By Chris Beswetherick
On Feb. 15, the Western Library’s Reading Series featured Assistant Professor of Journalism Brian J. Bowe to give a lecture entitled “Framing Islam: How media coverage shapes perceptions of Muslim neighbors and Islamic threats.”
Bowe earned his Ph.D. in Media and Information Studies from Michigan State University. His current research investigates how journalists portray their subjects.
In the past decade, a vast amount of journalists have covered events in the Middle East as a result of war and terrorism. The information that airs then spreads throughout the world and this coverage has a strong effect on the perception of the Middle East.
The media’s role becomes controversial when they share information that misrepresents a group of people, as that leads to stereotypes and racism. In the context of war and violence, consumers come to associate those negatives with the images published by the source and make conclusions based on that combination.
In fact, a poll by Gallup in 2010 reported 43 percent of people in the United States expressed islamophobia. In a previous paper Bowe participated in, “U.S. Newspapers Provide Nuanced Picture of Islam,” he researched how various sources have fostered the increase of islamophobia among the population.
“One basic assumption of framing theory is that communicators, journalists and audiences do not simply mirror political events or topics,” the paper stated. “Rather, political issues are subject to different patterns of selections and interpretations.”
In his lecture, Bowe discussed the concept of framing, which is a deliberate process of deciding what content to show in order to convey an idea or interpretation of an event. The conveyed idea holds a lot of influence and can perpetuate negative beliefs toward groups of people.
The challenge is to frame something objectively and representatively. It is difficult to truly mirror a political event or topic exactly. However, it is noticeable when sources do vary with the amount of opinionated content in their framing.
Bowe discussed the building of mosques in the United States and how, as a result of an increase in their numbers, others reacted. The approaches to the story contain information that vary visibly due to opinion and ideology.
Some news sources took non-objective stances and others were objective. The difference between the sources were the quotes and questions they included in their reporting.
One source shared quotes from people saying racist comments about Muslims, while another asked simple questions, like, “what is a mosque?” Bowe noticed the differences in each source’s framing. As a former journalist, Bowe uses objectivity to help guide his research so he investigated the consequences of poor and biased representation.
He also considers sources that express islamophilia; even positively-spun news can be perceived negatively by those on the other end. It is a difference between opinionated or objective.
The lecture successfully demystified and aided in the audience’s knowledge of Muslims, and how stereotypes are created by media misrepresentations.