World Economic Forum: Islam and the West Dialogue - PART II

This is the second-part of a three-part series. Part I is available here

Authors: Sacha Evans, Christian Kolmer, Roland Schatz.
Research Team: Yasser Abu Mulaiek, Sohail Akhtar, Dewi Astuti, Zuzana Beluska, Ali Reza Davari, Simon Jakobs, Stella Kallaghe, Atif Mussadaq, Derya Özdeniz, Denice Schaper, Dimitri Soibel.

PART II

Analysis: actors in the news

Across all reporting on Muslim-West issues (290,452 statements), protagonists – the main actors in a statement in the news – were more often identified with a country than with a religion. In more than 44.4% of statements, protagonists were identified with a country in the Muslim world – more than 40% from Palestine and another 40% from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon or Iran. Nearly 84% of these protagonists were engaged in political or militant activities.

The abundance of reporting on protagonists from Muslim majority countries can be attributed primarily to the fact that journalists from the Muslim world produced most of the reporting on Muslim-West issues and covered them more heavily. In the 12 Muslim majority countries analyzed, actors identified with Muslim majority countries were the focus of 56.2% of statements, while actors identified with countries outside the Muslim world were the focus of 28.3% of statements. Conversely, journalists in non-Muslim majority countries focused more on actors outside the Muslim world. Most of these protagonists were American or Israeli (76.3%).

Christians were covered the most neutrally of all protagonists, with 6.7% negative statements. But they only received a high volume of reporting in media outlets outside the Muslim world, which devoted 11.6% of their coverage to them. Media from Muslim majority countries devoted less than 1% of their coverage to Christians, nearly half of which focused on Catholics.

Media outlets outside the Muslim world provided most of the coverage of Jewish protagonists (86%) and covered them with a significantly more neutral tone, with 6.1% negative statements in non-Muslim majority countries as opposed to 44.5% negative statements in Muslim majority countries. This was the largest difference in tone in any of the major protagonists.

Although not covered heavily, protagonists representing secular ideologies were covered particuarly negatively in Muslim majority countries, rating 41.4% negative statements. They were covered with a rating of 26.3% negative statements outside the Muslim world.

Whereas most religious protagonists were depicted involved in religious activities in most coverage (75% of statements), Islamic protagonists were more often depicted involved in political or military activities (55%). Journalists depicted Islamic protagonists engaged in religious activities in only 23% of statements.

In media outlets within the Muslim world, journalists were more likely to present Muslims engaged in political activities (29.7% of statements). In media outside the Muslim world, journalists presented Muslims involved in militant activities (36.1% of statements). Media from both areas presented Muslims engaged in religious activities with about the same frequency.

The fundamentalist perspective was most visible in media reporting on Muslims, with 12% of statements, compared with an average of 1% of statements involving other religious protagonists. Partially as a result of these perspectives, the overall tone towards Islamic protagonists was more negative (overall rating 24.5% negative statements) than that which was communicated toward Jewish (9.5%) and Christian (6.7%) protagonists.

US President George W. Bush was the single most heavily covered protagonist in all the coverage of Muslim-West issues. (Figure 6.) Like most religious and political leaders who received more frequent and neutral coverage in their home countries and cultures, he was covered much more heavily and neutrally in media outside the Muslim world, with an overall rating 11.9% negative statements versus 27.0% in non-Muslim majority countries. The only country whose media rated him more neutrally than the US media was Saudi Arabia.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was covered with the next greatest frequency of all individual protagonists. The tone that journalists in both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority countries communicated towards him was more balanced than that communicated towards President Bush (overall rating 1.3% negative statements), partially because Muslim majority countries covered him three times as frequently and neutrally. However, Palestinian media were the second most negative in their portrayal of President Abbas behind Russian media.

Pope Benedict XVI had an even more balanced image (overall rating 0.4% negative statements). But he only received a high degree of coverage in media from non-Muslim majority countries, which produced 93.1% of the reporting on him. Spain and Italy produced nearly half the reporting on him and did so with a positive overall tone.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had the most positive image of all of these most visible leaders, largely because they both had an overall rating of more than 78% positive statements in Iranian media. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had the most negative image of any leader. Iranian media covered him with a rating of 61.3% negative statements – the most negative image in any country. Overall, media covered him more negatively than they covered Osama bin Laden.

The most visible organizations involved in Muslim-West issues were Muslim political organizations. (Figure 7.) On the whole, these organizations had a less neutral media image compared with individuals. In reporting from both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority countries, the most visible organizations were political and from the Muslim world.

The organization with the biggest difference in tone between Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority countries was Hezbollah, which received a rating of 6.8% negative statements in media inside the Muslim world and 22.0% negative statements in media outside the Muslim world. Interestingly, media from Muslim majority countries covered Fatah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda more negatively than media outside the Muslim world.

Evaluating the “other”

To characterize the tone of both the way content is presented and the content itself, two coding variables were employed in the analysis. The first measures explicit tone – the positive, negative and neutral attributes of language. The second takes into account contextual information – the positive, negative and neutral situations described in a text.

Whereas explicit ratings capture descriptions of praise and criticism, implicit ratings measure the extent to which surrounding circumstances are positive and negative. Results on both criteria must maintain a standard above 80% intercoder reliability to be included in the study.

Implicit ratings are generally more common than explicit ratings are. In the coverage of Muslim-West relations, the overall explicit rating was 7.6% negative statements; the overall implicit was 27.0% negative statements. This means that media reported on people involved in negative situations more often than they made explicit judgments about the people in those situations.

For media from Muslim majority countries, the following types of protagonists would be categorized as the “other”:
· Officials and members of the public from non-Muslim majority countries.
· Representatives of Western religions (Judaism and Christianity).

For media from non-Muslim majority countries, the following types of protagonists would be categorized as the “other”:
· Officials and members of the public from Muslim majority countries.
· Representatives of Islam.

In general, media from Muslim majority countries were more polarized, presenting a higher share of both implicit and explicit ratings. Media outside the Muslim world provided more neutral reporting. Iran’s media was the most polarized of any country with 28.2% neutral statements. Saudi Arabia’s was the most neutral (81.3%).

Media from both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority countries presented more explicit as well as implicit criticisms of actors from the “other” side than they did of actors representing their own country or religion. In media from non-Muslim majority countries, the explicit rating toward actors representing Islam or Muslim majority country contained approximately 11.1% negative statements. The explicit rating towards protagonists from Western religions and countries was 3.6% negative.

This difference in tone was even more striking in media from Muslim majority countries, which presented explicit criticisms in 14.3% of statements involving actors from Western religions or non-Muslim majority countries and explicit criticisms in only 6.2% of the statements involving protagonists representing Islam or Muslim majority countries.

In Muslim majority countries, TV outlets were more balanced than print outlets in their portrayal of the “other” side (overall rating showed 41.3% negative statements in print versus 34.2% negative statements in TV). In non-Muslim majority countries, the opposite was true: print outlets were more neutral, presenting an overall negative rating of 33.1% towards the “other” in TV coverage versus 22.9% negative statements in print.

Analysis: Patterns Across Issue Areas

Media outlets in North America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East covered dialogue issues more heavily than media outlets from other regions. This is largely because these three regions devoted a high share of coverage to the first issue area – international politics.

Figure 8: Coverage of Issue Areas by Region

Part III is available here. Part I is available here.

For further information on Media Tenor visit: www.MediaTenor.com.

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