Media help: *Thanks for help has been removed. - Help.com

First part of dissertation

Right as promised here is the current progress on my undergraduate final year dissertation. It is worth 1/3rd of the year and has to be 12,000 words. This is the first 1000 words or so.

The question I am researching is:

The Sun newspaper’s representation of Islam in the 2006 coverage of the war in Lebanon.

Here is my proposed PLAN:

The Sun newspaper’s representation of Islam in the 2006 coverage of the
war in Lebanon.

1.Introduction

2.Literature Review:
I)Dominant discourses about Islam in the West
I) During Cold War/Iranian Revolution
II)After 9/11 and 7/7 to present
III) Impact of dominant discourses for the understanding of Muslims in the West and UK. (Racism and Islamophobia?).

3.Methodology
I) Theory: Media representation (influence+power)
II)Methods: Discourse analysis, words used, dates used, etc.

4.Data Analysis: Description of how Sun socially constructs ‘Islam’
I) General findings: Range of terms, frequency of each
II) Dominant discourses (suicide bomber etc…).

5. Impact of dominant representations of Islam in UK on:
I) Attitudes by non-Muslims toward Muslims
II)Attitudes of Muslims toward non-Muslims

6. Wider security implications in UK on:
I) Muslims treated as ’suspect community’

7. Limitations/Conclusion.

Here is the first part of the third section

3.Methodology
I) Theory: Media representation (influence+power)

The Sun is Britain’s best selling tabloid newspaper, yet little is known about its institutional linkages. However, what is known is that the Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch, part of the News International company. The company is part of the larger News Corporation which has vast control over hundreds of medium; many television stations such as Fox along with several news channels.

Although this analysis only focuses on a single newspaper its findings are relevant to the way the media works as a whole. For instance, this paper believes that the most effective way of explaining how Western and UK media works is through the ‘propaganda model’. As Chomsky and Herman have argued, the media cannot be seen as neutral due to its corporate interests. For instance, Chomsky and Herman both claim that the media uses five filters to ‘frame’ news. Due to their significance they deserve closer analysis.

The first filter is with regards to ‘Ownership’. Due to power being concentrated in the hands of a wealthy business elite it would be unthinkable to claim that such linkages with businesses do not impact on their content.

This leads to the second filter that is in relation to the ‘Funding’ of the media. The media is a collection of many businesses that rely on advertisements for its existence. The propaganda model makes the assumption that advertisements are there to distract the ‘stupid’ majority from the occupations of the ‘real’ decision-makers, therefore ensuring that the concentration of power is maintained.

The third filter is on the issue of ‘Sourcing’. Chomsky and Herman both claim that there are too many events in the world, so journalists must be dispersed to where news ‘happens’. Again, this model claims that such a filter maintains the power of the status quo. For instance, no media organisation can afford to have a journalist everywhere so they must be taken to places where big news is likely to happen, such as Downing Street and Washington. Yet, the traditional liberal democratic view of the ‘journalist’ was an individual who questioned power, but according to Chomsky and Herman there seems to be a growing unease as to whether this can still be regarded as the case. For instance, since journalists rely on news, especially in an age of globalisation they cannot be too critical for fear of losing a major news source.

Furthermore, the next filter is ‘flak’ which Chomsky and Herman both explain as the negative impacts associated with writing against establishment views. It is an intentional management of public information with consequences that result in electing politicians that call for more arbitrary regulations on press freedom.

The final filter explained in Chomsky and Herman’s text is that of ‘Anti-Ideologies’. For the purpose of this dissertation this is probably the most important, as it refers to the deliberate exaggeration of threatening ideologies. For instance, during the Cold war the prevailing ideology was ‘anti-communism’. Yet, it was not accidental to have a anti-communism bias in the media, since it reflected the interests of the United States’ government. A far more modern and relevant example would be an ‘Other’ that threatens the West. For instance, the ‘Other’ today has become ‘anti-terrorism’ and as a result the risk of terrorism has been inflated. Indeed, Jason Burke’s text on ‘Al Qaeda’ explains this most vividly when he states that ‘Al-Qaeda’ has become a byword for terrorism, giving the impression that it has ‘tentacles everywhere’. As Burke states such a view is false and that the reality is that Al-Qaeda does not exist as a monolithic entity. A more accurate view would be to stress that Al-Qaeda is a certain form of organisation that is common to many disaffected Muslims.

Regardless of this Chomsky and Herman’s model has been subject to criticism. In the Anti-Chomsky reader it contains numerous articles from a number of academics that claim his theory does not reflect reality. A more serious criticism attributed to his work was that Chomsky used footnotes in a dishonest way “to create a kind of pseudo-academic smog” in order to distort the reality. Yet, this does not seem very fair as the ‘filters’ explained above are relevant to the British media in general and the Sun’s demonization of Muslim’s during the Lebanon war, more generally.

For instance, Bell etc have argued that the media consistently exclude minority views and give power to elites etc. This is very dangerous as power is given to the powerful which often are more capable of abusing their position. Although this study focuses on a traditionally right-wing newspaper, Bell etc. argue from Medialense that there is a commonly held view in the United Kingdom that the liberal media are either ‘better’ or more ‘accurate’. The author strongly criticises this view and states again that corporate interests are closely connected, which reflect the absence of reporting on big companies such as Shell. As X aptly states, why would a business criticise its own product, it would be nonsensical to do so.

Furthermore, Stanley Cohen was the founder of the term ‘moral panic’ and his work serves as a useful case study to demonstrate how the United Kingdom media can distort the truth. Cohen explains how during the 1970s the Mods and Rockers phenomenon was blown out of proportion. This was done by use of a number of media devices. One device journalists used was to constrain the responses people could give in terms of how such an incident could be stopped again. The author notes that the absence of placing the threat in context, by failing to explain that such incidents were rare, gave the impression that the whole youth of the United Kingdom was becoming delinquent. The Mods and Rockers may seem far removed from the current demonization of the Muslim ‘other’, but is surprisingly closely related.

The findings of the above are confirmed in ‘Muslims and the News Media’, edited by Poole and Richardson. The text has numerous articles written by a plethora of academics which confirm that their remains a persistent anti-Arab bias in the mainstream media. Additionally, Philo and Berry both note that such biases are tantamount in the public’s understanding of the Israel-Palestine account. The evidence suggests that when the public is presented with a more neutral account that places the context in its historical setting the public often felt a greater sympathy with Israel.

It would be unfair to blame solely the media for deliberately misleading the public because other factors also play a role in the relationship between knowledge. For instance Brian McNair notes that it is vital to understand the “…pressures of the market…” that journalists work under when producing news. Furthermore, Said, despite his Orientalist and stark criticism of the western media’s representations of Muslims, he contends that other factors play a role. To add, in Terror and Taboo the author explains how the pressures of journalism allow no time to comprehend the various complexities and nuances of the debates under question. Regardless, despite the way journalism works it is clear that the Sun’s particular power structure exacerbates how it reports on the representation of Muslims. It would be fair to say that all journalists face some problems when it comes to objectivity, as due to the nature of language it cannot ever be entirely neutral. Yet, as the above has shown, the Sun has been one of the most prolific newspapers when it comes to demonising minority groups. Therefore, by discursively analysing how it does this it can be possible to expose the damaging nature of the discourse.

****NOTE: THIS IS NOT FOOTNOTED HERE BUT WILL BE IN THE FINAL VERSION. ALL EVIDENCE WILL BE BACKED UP WITH SOURCES. ADDITIONALLY, ‘X’ IMPLIES THAT THE SOURCE HAS NOT YET BEEN IDENTIFIED BUT DOES EXIST. FINALLY, I AM AWARE THAT THE PIECE CONTAINS GRAMMATICAL ERRORS POSSIBLY SPELLING ONES TOO. *****

First part of dissertation

Right as promised here is the current progress on my undergraduate final year dissertation. It is worth 1/3rd of the year and has to be 12,000 words. This is the first 1000 words or so.

The question I am researching is:

The Sun newspaper’s representation of Islam in the 2006 coverage of the war in Lebanon.

Here is my proposed PLAN:

The Sun newspaper’s representation of Islam in the 2006 coverage of the
war in Lebanon.

1.Introduction

2.Literature Review:
I)Dominant discourses about Islam in the West
I) During Cold War/Iranian Revolution
II)After 9/11 and 7/7 to present
III) Impact of dominant discourses for the understanding of Muslims in the West and UK. (Racism and Islamophobia?).

3.Methodology
I) Theory: Media representation (influence+power)
II)Methods: Discourse analysis, words used, dates used, etc.

4.Data Analysis: Description of how Sun socially constructs ‘Islam’
I) General findings: Range of terms, frequency of each
II) Dominant discourses (suicide bomber etc…).

5. Impact of dominant representations of Islam in UK on:
I) Attitudes by non-Muslims toward Muslims
II)Attitudes of Muslims toward non-Muslims

6. Wider security implications in UK on:
I) Muslims treated as ’suspect community’

7. Limitations/Conclusion.

Here is the first part of the third section

3.Methodology
I) Theory: Media representation (influence+power)

The Sun is Britain’s best selling tabloid newspaper, yet little is known about its institutional linkages. However, what is known is that the Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch, part of the News International company. The company is part of the larger News Corporation which has vast control over hundreds of medium; many television stations such as Fox along with several news channels.

Although this analysis only focuses on a single newspaper its findings are relevant to the way the media works as a whole. For instance, this paper believes that the most effective way of explaining how Western and UK media works is through the ‘propaganda model’. As Chomsky and Herman have argued, the media cannot be seen as neutral due to its corporate interests. For instance, Chomsky and Herman both claim that the media uses five filters to ‘frame’ news. Due to their significance they deserve closer analysis.

The first filter is with regards to ‘Ownership’. Due to power being concentrated in the hands of a wealthy business elite it would be unthinkable to claim that such linkages with businesses do not impact on their content.

This leads to the second filter that is in relation to the ‘Funding’ of the media. The media is a collection of many businesses that rely on advertisements for its existence. The propaganda model makes the assumption that advertisements are there to distract the ‘stupid’ majority from the occupations of the ‘real’ decision-makers, therefore ensuring that the concentration of power is maintained.

The third filter is on the issue of ‘Sourcing’. Chomsky and Herman both claim that there are too many events in the world, so journalists must be dispersed to where news ‘happens’. Again, this model claims that such a filter maintains the power of the status quo. For instance, no media organisation can afford to have a journalist everywhere so they must be taken to places where big news is likely to happen, such as Downing Street and Washington. Yet, the traditional liberal democratic view of the ‘journalist’ was an individual who questioned power, but according to Chomsky and Herman there seems to be a growing unease as to whether this can still be regarded as the case. For instance, since journalists rely on news, especially in an age of globalisation they cannot be too critical for fear of losing a major news source.

Furthermore, the next filter is ‘flak’ which Chomsky and Herman both explain as the negative impacts associated with writing against establishment views. It is an intentional management of public information with consequences that result in electing politicians that call for more arbitrary regulations on press freedom.

The final filter explained in Chomsky and Herman’s text is that of ‘Anti-Ideologies’. For the purpose of this dissertation this is probably the most important, as it refers to the deliberate exaggeration of threatening ideologies. For instance, during the Cold war the prevailing ideology was ‘anti-communism’. Yet, it was not accidental to have a anti-communism bias in the media, since it reflected the interests of the United States’ government. A far more modern and relevant example would be an ‘Other’ that threatens the West. For instance, the ‘Other’ today has become ‘anti-terrorism’ and as a result the risk of terrorism has been inflated. Indeed, Jason Burke’s text on ‘Al Qaeda’ explains this most vividly when he states that ‘Al-Qaeda’ has become a byword for terrorism, giving the impression that it has ‘tentacles everywhere’. As Burke states such a view is false and that the reality is that Al-Qaeda does not exist as a monolithic entity. A more accurate view would be to stress that Al-Qaeda is a certain form of organisation that is common to many disaffected Muslims.

Regardless of this Chomsky and Herman’s model has been subject to criticism. In the Anti-Chomsky reader it contains numerous articles from a number of academics that claim his theory does not reflect reality. A more serious criticism attributed to his work was that Chomsky used footnotes in a dishonest way “to create a kind of pseudo-academic smog” in order to distort the reality. Yet, this does not seem very fair as the ‘filters’ explained above are relevant to the British media in general and the Sun’s demonization of Muslim’s during the Lebanon war, more generally.

For instance, Bell etc have argued that the media consistently exclude minority views and give power to elites etc. This is very dangerous as power is given to the powerful which often are more capable of abusing their position. Although this study focuses on a traditionally right-wing newspaper, Bell etc. argue from Medialense that there is a commonly held view in the United Kingdom that the liberal media are either ‘better’ or more ‘accurate’. The author strongly criticises this view and states again that corporate interests are closely connected, which reflect the absence of reporting on big companies such as Shell. As X aptly states, why would a business criticise its own product, it would be nonsensical to do so.

Furthermore, Stanley Cohen was the founder of the term ‘moral panic’ and his work serves as a useful case study to demonstrate how the United Kingdom media can distort the truth. Cohen explains how during the 1970s the Mods and Rockers phenomenon was blown out of proportion. This was done by use of a number of media devices. One device journalists used was to constrain the responses people could give in terms of how such an incident could be stopped again. The author notes that the absence of placing the threat in context, by failing to explain that such incidents were rare, gave the impression that the whole youth of the United Kingdom was becoming delinquent. The Mods and Rockers may seem far removed from the current demonization of the Muslim ‘other’, but is surprisingly closely related.

The findings of the above are confirmed in ‘Muslims and the News Media’, edited by Poole and Richardson. The text has numerous articles written by a plethora of academics which confirm that their remains a persistent anti-Arab bias in the mainstream media. Additionally, Philo and Berry both note that such biases are tantamount in the public’s understanding of the Israel-Palestine account. The evidence suggests that when the public is presented with a more neutral account that places the context in its historical setting the public often felt a greater sympathy with the Palestinians.

It would be unfair to blame solely the media for deliberately misleading the public because other factors also play a role in the relationship between knowledge. For instance Brian McNair notes that it is vital to understand the “…pressures of the market…” that journalists work under when producing news. Furthermore, Said, despite his Orientalist and stark criticism of the western media’s representations of Muslims, he contends that other factors play a role. To add, in Terror and Taboo the author explains how the pressures of journalism allow no time to comprehend the various complexities and nuances of the debates under question. Regardless, despite the way journalism works it is clear that the Sun’s particular power structure exacerbates how it reports on the representation of Muslims. It would be fair to say that all journalists face some problems when it comes to objectivity, as due to the nature of language it cannot ever be entirely neutral. Yet, as the above has shown, the Sun has been one of the most prolific newspapers when it comes to demonising minority groups. Therefore, by discursively analysing how it does this it can be possible to expose the damaging nature of the discourse.

****NOTE: THIS IS NOT FOOTNOTED HERE BUT WILL BE IN THE FINAL VERSION. ALL EVIDENCE WILL BE BACKED UP WITH SOURCES. ADDITIONALLY, ‘X’ IMPLIES THAT THE SOURCE HAS NOT YET BEEN IDENTIFIED BUT DOES EXIST. FINALLY, I AM AWARE THAT THE PIECE CONTAINS GRAMMATICAL ERRORS POSSIBLY SPELLING ONES TOO. *****

First part of dissertation

Right as promised here is the current progress on my undergraduate final year dissertation. It is worth 1/3rd of the year and has to be 12,000 words. This is the first 1000 words or so.

The question I am researching is:

The Sun newspaper’s representation of Islam in the 2006 coverage of the war in Lebanon.

Here is my proposed PLAN:

The Sun newspaper’s representation of Islam in the 2006 coverage of the
war in Lebanon.

1.Introduction

2.Literature Review:
I)Dominant discourses about Islam in the West
I) During Cold War/Iranian Revolution
II)After 9/11 and 7/7 to present
III) Impact of dominant discourses for the understanding of Muslims in the West and UK. (Racism and Islamophobia?).

3.Methodology
I) Theory: Media representation (influence+power)
II)Methods: Discourse analysis, words used, dates used, etc.

4.Data Analysis: Description of how Sun socially constructs ‘Islam’
I) General findings: Range of terms, frequency of each
II) Dominant discourses (suicide bomber etc…).

5. Impact of dominant representations of Islam in UK on:
I) Attitudes by non-Muslims toward Muslims
II)Attitudes of Muslims toward non-Muslims

6. Wider security implications in UK on:
I) Muslims treated as ’suspect community’

7. Limitations/Conclusion.

Here is the first part of the third section

3.Methodology
I) Theory: Media representation (influence+power)

The Sun is Britain’s best selling tabloid newspaper, yet little is known about its institutional linkages. However, what is known is that the Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch, part of the News International company. The company is part of the larger News Corporation which has vast control over hundreds of medium; many television stations such as Fox along with several news channels.

Although this analysis only focuses on a single newspaper its findings are relevant to the way the media works as a whole. For instance, this paper believes that the most effective way of explaining how Western and UK media works is through the ‘propaganda model’. As Chomsky and Herman have argued, the media cannot be seen as neutral due to its corporate interests. For instance, Chomsky and Herman both claim that the media uses five filters to ‘frame’ news. Due to their significance they deserve closer analysis.

The first filter is with regards to ‘Ownership’. Due to power being concentrated in the hands of a wealthy business elite it would be unthinkable to claim that such linkages with businesses do not impact on their content.

This leads to the second filter that is in relation to the ‘Funding’ of the media. The media is a collection of many businesses that rely on advertisements for its existence. The propaganda model makes the assumption that advertisements are there to distract the ‘stupid’ majority from the occupations of the ‘real’ decision-makers, therefore ensuring that the concentration of power is maintained.

The third filter is on the issue of ‘Sourcing’. Chomsky and Herman both claim that there are too many events in the world, so journalists must be dispersed to where news ‘happens’. Again, this model claims that such a filter maintains the power of the status quo. For instance, no media organisation can afford to have a journalist everywhere so they must be taken to places where big news is likely to happen, such as Downing Street and Washington. Yet, the traditional liberal democratic view of the ‘journalist’ was an individual who questioned power, but according to Chomsky and Herman there seems to be a growing unease as to whether this can still be regarded as the case. For instance, since journalists rely on news, especially in an age of globalisation they cannot be too critical for fear of losing a major news source.

Furthermore, the next filter is ‘flak’ which Chomsky and Herman both explain as the negative impacts associated with writing against establishment views. It is an intentional management of public information with consequences that result in electing politicians that call for more arbitrary regulations on press freedom.

The final filter explained in Chomsky and Herman’s text is that of ‘Anti-Ideologies’. For the purpose of this dissertation this is probably the most important, as it refers to the deliberate exaggeration of threatening ideologies. For instance, during the Cold war the prevailing ideology was ‘anti-communism’. Yet, it was not accidental to have a anti-communism bias in the media, since it reflected the interests of the United States’ government. A far more modern and relevant example would be an ‘Other’ that threatens the West. For instance, the ‘Other’ today has become ‘anti-terrorism’ and as a result the risk of terrorism has been inflated. Indeed, Jason Burke’s text on ‘Al Qaeda’ explains this most vividly when he states that ‘Al-Qaeda’ has become a byword for terrorism, giving the impression that it has ‘tentacles everywhere’. As Burke states such a view is false and that the reality is that Al-Qaeda does not exist as a monolithic entity. A more accurate view would be to stress that Al-Qaeda is a certain form of organisation that is common to many disaffected Muslims.

Regardless of this Chomsky and Herman’s model has been subject to criticism. In the Anti-Chomsky reader it contains numerous articles from a number of academics that claim his theory does not reflect reality. A more serious criticism attributed to his work was that Chomsky used footnotes in a dishonest way “to create a kind of pseudo-academic smog” in order to distort the reality. Yet, this does not seem very fair as the ‘filters’ explained above are relevant to the British media in general and the Sun’s demonization of Muslim’s during the Lebanon war, more generally.

For instance, Bell etc have argued that the media consistently exclude minority views and give power to elites etc. This is very dangerous as power is given to the powerful which often are more capable of abusing their position. Although this study focuses on a traditionally right-wing newspaper, Bell etc. argue from Medialense that there is a commonly held view in the United Kingdom that the liberal media are either ‘better’ or more ‘accurate’. The author strongly criticises this view and states again that corporate interests are closely connected, which reflect the absence of reporting on big companies such as Shell. As X aptly states, why would a business criticise its own product, it would be nonsensical to do so.

Furthermore, Stanley Cohen was the founder of the term ‘moral panic’ and his work serves as a useful case study to demonstrate how the United Kingdom media can distort the truth. Cohen explains how during the 1970s the Mods and Rockers phenomenon was blown out of proportion. This was done by use of a number of media devices. One device journalists used was to constrain the responses people could give in terms of how such an incident could be stopped again. The author notes that the absence of placing the threat in context, by failing to explain that such incidents were rare, gave the impression that the whole youth of the United Kingdom was becoming delinquent. The Mods and Rockers may seem far removed from the current demonization of the Muslim ‘other’, but is surprisingly closely related.

The findings of the above are confirmed in ‘Muslims and the News Media’, edited by Poole and Richardson. The text has numerous articles written by a plethora of academics which confirm that their remains a persistent anti-Arab bias in the mainstream media. Additionally, Philo and Berry both note that such biases are tantamount in the public’s understanding of the Israel-Palestine account. The evidence suggests that when the public is presented with a more neutral account that places the context in its historical setting the public often felt a greater sympathy with the Palestinians.

It would be unfair to blame solely the media for deliberately misleading the public because other factors also play a role in the relationship between power and knowledge. For instance Brian McNair notes that it is vital to understand the “…pressures of the market…” that journalists work under when producing news. Furthermore, Said, despite his Orientalist and stark criticism of the western media’s representations of Muslims, he contends that other factors play a role. To add, in Terror and Taboo the author explains how the pressures of journalism allow no time to comprehend the various complexities and nuances of the debates under question. Regardless, despite the way journalism works it is clear that the Sun’s particular power structure exacerbates how it reports on the representation of Muslims. It would be fair to say that all journalists face some problems when it comes to objectivity, as due to the nature of language it cannot ever be entirely neutral. Yet, as the above has shown, the Sun has been one of the most prolific newspapers when it comes to demonising minority groups. Therefore, by discursively analysing how it does this it can be possible to expose the damaging nature of the discourse.

****NOTE: THIS IS NOT FOOTNOTED HERE BUT WILL BE IN THE FINAL VERSION. ALL EVIDENCE WILL BE BACKED UP WITH SOURCES. ADDITIONALLY, ‘X’ IMPLIES THAT THE SOURCE HAS NOT YET BEEN IDENTIFIED BUT DOES EXIST. FINALLY, I AM AWARE THAT THE PIECE CONTAINS GRAMMATICAL ERRORS POSSIBLY SPELLING ONES TOO. *****