The post-September 11 portrayal of Arabs, Islam and Muslims in 'The Washington Post' and 'The New York Times': A comparative content analysis study

The focus of the research in the present study is on the reactions of the American mass media to the unprecedented attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In the six months following the attacks, Islam, Arabs and Muslims were covered extensively in the American media. These portrayals are the subject of the present study.; Many Muslims and non-Muslims believe that the American mass media has a negative bias when covering Islam, Arabs and Muslims. Many scholars attribute this bias to a long-standing negative assessment of the religion of Islam, Arab history and culture, and Muslim beliefs and customs. As a consequence, these scholars argue, the portrayals of Islam, Arabs and Muslims are often negative, one-sided and not fact-based.; The focus of this study is to examine the kinds of portrayals made in two leading American newspapers, The Washington Post and The New York Times, in the six months following the Sept. 11 attacks. The study attempts to do the examination by looking at the associations made between the three key terms, Islam, Arab, and Muslim and the words they are used with. This form of collocation analysis allows for research into the kinds of frames that the American mass media construct for Islam, Arabs and Muslims.; The research technique used in the present study involves the systemic interval sampling of two newspapers across a six-month period. The key terms were then isolated, retaining only the text necessary to establish context. The associations between the terms and the text establishing their context were coded and the results analyzed quantitatively. The Chi-square, analysis of variance and percentage statistics were all employed as methods of analysis.; Based on the study results and the interpretation of those results, the study finds that American mass media do not present a balanced view of Islam, Arabs, or Muslims. In fact, the portrayals are much more often negative than positive. The study also finds that the portrayals can be grouped into three general themes; violence, religion and political/cultural. The study found no meaningful difference in the quality of portrayals between the two newspapers. While the study did find differences in the portrayals of specific keywords over the six-month period, those differences were not significant.