists have long debated the question of:

“Are ethnocentric attitudes and ideologies autonomous forces that can lead to war
and discrimination or are they merely mobilized to support warlike and discriminatory
policies that have been caused by other factors?” ((2) pg 1-2)

W. G. Sumner’s (1906) opinion was that ethnocentrisms of attitude, ideology, and

action were inextricably linked together, and mutually reinforcing, this is also my
contention (2). The evaluation of the effectiveness and the degree of agency hinges on the
extent that stereotyping and automatic attitudes are natural, if they are malleable, and, if
so, are there examples of them being intentionally ‘mobilized’ today?

The way in which I will try and answer this is by firstly stating that inter-group
bias and prejudice are natural processes, and then I will explore the ‘natural’ reaction to
9/11 and the implicit association between these events and the out-group. I will then show
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that these associations are malleable and can be activated at will by just the mention of
these events. After this I will attempt to show that the media alone can be deemed as just
a social agent reproducing the ignorance and ideology of the community mouth-piece,
but also it can act through other institutions with intention.

Ethnocentrism and agency

There are many facets of ethnocentrism which signal its existence, these are
present and exemplified in the case of the West and the East by an Orientalist outlook.
Every situation is specific therefore some theorists actually define the ethnocentric facets
by the outcome of perceived conflict. The generally common facets of ethnocentrism can
be reviewed on table 1.1 ((2) pg.12.).

Perceived threat of the out-group towards the in-group can result in dislike of the
attacker (4; 5, p.45), whilst at the same time has also been noted to lead to an ethnocentric
ideology (2) so it would be logical that if increased ethnocentrism were the goal, then a
perception of a constant and explicit conflict would be effective to this end.

The question of agency is important, as it is an “old trick” to use false perceptions

of threat from out-groups to generally create in-group solidarity and out-group hostility.
((6), p. 137) Simultaneously this may be creating some kind of “phenomenal absolutism”
(7) which is the tendency to assume that the world is exactly as one sees it, and that all
the other persons really perceive it in the same way but behave the way they do out of a
perverse wickedness or incompetence.

The attempt at a creation of a “phenomenal absolutism” (7) tendency could be

exemplified in the ‘critical assessment of post 9/11 discourse’ by Muscati (2003). This
study could be shown to say how this process of intensifying ethnocentrism is something
we are being led through because we are being persuaded that it is a natural occurrence
for the Muslim population to fit the persona of ‘evil’. Argues how the manufacture of
ethnocentrism comes through leading social and political figures in the west presenting
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the perceived conflict as ‘good versus evil’, and Muslims as ‘inherently irrational’,
singled out, as ‘uniquely fundamentalist’, as subhuman, and as a homogeneous threat
(2003). This discrimination of the inhabitants of the East is very similar to Said’s (1978)
concept of an Orientalist outlook.

Historical power relations Orientalism perspective

“Without a well-organised sense that these people over there were not like
“us” and didn’t appreciate “our” values – the very core of traditional
Orientalist dogma … - there would have been no war.” (Edward W. Said 2003
pg. xv)

An idea central to Edward Said’s (1978) book ‘Orientalism’ is that the western idea of
the East is not generated from facts or from a balanced perspective, but rather that it is
often a romanticized ‘imagined community’ constructed from the western essentialised
view of ‘eastern’ societies as, for example, fundamentally similar. Said argued that
‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ (the West) worked as oppositional terms, so that the “orient” was
constructed as a negative inversion of Western culture. Put simply Orientalism is “A
Western style for dominating restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” ((1) pg.
6).

Said also warned against the “falsely unifying rubrics that invent collective
identities,” referring to such terms as “America,” “the West,” and “Islam,” which were
leading to what he felt was a manufactured “clash of civilisations” (2003)(1). These
‘collective identities’, which are being created in the minds of the public, could be
dangerous as they could aid the inter-group paradigm of “us” versus. “them”. As Perdue
(1990) suggested; even the minimal group paradigm of “we” and “they” can activate the
hardwiring for inter-group bias in people (9).
 Candidate Number: 90554

Throughout history, Eastern cultures have long been seen as different, inferior,
exotic, and in many cases, sensual. Dividing the world into “us” versus “them”, the
‘West’ and the ‘East’, the ‘Occident’ (the West as it views itself) and the ‘Orient’, all
serves to homogenize the ‘Other’ as unusual, uncivil, and ‘evil’ whilst proclaiming the
dominant Western ideology as normal, civil, and good (10; cited in 44). Modern neo-
colonialism has also been justified by the impression that Arabs are inherently aggressive,
chaotic and irrational, and that the West (colonial forces) were and are rational, organised
and good, ‘spreading democracy’, and human rights (1). This is a good example the
ethnocentric standpoint where the assessment of our own values, against those of the out-
group, can be seen as universal and right. (2).

This was explicitly believed in the past, and the idea that Arabs ‘needed’ our
values imposed on them can be an example of this happening, then, and today. A kind of
benevolent execution of power over the East (e.g. Iraq), it is my contention that this
ethnocentric view is being expressed intentionally, and especially through the mainstream
media, as it is the cultural tool which reaches us all. Parallel to the general facets of
ethnocentrism exemplified by Sumner (1906)(3), what I am positing here is the notion
that, through the psychological pathways described later, the media is exaggerating the
threat of an out-group, and the impression of an official conflict with the ‘Orient’.
Therefore what follows is an illustrative analysis of how the media has been
treating the image of this out-group.

The social psychology of prejudice approach

Categorization is an in inescapable feature of human existence, as the world is simply

too complex to deal with without the ability to simplify and order it, and in this sense the
average human being simply doesn’t have the capacity to respond differently to every
person they meet (11). So important to prejudice is the categorization process that some
have argued that without it prejudice just wouldn’t exist (12; 13). The two fundamental
effects of categorization are the exaggeration of inter-group differences and the
enhancement of intra-group similarities (Brown, 1995). For example, Jones et al., (1981)
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asked members of university clubs to rate members of their own club and others as to
how similar they were on a number of trait dimensions, as a result they found a consistent
tendency for members of out-groups to be seen as more similar to one another than
members of the in-group (15). Another important facet of stereotyping is highlighting
contrast between groups. This is exemplified by Doise et al. (1978), in a study on
priming school children with the category of gender, they showed that when the category
was salient there were reliably more different adjectives used to describe photographs of
male and female children, and correspondingly more identical adjectives used to describe
photographs of the same gender (16).

So why is there seemingly out-group similarity in the eyes of the in-group?

Linville et al., (1989) suggested that this perceived out-group similarity stems
from the different amount of information that we gather about in-group as opposed to
out-group members (17). This is said to be true because in-group members tend to
interact more with other in-group members than out-group members, so differential
familiarity is important. Park et al., (1991) suggested differently, they claimed that the
amount of information about a number of exemplar from the group with whom some
interaction is not as important as the estimated nature of the category as a whole (18).
They suggested that people internalise a more abstract conception of the categories as a
whole, which is modelled on the prototypical member of the group and some estimate of
the variability around this person.

These theories, when associated with perceptions of Arab-Muslims, for

example, could be used to partially explain assumptions about members of this social
group, obviously there are far more important items to keep in mind, but physical
distance could parallel the West’s general lack of interaction with Arab-Muslims
occupying the Middle East, and prototypical members could be exemplified by the
actions of terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden, perceived variation around this
prototypical member could also be narrowed by the apparent actions of terrorists and
horrific events associated with the Arab-Muslim social group. This argument is supported
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by Blair (2002) in the sense that when the group members are well known, more abstract
qualities, such as likeability, may also influence automatic attitudes (35). In studies on
this, this effect occurred automatically and whilst the participants were explicitly focused
on the individual’s race (2002). Indeed it is specifically argued by Muscati (2003) that
Muslims are often judged ‘en masse’ by the standards of their worst representatives, and
where Muslim practices and individuals contradict these negative judgements they are
often presented as the exception, not the rule (8).

A study which could be relevant to the judgment of the Arab-Muslim, Turner et

al., (1987) suggested that, in general, the basic level for categorising people is that of the
social group, and in situations of rare contact this can be important (19). Bruner (1957)
suggested that the categories most likely to be used are those which are most ‘accessible’
to a person, and those which best ‘fit’ the stimuli prevalent at the time (11). Brown (1995)
suggests that there are three features of the immediate situation which are important for
the choice of categorization(14). The ‘entativity’, meaning the appearance of the group as
an entity in the mind of the perceiver, of potential category members, their perceptual
distinctiveness, and the recent external evocation of a category. The way in which people
(as a stimuli) actually stand in relation to one another influences whether they are
perceived as members of the same group (20), therefore if a social group (i.e. Arabs) is
perceptibly similar and if they don’t come into contact with the in-group often then they
will be categorized together, and as similar to some extent. And, it is not just the stimulus
characteristics of the situation which can activate one category rather than another, if
some event has occurred very recently which is evocative of a particular characterization
then it is likely that situations or events happening subsequently will also be interpreted in
terms of that same category system (14).

Other studies have shown that inter-group bias and categorization are natural
phenomena, for example Ashburn-Nardo, Voils and Monteith (2001) demonstrated that
automatic inter-group bias can occur even in the minimal group situation, and where
there has been no history of conflict exists between the two groups, and also Perdue et al.
(1990) who argued that inter-group bias occurs so naturally that it can be obtained even
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with vaguely defined in-groups (e.g. we) and out-groups (e.g. they) (9). People are
hardwired for inter-group bias, but that exposure to information about in/out groups
serves to develop and strengthen implicit associations that may contribute to inter-group
bias (39). Absent of the event of 9/11 it is possible that prejudice could be activated by
other prevailing traits of the group, for example this would be true of religion as an inter-
group difference.

Religion as a group identifier.

From using a predominantly Christian sample Rowatt, Franklin and Cotton (2005)
showed that as anti-Arab racism increases, self reported attitudes towards Muslims can
decrease sharply, however this could only be a function of inaccurate cognitive
stereotypes. For example, thinking that most Muslims are Arabs when there are over 200
Muslim groups around the world (23) or thinking that many Arabs are cunning, warlike,
cruel, irrational, or unkind to women (24). As it was a predominantly Christian sample,
however, the strong association between anti-Arab racism and attitudes towards Muslims
could also be due to pervasive in-group/out-group biases (25).

Although much academic research has addressed racism, religious discrimination

has been largely ignored (26). Rokeach (1960) argued that what could possibly matter
more than categorization as a basis for prejudice was the degree of ‘similarity’ or
‘congruence’ between ‘our’ belief system and that of the other person, from this it follows
that disagreement can lead to dislike because of a perceived threat to our belief system
(27).

Hunsberger and Jackson (2005) exemplified this in a study showing how belief or
meaning systems can act as a frame of reference for inter-group difference in values. As
difference can be seen as threatening, it is interesting that meaning systems were
emphasised in the media just before the U.S. attacked Iraq (28). Hunsberger and Jackson
(2005) suggested that downward societal comparisons by the perception of owning
religious ‘truth’ may generate prejudice against members of other religions, and that
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identification with a group that has comparatively more of a higher societal status can
also have a similar effect. Tensions are also likely to be intensified if perceive themselves
to be in conflict with other religious or non-religious groups. (28)

This prejudiced outlook or a ‘religion-central’ world view also has an effect in the
intellectual field. In a review of physiological literature associated with Muslims and/or
Islam, Sheridan and North (2004) found that the religious background of the author
affected the tone of the abstract, “Sikh-named” authors were found to be most likely to
publish balanced works (95%), followed by those with “Hindu” names (89.6%). Authors
with “Jewish” and “Christian” names were the least likely to publish works of a balanced
tone (71.2%) and (74.5%) respectively(29).

9/11 and empirical studies on resulting explicit prejudice

A very powerful illustration of the ‘external evocation of a category’ (see above)

associated with a recent event, was the tragic events that occurred in New York on the
day of September 11th, 2001. Passenger jets carrying many innocent civilians and 19
hijackers, with Muslim-sounding names, pentagon and the flew into the twin towers, the
latter then crumbled to the ground, taking with them the lives of around 3000 more
innocent people. The events of that day were played repeatedly, shocking the world, the
seemingly tranquil existence of millions of people was perceptively shattered and indeed
social-political reality was never the same again.

Following the events of 9/11 the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and
Xenophobia anticipated a rise in Islamophobia and produced a ‘Summary Report on
Islamophobia in the EU after 11th September, 2001’ across the 15 EU member states (30).
This report identified a rise in what it termed ‘ethnic xenophobia’, which it described as
being ‘distinctly separate from the xenophobia that exists within both Islamophobia and
indeed…anti-asylum seeker sentiment…’ (30). Here within all this, ‘expressions of
Islamophobia’ found justification in what the report identified as a ‘catalytic justification’
with regard to ‘both latent and active’ prejudices (31). What is being referred to here, one
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does not need to guess, is a report describing ‘catalytic justification’ in the events of 9/11
in the prejudices of those whom felt personally threatened by the events. ‘Both latent and
active’ is referring to the fact that anti-Arab racism was already present and explicit
prejudice was being justified by these perceived attacks from this out-group. Added to
this a newspaper article (32) reported that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
officials announced a significant increase in the number of complaints from Muslims
regarding discrimination in the workplace (from 171 to 427) following the ‘terrorist’
attack on September 11th, 2001. (cited by 36)

These images were shown, which the media disgustingly overly repeated in my
opinion, whilst being associated with those 19 hijackers, and, shortly after, another figure
known as Osama Bin Laden, whom possibly could have been seen to be filling the
‘prototypical role’ of the Arab-Muslim (18), as were these hijackers, sharing the salient
‘stimuli’ of the dark-skin of the Arab-Muslim social group. Indeed according to Allen and
Nielsen (2002) the single most predominant factor in determining who was to be a victim
of an attack or infringement was their visual identity as a Muslim, with the primary visual
identifier appearing to be the hijab, worn by many Muslim women. Sikh men also
incidentally became targets thanks to the turbans they wore, because of a perceived
resemblance to Osama Bin Laden (30).

Another study by Sheridan (2006) showed that self reported levels of racial and
religious discrimination from a sample of 222 British Muslims rose after 9/11, with
indirect or implicit discrimination rising by 82.6%, and experiences of overt
discrimination by 76.3%. This large jump in reports of prejudice suggests that the valence
of the ‘catalytic’ event was high and was successfully, to some extent, associated with the
salient ‘out-group’ of the Arab-Muslim community. Later on I will discuss in more detail
the implicit associations made between 9/11 and the Arab–Muslim social group, and the
relating automatic attitudes towards Arab-Muslims generated from this event, and those
blamed for it. (26)
 Candidate Number: 90554

Psychological pathways linking Ethnocentrism as an ideology and prejudice

Cunningham et al., (2004) agreed that there is a prejudice associated with

ethnocentric views of the world; it is a predictor of certain views towards several
culturally disadvantaged out-groups. Cunningham et al., (2004) suggested that models
that depicted constructs of stereotypes and prejudice as ordinary tended to ignore the
broader network of ideology that represents ones political and social view of the world
and the place of social groups in it. They found that prejudices towards specific groups
are manifestations of a generalised underlying ethnocentrism, and that those who hold
negative attitudes toward one disadvantaged group also tend to hold them toward other
disadvantaged groups. (2004)

Cunningham et al., (2004) go on to discuss a possible psychological pathway in

which prejudiced implicit associations can go on to create ‘rigid thinking’; this could be
done through the social justification theory and an ethnocentric ideology. They also
posited another pathway in which rigid thinking can in turn affect the implicit evaluation
of social groups. Rigid thinking could also predispose one to a right-wing-ideology
(seeing the world in black and white). (33) These ideologies with their positive regard to
the status quo could be maintained by social justification (34), which could maintain this
positive regard for the outlook presented to them by authorities.

In the next section I will exemplify these implicit attitudes towards Arab-Muslims
can be changed and associated strongly with events such as 9/11 (i.e. social ‘information’
associating Arab-Muslims with terrorism), and also that evocation of these implicit
associations/attitudes can be brought about by reminding the individual of this event.
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Implicit Attitudes towards Arab-Muslims and the moderating effects of social

information.

Blair’s (2002) review (cited by 36), showed that many researchers have found that
automatic attitudes or stereotypes are malleable, Devine (1989) suggested that repeated
exposure to information (i.e. 9/11) that associates members of a social group with
evaluative attributes might form automatic attitudes and beliefs towards them. In this
respect, repeated exposure to the event of evaluative attributes such as irrationality,
fundamentalism and terrorism associated with Arab Muslims may affect automatic
attitudes towards them.

Implicit Association Tests have also been shown to demonstrate that automatic
attitudes and stereotypes towards social groups are likely to be influenced by the valence
of stereotypes salient in a given situation associated with the social group (43). For
example Wittenbrink et al. (2004) showed that exposure to a positive stereotypic situation
about black significantly reduced the magnitude of the IAT effect, whereas exposure to a
negative stereotypic situation (e.g. a gang incident) did not.

As cited in (36) Information in immediate environments (38), and social influence (37),
have also been shown to have an effect on automatic attitudes and stereotypes toward
certain social groups.

So if repeated exposure to information regarding social groups can serve as a

basis for automatic attitudes and stereotypes then how strong is this associative effect?

Recent studies (38; 39) have shown that the IAT may be quite sensitive to changes
in the situational context, therefore, if the implicit associations are sensitive enough to
reflect social information regarding blacks in situations paling in comparison with recent
terrorist attacks associated with Arab-Muslims, then the strength of the associations
between Arab-Muslims and the recent negative events is likely to be stronger than those
associated with blacks.
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As the study by Park, Felix and Lee (2007) is one of the few studies done on the
implicit associations with Arab-Muslims and of the few which especially also concerns
the moderating effect of social information I will cover this in greater depth as it reveals
many interesting items, therefore much is drawn directly from the paper (36).

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative valence and strength of
implicit attitudes towards Arab-Muslims whilst exploring the moderation of such implicit
attitudes by social information. The three studies (a) investigated the relative valence and
strength of implicit attitudes toward and beliefs about Arab-Muslims and (b) tested
whether the implicit attitudes could be moderated by valenced social information.

The first study out of three was designed to find out what implicit attitudes and
beliefs people held with regard to Arab Muslims in relation to whites using the IAT and
explicit attitude measures. As expected from IAT results the participants showed a strong
pro-white attitude compared to that towards Arab Muslims. What was particularly
revealing however was the analysis of the open ended question that asked the participants
to provide what they knew or heard about Arab Muslims. Out of 75 answers the most
common responses, not surprisingly, involved terrorism or related characteristics, such as
violent or destructive, at 27%. 23% reported deep religiosity, 13% described
discrimination against women, and polygamy, etc., 12% suggested personality traits not
directly associated with terrorism, such as smart, hard-working, untrustworthy, or close-
minded, and responses towards physical features or outfits were 9%. As terrorism was the
most salient and representative attribute about Arab Muslims, it was concluded that this
was likely to have influenced the IAT results showing preference for whites over Arabs.
This conclusion was reinforced by the finding that the greater IAT effects were
demonstrated by those participants who yielded answers related to terrorism that those
who did not. (36)
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Studies two and three demonstrated implicit preference for black over Arab
Muslim names, with again almost identical ratios of specific types of responses to the
question of remembered attributes found in study one.

What was especially interesting was that the results to study three indicated that
implicit and explicit anti-Arabic prejudice could be moderated when participants were
primed with positive and negative information about Arab Muslims before the IAT task.
Participants were exposed to the information about the terrorist attack against the
twin towers in New York. Even though no Arab names were given in the information,
participants showed a greater anti-Arab bias than those in the neutral information
condition. The results here showed that automatic stereotypes and prejudice, which had
been previously believed to have been fixed and unavoidable (40; 41; cited by 36), could
be influenced by moderating variables, and that stimulus cues in the surrounding contexts
of social information could affect automatic responses. (36)

With respect to this study, theses results are especially important as the
unashamedly repetitive exposure to the atrocities of 9/11 by the mainstream media, would
in theory have repeatedly exposed the public viewer to an evaluative association between
the events and Arab-Muslims, and in turn created a strong implicit association with
Muslim Arabs of terror, destruction and anger.

The Role of the Media

From an early age almost all people are exposed to information associated with
particular groups, perhaps even prior to forming personal beliefs (41). Greenwald and
Banaji (1995) defined implicit attitudes as “introspectively unidentified (…) traces of
past experience that mediate favourable or unfavourable feeling, thought, or action
toward social objects” (42) (p. 8. cited by 39)
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Analyses of media content consistently document that racial minorities, across a

wide variety of media contexts, if represented at all, are portrayed stereotypically and in a
narrow range of peripheral roles (44).

As stated above research on control of automatic stereotyping shows that certain

situational/contextual and motivational factors can moderate implicit attitudes and
stereotypes. (35; 36; 41; 45; among others, 44)

Keeping in mind that racist feelings are artefacts of shared cultural norms (46)
rather than individual idiosyncrasies, it is important to understand that socio-cultural
forces such as the mass media, among others, help form, mediate, activate and transmit
cultural stereotypes. It is especially effective when there is little or no other type of
contact with the social groups concerned, when they are at a great distance away for
example. (Linville et al., (1989 brown book)) Here the mainstream media can substitute
personal contact and create and reinforce cultural stereotypes about people and places
when there is little other scope for comparison. (47)

As I will exemplify later, through continual habitual exposure across genres and
media sources, whatever stereotypes are repeated in media discourse become part and
parcel of a generally dominant symbolic ideology (48; 49). Even exposure to a single or
small number of examples in the media, can be powerful enough to create impressions
about issues, peoples and places (50; cited in 44). As the studies on implicit associations
and the malleability of these implicit associations and automatic attitudes have suggested,
this can be done with few exemplars if the valence of the information (i.e. 9/11)
associating the social group with salient evaluations (e.g. terrorists) of the group is strong
enough, and repeated to send home the message (41).

Jo and Berkowitz (1994) provided the ‘neo-association’ model in which an

associative network of related concepts in the cognitive structure can provide the basis
for which a particular stimulus can trigger a chain of related thoughts and feelings
through the process of spreading activation (51). And as the ‘activation-recency’
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hypothesis put forth by Hansen and Hansen (1988) suggests, prolonged exposure to
biased media content makes these notions highly automatic (52). As I will point out later,
the recent reality is that racist dispositions are being added to by media hype over
situations involving Arab-Muslims, sometimes with unfounded evidence.

The Media before 9/11

Negative stereotypes of Muslims and the Islamic world were surprisingly

prevalent in the west before 9/11, for example Madani (2000) analysed newspaper
headlines from between 1956 and 1997, finding that the U.S. media depicted Muslims
and Arabs more negatively than Western Europeans and Israelis (53). Altareb (1998)
examined attitudes toward Middle Eastern Muslims held by non-Muslim undergraduates
in the United States (54). It was discovered that although participants possessed little
information about Muslims and Islam, they did hold definite attitudes toward Muslims,
and it was found that much of this information was gleaned from film and media sources.
Importantly in this study it was noted that both stereotypical and sensationalist depictions
of Muslims were expressed in the mainstream media at the time. (1998)

Religious Discrimination in England and Wales

From 1999 to 2001 an interdisciplinary research team based at the Religious Resource
and Research Centre of the University of Derby carried out the “Religious Discrimination
in England and Wales” Research Project (55 cited in source (56)). Amongst the studies
aims was to ‘assess the evidence of religious discrimination in England and Wales, both
actual and perceived’, and ‘to describe the patterns shown by this evidence, including its
overall scale, the main victims, the main perpetrators, and the main ways in which the
discrimination manifests’. ((55) pg. 308.) The project’s findings were based mainly on
the results of a postal questionnaire survey of 1,830 religious organisations throughout
England and Wales, of which 300 were Muslim.
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The empirical findings included a consistently higher level of unfair treatment

reported by Muslim organizations than other religious groups, both in terms of the
proportion of respondents indicating unfair treatment was experienced and was frequent.
Respondents were asked for their personal view of how ‘serious’ their experience was of
various aspects of discrimination and unfair treatment, including ignorance, indifference,
hostility, verbal abuse, physical abuse, damage to property, policies of organisations,
practices of organisations and media coverage. Muslim respondents were more likely
than those from other religions to identify ‘very serious’ problems in nearly every area.
Importantly a large majority of Muslim respondents regarded ignorance as a ‘very
serious’ or ‘quite serious’ problem, with other evidence indicating that the very high
concern in respect to media coverage was also largely related to a perception of ignorance
and bias in the media. Muslim respondents were also the most likely to think that
problems had grown worse in the last 5 years1. Consistently the majority of Muslim
respondents thought that hostility, verbal abuse and unfair media coverage had all
become more frequent. Muslims also reported that other people based their views on
‘preconceived ideas’ and ‘stereotypes’, and, those who said that they practised their
religion most often said that they were made to feel awkward and that they experience
pressure to conform.
Relevantly, in every religious group, but especially Muslims, questions about the
media tended to produce more claims of unfair treatment than any other area of life
covered in the survey, with relatively more Muslim organizations reporting that this
unfairness was ‘frequent’ rather than ‘occasional’. (56)
Interestingly enough, although there had been considerable media interest following
the project during 1999 to 2000, the project’s report ultimately received little media
coverage. (56)
This study highlights many important items, including the role of the media,
subsequent stereotypes and prejudice, and of Muslims being a primary target in relation
to other religious groups. Referring to ‘preconceived ideas and stereotypes’ (55) and
related abuse raised alongside unfair media representation, the study itself did not clearly
indicate whether this was intentional, so, for the benefit of the doubt this must be
1
Important to note that the research was conducted in 1999, the 5 years were leading up to September 11th,
2001
 Candidate Number: 90554

assumed to be a form of incompetence and irresponsibility on the media’s part, with no

due attention drawn to the type of representation given and their influence on the public’s
attitudes.

The Media as just social actors, mirroring the ignorance of the community.

As an example here I will provide an empirical study of two Australian

newspapers by Akbarzadeh and Smith (2005), named ‘The Representation of Islam and
Muslims in the Media – (The Age and Herald Sun Newspapers)”. The report examines
the extent of negative images reproduced in The Age and the Herald Sun (57).
Akbarzadeh and Smith (2005) created a database of 451 items generated from a
search for the words ‘Islam’ and/or ‘Muslim’ from The Age and Herald Sun newspapers
from September 11, 2001 – December 31, 2004. From an analysis of these items they
concluded that these newspapers were not Islamophobia but the representations of
Muslims were not free of problems. Like the ‘Religious Discrimination in England and
Wales’ report the project revealed that there is a certain level of ignorance in the
Australian community in relation to Muslims and Islam. They then suggested that
ignorance can end up leaving a feeling of unease, and this is an issue which finds its way
to the pages of the press; they theorised that journalists, being social actors in their own
right, are affected by political and ideological influences themselves, some of which are
openly hostile towards Islam. Whilst Akbarzadeh and Smith (2005) argue that the
negative images of Islam and Muslims are not solely due to the construction of the news
stories, the content of such stories have a significant impact on the overall impression
they leave behind; news stories about terrorism, for example, are ‘anchored in the
shocking negativity of the events’ (57). They explained that ‘even an informed journalist
with a high sense of professionalism and a commitment to avoiding stereotypes would
find it difficult to avoid the negative impression that links Islam with violence and
carnage’ (57 pp. 36).
If what they say is true and media representatives are just reproducing the
ideology and political leanings, then other findings from the paper are interesting as they
 Candidate Number: 90554

show how an ethnocentric ideology can be reproduced via the agency of individuals with
a certain outlook.

The Media, the security services, and the government.

I will now attempt to address the issue of cases where the media has shown itself to
be outright inaccurate. The examples shown could only be construed as an attempt by the
media to heighten negative attitudes towards Arab-Muslims. This is done through
imagined convictions of guilt of representative individuals of the Arab-Muslim group
attaining to fundamentalist versions of Islam. This next section will show how the media
has outright falsely represented cases of supposed extremism.

Trial by media and crimes of association.

These examples were drawn from the same 58 and cited as such.

Amazingly throughout the world, only one person, Mounir al Motassadeq, has
ever been convicted in relation to the September 11th attacks. However even that
conviction has now been deemed as evidentially unsafe, as the judge criticised the US
authorities for refusing to allow testimony from a key al Qaeda captive that could prove
crucial in establishing the defendant’s guilt or innocence. On top of that the case does not
appear to rest on any substantial material evidence, except that he was a friend of the
Hamburg September 11 hijackers. In this case and in many like it, the bias of the
intelligence services, the police and the media has combined with the current
political/ideological agenda to create a culture of suspicion against Muslims (58).

Trial by media

The cases (cited from (58)) below illuminate how intelligence services and the police
are often the only sources of information for the media, which in turn then feed off them
to construct alarmist and distorted pictures of spectacular threats. Speeches are made in
 Candidate Number: 90554

parliament demonising the accused, and police and intelligence services are praised for
foiling devastating plots and preserving ‘national’ security. The mainstream media are a
substitute for the court, as the press becomes not only the arena where the suspect is tried,
but judge and jury too.

The first example is the case of 28 Pakistani street vendors arrested in Naples in
January 2003. These people were arrested on suspicion of ‘association with the aim of
international terrorism, possession of illegal explosive material, falsification of
documents and trafficking’. (59) The press instantly reported that an ‘al-Qaeda terrorist
cell’ had been uncovered, saying that an anonymous police source claimed that a plot to
assassinate Britain’s chief of defence staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce had been foiled,
alongside plots to attack the US consulate in Naples and nearby tourist spots from
Pompeii to Capri. The explosive material found ‘could’, said the police official, ‘have
blown up a ten-storey building’. (59) It was ominously added that religious texts in Urdu
and other documents had also been found in the men’s apartment, as well as photos of
‘martyrs of the Jihad’.(59). Friends told the press that the street vendors had been living
in appalling conditions in a room in a building rented from the local mafia, one of the
substances seized was a kind of sugar sent from Pakistan, and the ‘fanatical texts’ cited
by the police were nothing more than laminated prayer cards from the Koran. Needless to
say, the judge ordered the release of all twenty-eight two weeks after the arrest. There
was no evidence of any link to al Qaeda and they had not been aware of the explosives in
the flat, probably planted there by the mafia owners. (58)

Another case, the so-called ‘ricin plot’ to poison commuters on the London
underground, is a good demonstration of the hysterical nature of the interplay between
the intelligence ‘services’, media and government (60). This story first emerged in the
UK on 17th November 2002, when the Sunday Times claimed, on the front page, that MI5
had foiled a poison gas attack on the underground. Due to the ‘Terrorism Act (2000)’(
source this to the home office website) six men were arrested as they were said to be part
of an al Qaeda network operating out of Europe, and had been planning to release a ‘gas
bomb’ on a crowded tube train. Home Secretary David Blunkett described the men as part
 Candidate Number: 90554

of a ‘terrorist cell’. (61) When the six men appeared in court no allegations were made
about explosives or chemicals and no claim was made that they had any materials to
make the bombs, later Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott had to admit that there was
no evidence of any plan for a gas or bomb attack (62). Even though the results of the
‘ricin’ trials came to nothing, the story of the ‘ricin plot’ had developed a life of its own,
being linked to, and ‘verifying’ many other instances of supposed terrorist activities. For
example, the security services in Ireland told the press that anti-terrorist and military
intelligence were on full alert after fears that associates of those charged in the ‘ricin plot’
were moving to Ireland to escape the huge police pressure in British cities.(63). In
January 2004 in France, a Muslim family was arrested on suspicion of providing
logistical support for Muslim fighters in Chechnya, were linked to the ricin plot (64). The
Spanish case of the 16 North Africans, whom died in jail with no cases drawn up of their
manslaughter, (65) was linked to a major ‘ricin scare’ which was immediately linked to
the ‘UK ricin plot’, the defendants were said to be in possession of a white powder. A
press release followed this up by claiming that these men had ‘provided information and
support to other ‘Islamic terror groups’, had explosives, used chemical products and had
connections with terror cells in Britain and France’ (66). The president of Spain at the
time, President Aznar, declared at a press conference that the men ‘comprised an
important network of terrorists connected to al Qaeda’ and that their arrests brought to
attention the importance of ‘the danger of terrorist groups getting hold of [weapons] of
mass destruction’ (66).

This pre-emptive action was congratulated as such by president bush, and, in a speech
to the UN Security Council, US secretary Colin Powell presented in a slide show linking
the suspects to the London ’ricin plotters’, and also as an example of the links between
Baghdad and bin Laden. After all this prejudicial coverage the case against these 16
North Africans collapsed before it was even brought to trial, as the flasks and bottles
containing what was said to contain explosives and chemical products contained nothing
more that household ammonia, washing powder, cologne, olive oil and honey. (67)
 Candidate Number: 90554

Many similar cases have had similar results before and since, but are too numerous to
list here (58). Gareth Peirce, a UK human rights lawyer noted the ’tidal wave of
contemptuous coverage, putting in jeopardy any hope of a fair trial’, and ‘in the
punishing climate, media fury stands in for due process, for so weak are some of the
‘cases’ initiated, many do not come to trial at all.’ (68)

This stating of the details of the cases, for example is important, as I have
demonstrated above, when the details of the cases are not presented and only the titles of
the media reports are empirically analysed then a different evaluation could be reached.

Discussion:

Through trying to highlight the possible psychological mechanisms and

implementation of ethnocentric perspectives through the media, I have attempted to
provide a possible answer to question of the usage and the effectiveness of agency, as
compared to autonomous ideologies and attitudes. It is true that there are psychological
relationships between implicit associations and explicit prejudice, and a broadly general
conclusion would be that ethnocentric ideology can be thought of as a possible facilitator
in this degree. The power of suggestion can be a useful tool to those inclined to benefit
from an ideology shared by the public. Here the point that Sumner (1906) made all those
years ago about the ethnocentrisms of attitude, ideology, and action being inextricably
linked together, and mutually reinforcing, can be argued to be as true today as it was back
then. The question of agency on public opinions and feelings of the in-group towards the
out-group opens up a whole barrel of worms, as we ask ourselves, is the old Orientalism
as genuine as the neo-Orientalism?
The media record can to a certain extent provide a veritable record of the political
and social-psychological relationships, and would make an interesting study. This could
also give much depth to current studies. What this study opens up are more questions
about a possible informational conflict than should be evaluated, this is a relevant
question to ask as this dissertation shows quite clearly the physical and explicit
discrimination and physical actions felt by the Arab-Muslim community. Biased
 Candidate Number: 90554

information can build upon inter-group bias and legitimise latent prejudice; this is
something which has to be dealt with. Nowadays it is almost expected of the media to
produce spin and scandalous story telling to grip the observer and to sell newspapers,
however what is most interesting, let alone worrying, is how the government figureheads
are treating the media spin as evidence. This is quite revealing as to the purpose of that
spin, if its creation has in itself been associated with security and governmental
institutions.
This may all serve to discredit the mainstream media for some, and more and
more people are turning to alternative sources of information. If there is much scope to
the proposed psychological possibility of implicit prejudice leading to the creation of a
close-minded person (33), then there could be some split in the opinions of the public,
between those taking heed of historical warning signs and those being lulled further and
further into the ethnocentric status quo. This information war, as suggested above, can be
exemplified by the case of the al-Jazeera journalist released recently, after being held in
Guantánamo Bay without charge for 6 years. This has been described by the International
Federation of Journalists as the ‘continuation of a concerted campaign against the Arab
Media in general, and al-Jazeera in particular’ (69).

“Greeting the news of his release, Clive Stafford Smith said, "This is wonderful
news, and long overdue. The US administration has never had any reason for holding Mr.
al-Haj, and has, instead, spent six years shamelessly attempting to turn him against his
employers at al-Jazeera. We at Reprieve send him our best wishes as he is reunited with
his wife and his seven-year old son Mohammed, whom he has not seen since Mohammed
was a baby." (70)

As this example, along with others being held without trial, alongside the 16
North African’s suspicious deaths, and the many killed in the Iraq war, the question is
what exactly is this ‘irresponsible’ agency prepared to put up as ‘truth’ in that hypnotic
box we call the TV?
 Candidate Number: 90554

As Rokeach (1960) strongly suggests through empirical evidence brought from an

analysis of the level of perceived dogmatism, suggests the more real the threat the more
real the dogmatism. Dogmatism here is expressed by both the severity of punishment
towards deviators and the degree of absolutism of the threat. His data set is of a 1200-
year period from the Papal Encyclicals; maybe we should therefore pay heed to this
analysis and ask the questions, which may seem silly at this point: if there is some degree
of agency behind the perception of conflict, then to what degree is this the case? And,
how real is the threat going to get?
Either way I argue that we cannot remain limited to the discussion of how media
images ‘inform definitional imperatives’ (72) and how in turn these definitional
imperatives inform the dissemination of media images, as this discourse leaves out the
evaluation of the extent of agency. If we are to predict with greater accuracy through
social, anthropological, political and psychological perspectives of the impact of the
forces at work then an analysis of the degree of intention is imperative.

The question therefore remains, how natural is Arab-Muslim prejudice?

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 Candidate Number: 90554

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Home Office, 2001). Also available at the Research Development and Statistics Directorate’s
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including Smail Boudjelthia, have been placed under administrative detention. It is alleged that
they manipulated their mobile phones in a way similar to the Bali and Madrid bombers. An initial
accusation that they provided logistical support to a French Algerian cell that planned to bomb the
Strasbourg Christmas market has also been resurrected.” From - Liz Fekete. Anti-Muslim Racism
and the European Security State. Race & Class, Vol. 46, No. 1, 3-29 (2004)
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Pride CR: The New Centennial Review - Volume 6, Number 2, Fall 2006, pp. 245-266
Candidate Number: 90554