How Social Media as a Discourse Community Contributes to Islamophobia - Research Paper Example

How Social Media as a Discourse Community Contributes to Islamophobia Name: Institution: Date: Abstract The research sought to establish how social media as a discourse community contributes to Islamophobia. An online survey was created on SurveyMonkey.com website and posted online. A URL link to the survey was subsequently emailed to the participants. The sample size N = 243 but this reduced to N=242 after one respondent did not participate in the research. 98 were female while 38 were male. The sample comprised of peers on social media and students in university. Majority of the respondents, 40.85%, used social media daily while 40.85% used social media on hourly basis. Many of the respondents, 23.78%, often used Twitter as a social media site followed by Instagram 23.08%, YouTube 18.88% and Facebook 13.99% respectively. Over 50% of the respondents disagreed that Islam is cruel, bigoted and unreasonable religion. Social media is often used to spread anti-Islamic messages. The findings supported RQ2 and RQ3 but did not support the first research question. The rise of discourse community on social media brings about a challenge with regard to tolerance and hate messages directed towards certain virtual groups on social media. How often people see anti-Islamic messages impact their perception of whether the social media is the main reason for spreading anti-Islam posts. Key words: Islamophobia, Muslims, Islam, social media The growth and expansion of the internet has created various positive opportunities for people to engage and communicate. The Internet plays an important role in controlling and shaping public opinion with regard to a new paradigm involving power relations. Islam presence within the social media is outstanding. The media in many circumstances overestimates the number of Muslims that live within their borders and this causes a problem in dealing with issues surrounding Islam. There is an obsession within the mainstream media as well as academic discourse regarding to Islam and the West and some sentiments through the media have contributed to Islamophobia. There are so many things that are inaccurate concerning Muslims which are peddled through the main stream media and have the impact of perpetuating hatred and resentment towards the Muslim community across the globe. Untruths and myths peddled about Islam and Muslims has intensified Islamophobia in some countries in the West. Audiences that are not discerning to identify the malicious information that directed to cement a certain perception end up believing everything they read from the media. Mainstream media must have editorial regulations that will ensure no single group is targeted for negative publicity. Islamophobia is wide spreading owing to the happening in the world that has seen extremists use Islam to persecute in non-Muslims in countries where Islam is the dominant religion. Social media as a discourse community has played a part in perpetuating the narrative. This study seeks to establish how social media as a discourse community has contributed to Islamophobia. Literature Review The expansion and growth of Internet has resulted in many positive opportunities for people to communicate as well as engage in a manner. It has also resulted into a double-edged sword through creating an online platform and vacuum for people applying hate to appeal to a broader audience under the cloak of anonymity that provides a chance of going beyond as well as bypassing editorial regulation and control (Awan, 2016). Consequently the Internet offers new opportunities for cyber-bullying. Awan (2016) further points out that Online hate speech, incitement; bullying and threats of violence have become a major issue for the police, social media networks, policy makers, and Crown Prosecution Service. It is an offence in England and Wales to stir up as well as incite hatred using illegal hate content on the basis of religion, race, and sexual orientation (Awan, 2016). Messages have the potential of being spread at a very fast pace while people remain anonymous while the cyberspace nature remains unregulated. There is increased interest in naming and categorization of discriminatory discourses concerning Islam and Muslims for the purpose of challenging and contesting them. Cheng (2015) argue that the challenge is that traditional categories addressing discrimination do not apply to ‘Muslims’ as group but transcend categories of nationality, race, ethnicity as well as skin colour since any person can choose to be Muslim. Nevertheless, this is against the fact that no one can choose to be born within a Muslim family or be born in a Muslim society. Perspectives that someone can change or hide one’s religion but not his skin colour are discriminatory making Muslims to change aspects of themselves as well as forgo some belief with the purpose of preventing vilification and discrimination. Cheng (2015) points out that Owing to the manner in which Islam, ethnicity, race and religious dress are conflated; the question of naming the discrimination against Muslims and Islam still remains problematic. Islam and Muslims as people are sometime inaccurately identified by such things like names, dress and physical appearance. Islamophobia remains the common term that has been used to describe such kind of discrimination (Cheng, 2015). Other terms used include anti-Muslimism, Muslimophobia, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Muslim hate and anti-Muslim prejudice. Media usually shape and craft actively public opinion as opposed to mirroring it. Some people still believe new in the media that they are fed with facts rather than opinions or editorialized facts. Aguilera-Carnerero and Azeez (2016) observe that in the modern world social media is commencing to change the nature and form of the media in turn bringing about different and new challenges. Boundaries have been pushed in social media sphere on what can and cannot be said and the audiences involved. In many circumstances media does no longer serve challenging hegemonic discourses and narratives disseminated by government. Majorly they often act as a fourth branch of government as well as a mouth through which the narratives are normalized and disseminated to the public (Aguilera-Carnerero and Azeez, 2016). Media and religion when they are taken together they undermine the longstanding academic narratives of clear-cut separation between private and public, the personal and institutional, offline and online (Ogan, 2014). The media to a great extend overestimate the population of Muslims living within the borders of their countries (Navarro, 2010). In Ipsos Mory study any average French individual overestimated that Muslims accounted for 31 percent of French population when in real sense it is about 5 percent (Yang et al, 2011). The major cause of such kinds of gross misconceptions is owing to constant content publication within the press highlighting as well as hyperbolizing the Immigration Crisis in the country. According to Chaudhry (2016), when the media make such gross errors, they become a cause of physical brutalization meted out to Muslim citizens. In some recent notable examples of French Islamophobic was an attack on a Moroccan man whereby he was stabbed 17 times while his killer declared “I am your God, I am your Islam.” Further, twenty-six mosques in France were attacked with gunfire, firebombs, grenades and pig heads. Figures from French National Observatory Against Islamophobia indicate that there a total of sixty Islamophobic incidents reported. Since such gross estimation and miscalculations happen it shows the level at which the media can lead to reality obscurity as opposed to presenting it (Chaudhry, 2016). This negates the objective of the media of creating informed citizens. The goal of creating citizens who are informed is realizing social cohesion but bias by the media as well as the passive adoption of Islamophobic narrative only help to strengthen the deeply embedded political and social antagonism and aggravate an environment of hate (Seib, 2012). Facebook is one of the fastest growing social media platforms. By the end of 2013 Facebook had close to 1.23 billion active users as well as about 757 million users who logged onto Facebook daily (Awan, 2016) This space has also led to increase in online virtual communities together with hate groups who use the space in sharing Islamophobic, violent and racist narrative that targets to create a hostile virtual environment (Awan, 2016) There is an increase in online anti-Muslim abuse and Islamophobia on social media. There are gaps in the current literature with regard to the impact of social media in contributing to Islamophobia. Such gaps prompt the need of this research to establish the link between the use of social media and Islamophobia. The following are research questions for this research. Research Questions RQ1: Does how often people see anti-Islamic messages on social media contribute to Islamophobia? RQ2: Is there a relationship between how often people see anti-Islam messages and their perception of widespread hatred of Muslims on social media? RQ3: Is there a relationship between how often people see anti-Islamic posts on social media and their perception of whether social media is the main reason for the spreading of anti-Islam messages? Method The research design involved deciding on the methods of collecting, recording, analyzing and interpretation and presentation of data. The timelines of achieving every task was planned according to schedule from formulating hypothesis, preparation of research instruments, testing research instruments, administering questionnaires, collecting data, analyzing, interpretation and presentation. The research instrument comprised of online survey questionnaire administered online. The survey question included multiple choices as well as rating scales. The research instrument was tested for reliability and accuracy to avoid misinterpretation of questions. The sample size comprised of 143 adults aged 18 years and above. The participants were peers on social media as well as university students. The questionnaires were prepared and tested to determine any ambiguity in the question being asked using a small pilot sample. Snowball sampling was used for the purpose of spreading the survey. The survey was posted on the social media and sent to students in the university. An online survey was created on SurveyMonkey.com website and posted online. A URL link to the survey was subsequently emailed to the participants. The participants had to fill out the questionnaires. Another link was shared on the social media. Out of the 142 participant 1 did not respond to the online survey questionnaire. 98 of the sample population were female while 44 were male. The frequency of use of social media was measured against the number of respondents. The research sought to establish the relationship between Islamophobia and racism. Results ANOVA was used to test the research question. RQ1 was not supported by the findings. The test value (f) was less than 1, degree of freedom (df) was = 4, and the significance value (p) was also less than 1. This question was answered by the survey question 7 and question 8 where Q7= nominal and Q8= internal. One-way nova was applied. There is no significant relationship on the frequency of seeing anti-Islam messages on social media and Islamophobia. RQ2 was supported by the study. The test value (f) was 6.502, df was 4 and p was zero. One way nova was applied. There significant relationship between how often people saw anti-Islam messages and their perception of widespread hatred of Muslims on social media. This means that the more often people are exposed to anti-Islam messages, the more they agree that hatred on Muslim is widespread on social media. RQ3 was supported by the research. The test value (f) was 4.520, degree of freedom =4 and significance value was less than one. One-way nova was applied on research question. There is a direct relationship between how often people see anti-Islamic messages on social media and their perception of whether the social media is the main reason for spreading anti-Islam posts. 42.96% of the respondents were holders of bachelor’s degrees, 26.06% college/university education, 21.83% Master’s degree and only 4.93% had high school education. Majority of the respondents admitted to using social media daily (40.85%) while a good number, 40.85% used social media hourly. 23.78% of the respondent said that Twitter was the social media site that they often used. This was the highest percentage. It was followed by Instagram 23.08%, YouTube 18.88% and Facebook 13.99%. While 20.28% of the respondents confessed using other sites apart from mentioned sites. When the participants were asked to characterize the relationship between racism and Islamophobia, 30.99% of the respondents had the view that racism and Islamophobia are closely related while 39.44% disputed that there is any relations existing between racism and Islamophobia. 29.58% of the sample population reckoned that racism and Islamophobia are somewhat related. Majority of the respondents (40.43%) agreed that hatred of Muslim is prevalent on social media, 16.31% strongly agreed; 17.73% disagreed while 9.22% strongly disagreed; 21.28% were of neural opinion. Many respondents (39.01%) disagreed that Muslims are regarded as outsiders since their lifestyle is different from other people, 26.24% strongly disagreed, 22.7% were neutral, 13.48% agreed while 3.55% strongly agreed. 31.21% of the sample respondents agreed that Muslims are outsiders since their culture is different from other people, 26.95% strongly disagreed; 25.53% were neutral; 17.02% agreed while 4.96% strongly agreed. 48 of the respondents representing 34.04% of the sample population disagreed that Muslims are outsiders since their belief system is different from other people’s, 26.24% strongly disagreed; 26.24% were of neutral position; 15.60% agreed whereas 2.84% strongly agreed. Majority of the respondents (37.59%) disagreed with the notion that Muslims are outsiders because their values are different other people’s, 24.82% strongly disagreed; 24.11% were neutral; 12.77% agreed with this notion while 2.84% strongly agreed. When asked about how frequent they saw anti-Islamic messages on social media; 34.29% said a few times in a week, 16.43 said every day, 24.29% reported a few times in a month but not every week while 17.86% claimed to have seen the messages less than a few times in a month. The remaining 7.14% claimed to have never seen anti-Islamic messages on social media. Majority of the respondents strongly disagreed (58.27%) that Islam is a cruel religion while 20.14% only disagreed. 14.39% remained neutral; 5.04% agreed while 2.88% strongly disagreed. 50% of the participants also strongly disagreed that Islam is a bigoted religion while 18.12% disagreed; 17.39% had no opinion; 10.14% agreed while 7.25% strongly agreed. 55.8% of the respondents strongly disagreed that Islam is an unreasonable religion while 26.09% disagreed; 13.04% remained neutral; 6.52% agreed while 1.45% strongly agreed. Many of the respondents agreed (38.69%) when asked whether social media is the main reason for the spreading of anti-Islam messages, 23.36% strongly agreed; 13.14% disagreed while 6.57% strongly disagreed. Discussion Many of the participants found time to engage in social media activities since most are young and have the time and energy to spend time on social media. Twitter is the preferred social media site since it is ease to tweet and few number of characters are required to make a post. Following celebrities and other important figures in the society makes it easy for the individual to get any breaking news that happens across the world. There was a sizeable part of the sample who claimed to use other social media sites apart from the previous mentioned. 30.99% of the respondents believed that there was a close relation between racism and Islamophobia while 39.44% denied that there was any relation between the two. A good portion (29.58%) reckoned that that Racism and Islamophobia are somewhat related. Majority of the respondent agreed (40.43%) that there was widespread hatred of Muslim on social media where 16.31% strongly agreed. Some remained neutral on this issue (21.28%) while17.73% disagreed; 9.22% strongly disagreeing. These sentiments can be due to the fact that majority of the people sampled had an Islamic background and felt discriminated as Muslims. Many of the respondents disagreed that Muslims are regarded as outsiders because their lifestyle is different from other people. Majority of the responds disagreed that Muslims are considered outsiders owing to their culture, lifestyle and belief system. This perspective can be attributed by inclusivity initiatives that have been implemented by various western governments to cater for the needs groups gazette as minorities like Muslims, homosexuals and immigrants. Majority of the respondents reported to have spotted anti-Islamic messages on social media weekly, monthly, a few times but only 7.14% had never seen such messages on social media. Provided that majority of the respondents were of Islamic background, they could have been sensitive to any message on social media directed towards Muslims. Over 50% of the respondents disagreed that Islam is a cruel, bigoted, and unreasonable religion. 58.27% of the respondents strongly disagreed that Islam is a cruel religion while 20.14% disagreed. 14.39% remained noncommittal. Only 5.04% agreed that Islam is a cruel religion while 2.88% strongly agreed. 50% of the participants strongly disagreed that Islam is a bigoted religion while 18.12% disagreed. 17.39% remained neutral. 10.14% agreed and 7.25 strongly agreed. Many respondents disagreed that Islam is an unreasonable religion. 55.8% strongly disagreed with the statement while 26.09% disagreed. 13.04% had no opinion on that matter. Only 6.52% agreed with the statement with 1.45% strongly agreeing. Many respondents agreed that social media is the main reason for the spread of anti-Islam messages. 38.69% agreed while 23.39% strongly agreed. Only 6.57 strongly disagreed with 13.14% disagreeing. These findings did not support RQ1 hence significant relationship on how often people saw anti-Islam messages on social media and Islamophobia. On the RQ1 if how often people see anti-Islam messages on social media contribute to Islamophobia, the findings did not support the research question. RQ2 that asks if there is relationship between how often people see anti-Islam messages and their perception of widespread hatred of Muslims on social media was supported by the research. The more often people are exposed to anti-Islam messages, the more they agree that hatred on Muslims is widespread on social media. RQ3 was supported by the research findings. There is a direct relationship between how often people see anti-Islamic messages and their perception of whether the social media is the main reason for spreading anti-Islam posts. Limitations Majority of the respondents were of Islamic faith (56.74%) and hence there is a high possibility of the answers given being biased towards the religious orientation. The sample population consisted of peers on social media and university students hence it was not a true presentation of the entire society. The views expressed reflected a certain age group that is still youthful and may harbor extreme views as opposed to the elderly in the society that may be more neutral and tolerant. Snowball sampling may have left out some other people that would have broadened the sample population making the study’s findings more credible. It is possible that the respondents did not express their true feelings for fear of being labeled extremists and hence they projected a tolerant demeanor in this research. Consequently, the findings may not have captured the true picture of the happenings in the real world. Further research has to focus on the reason why social media sites are the suitable platforms for spreading hate messages and how social media discourse community can be regulated to be useful to the society. Conclusions Islamophobia has become a phenomenon that describes a kind of discrimination that is directed towards Islam and Muslims. Majority of people think Islam that is not bigoted, unreasonable and cruel despite them seeing anti-Islamic messages most of the time. The more often people see anti-Islam message on social media the more they perceive social media as the main reason of spreading anti-Islam posts. The anonymity of participants on social media makes it hard to trace and prosecute the original generators of hate messages as well as Governments have to work closely with social media sites companies in moderating on what is shared on social media. References Aguilera-Carnerero, C. & Azeez, A.H. (2016). ‘Islamonausea, not Islamophobia’: The many faces of cyber hate speech, Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 9 (1): JAMMR 9 (1) pp. 21–40. Awan, I. (2016). Islamophobia on Social Media: A Qualitative Analysis of Facebook’s Walls of Hate, International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 10 (1): 1-20. Awan, I. (2014). Islamophobia and Twitter: A typology of online hate against Muslims on social media. Policy & Internet, 6(2), 133-150. Chaudhry, A.A. (2016). How do the media fuel Islamophobia? Media Development. Cheng, J.E. (2015). Islamophobia, Muslimophobia or racism? Parliamentary discourses on Islam and Muslims in debates on the minaret ban in Switzerland, Discourse & Society, 26(5) 562–586. Navarro, L. (2010). Islamophobia and sexism: Muslim women in the western mass media. Human Architecture, 8(2), 95. Ogan, C., Willnat, L., Pennington, R., & Bashir, M. (2014). The rise of anti-Muslim prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States. International Communication Gazette, 76(1), 27-46. Yang, M., Kiang, M., Ku, Y., Chiu, C., & Li, Y. (2011). Social media analytics for radical opinion mining in hate group web forums. Journal of homeland security and emergency management, 8(1). Read More

There is increased interest in naming and categorization of discriminatory discourses concerning Islam and Muslims for the purpose of challenging and contesting them. Cheng (2015) argue that the challenge is that traditional categories addressing discrimination do not apply to ‘Muslims’ as group but transcend categories of nationality, race, ethnicity as well as skin colour since any person can choose to be Muslim. Nevertheless, this is against the fact that no one can choose to be born within a Muslim family or be born in a Muslim society.

Perspectives that someone can change or hide one’s religion but not his skin colour are discriminatory making Muslims to change aspects of themselves as well as forgo some belief with the purpose of preventing vilification and discrimination. Cheng (2015) points out that Owing to the manner in which Islam, ethnicity, race and religious dress are conflated; the question of naming the discrimination against Muslims and Islam still remains problematic. Islam and Muslims as people are sometime inaccurately identified by such things like names, dress and physical appearance.

Islamophobia remains the common term that has been used to describe such kind of discrimination (Cheng, 2015). Other terms used include anti-Muslimism, Muslimophobia, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Muslim hate and anti-Muslim prejudice. Media usually shape and craft actively public opinion as opposed to mirroring it. Some people still believe new in the media that they are fed with facts rather than opinions or editorialized facts. Aguilera-Carnerero and Azeez (2016) observe that in the modern world social media is commencing to change the nature and form of the media in turn bringing about different and new challenges.

Boundaries have been pushed in social media sphere on what can and cannot be said and the audiences involved. In many circumstances media does no longer serve challenging hegemonic discourses and narratives disseminated by government. Majorly they often act as a fourth branch of government as well as a mouth through which the narratives are normalized and disseminated to the public (Aguilera-Carnerero and Azeez, 2016). Media and religion when they are taken together they undermine the longstanding academic narratives of clear-cut separation between private and public, the personal and institutional, offline and online (Ogan, 2014).

The media to a great extend overestimate the population of Muslims living within the borders of their countries (Navarro, 2010). In Ipsos Mory study any average French individual overestimated that Muslims accounted for 31 percent of French population when in real sense it is about 5 percent (Yang et al, 2011). The major cause of such kinds of gross misconceptions is owing to constant content publication within the press highlighting as well as hyperbolizing the Immigration Crisis in the country.

According to Chaudhry (2016), when the media make such gross errors, they become a cause of physical brutalization meted out to Muslim citizens. In some recent notable examples of French Islamophobic was an attack on a Moroccan man whereby he was stabbed 17 times while his killer declared “I am your God, I am your Islam.” Further, twenty-six mosques in France were attacked with gunfire, firebombs, grenades and pig heads. Figures from French National Observatory Against Islamophobia indicate that there a total of sixty Islamophobic incidents reported.

Since such gross estimation and miscalculations happen it shows the level at which the media can lead to reality obscurity as opposed to presenting it (Chaudhry, 2016). This negates the objective of the media of creating informed citizens. The goal of creating citizens who are informed is realizing social cohesion but bias by the media as well as the passive adoption of Islamophobic narrative only help to strengthen the deeply embedded political and social antagonism and aggravate an environment of hate (Seib, 2012).

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