Media And Collective Fear: Has mass media contributed to create an atmosphere of collective fear addressing Islamic terrorism?

Roldao, Ana Paula (2018) Media And Collective Fear: Has mass media contributed to create an atmosphere of collective fear addressing Islamic terrorism? masters thesis, Griffith College Dublin.

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Abstract

Mass media has played a central role in the construction of the Islamist terrorist stereotype into the audience imaginary. The lack of representation of Islamic communities in the press, and a partial and bias coverage about terrorist attacks not only increase intolerance and xenophobia but also is collaborated to build a perception of an unsafe society. The aim of this research is finding if the mass media has collaborated to the increasingly popular perception of Islamic Terrorism as a global threat, by stereotyping the Muslim community out and in the West. Principal finds shown that since the coverage of the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks until the end of 2015, the association of the word ‘Islamic’ with the word ‘terrorist’ has increased in the media channels. One of the reasons for this rise is the polarised narrative presented by the newspapers which mainly reproduced Western discourse Findings also displayed an unbalance in the portrayal of victims of terrorism. This portrayal tended to humanise the Western victims and dehumanise the Eastern ones, what might impact in the choice of the audience to support one side and ignore the other one.

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