Elizabeth Poole

Media portrayals of religion and the secular sacred : representation and change

Is it true that Christianity is being marginalised by the secular media, at the expense of Islam? Are the mass media Islamophobic? Is atheism on the rise in media coverage? Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred explores such questions and argues that television and newspapers remain key sources of popular information about religion. They are particularly significant at a time when religious participation in Europe is declining yet the public visibility and influence of religions seems to be increasing. Based on extensive research conducted on British mainstream media coverage of religion, the book is set in the context of wider debates about the sociology of religion and media representation. This book opens by laying out the key issues in global perspective. Using research conducted in the 1980s and 2008-10, the authors examine British media coverage and representation of religion and contemporary secular beliefs and values, and consider what has changed in the last 25 years. Exploring the portrayal of Christianity and public life, Islam and religious diversity, atheism and secularism, and popular beliefs and practices, several media events are also examined in detail: the Papal visit to the UK in 2010 and the ban of the controversial Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, in 2009. Questions arise about the media image of Christianity, how atheist and secularist demands on freedom of speech and equality are treated, and whether the media is anti-Islamic. Religion is shown to be deeply embedded in the language and images of the media, and present in all types of media coverage from news and documentaries to entertainment, sports reporting and advertising. A final chapter engages British findings with wider global debates about religion and media.

Networking Islam: The Democratising Potential of New Technologies in Relation to Muslim Communities

Abstract This article critically examines existing theory on the uses of new technologies by minority communities to make connections, transforming identities and challenging traditional notions of community. As with the debate about new technologies in general, a utopian and dystopian position has prevailed. Has the development of new technologies, as the optimists predict, opened up access and liberated minority groups from established structural constraints? Has the Internet been a tool for mobilisation both socially and politically? Or as theorists such as Robins and Webster (1999) argue does the development and use of new technologies reinforce and maintain traditional hierarchies both within and without minority communities. What are the consequences of global and technological processes on already excluded groups? After examining these theories, the article applies them to Muslim communities in Britain by situating them within the worldwide community of Muslims (the Umma). Suggesting that there has been perhaps too much emphasis on theorising about the potential of new technologies with few empirical studies to support arguments that new technology provides for greater connectivity between dispersed groups, the article argues that an empirical approach will reveal how far minority communities are able to access new technologies for these purposes or whether these are limited to a privileged educated elite. Such questions are important for identifying the barriers to access and suggesting ways of enabling and empowering people in a new media environment.

The Case of Geert Wilders: Multiculturalism, Islam, and Identity in the UK

This article aims to show how in the current political climate in the UK debates about multiculturalism, religion, and identity, in relation to Muslims, have played out in the public sphere through an examination of British news media coverage of the Geert Wilders case. Wilders, a far right Dutch MP, was refused entry to the UK in February 2009 for inciting racial hatred. Coverage of this event demonstrates the struggles around identity taking place amongst various social, political groups in the UK. I will show how Islam, in particular, is currently central to these discursive debates and how different groups’ interpretations of the event attempt to assert ideas of ‘Britain’ and ‘Britishness.’

Constructing “British Values” Within a Radicalisation Narrative

This article examines the reporting of the “Operation Trojan Horse” affair in two British newspapers, the Daily Mail and The Guardian, in 2014. I argue that this high-profile case was a vehicle for the Conservative-led Government, and parts of the United Kingdom’s press, to advance their doctrine of muscular liberalism, an ideology that locates the rise of extremism in the policies of multiculturalism. In this interpretation of the event, it was argued that, under a Labour council, schools in Birmingham had been given the freedom to practise a segregationist agenda, resulting in an infiltration of Islamist ideology. Through a radicalisation narrative, that locates the causes of terrorism with extremist thought, an issue of local governance and agency was transformed into an argument about terrorist radicalisation. This allowed Government agencies to intervene, at a local and national level, promoting an assimilationist agenda through conceptualisations of national identity, here constructed as “British values”.

‘Muslim Media’ and the Politics of Representation

This article examines data from a year-long project, ‘Muslims in the European Mediascape’, which explored the production and consumption of diversity issues in the United Kingdom and Germany. Here, I report on the findings from minority (predominantly Muslim) media producers and consumers in the United Kingdom; these findings demonstrate both the ambitions of the producers and the somewhat limited extent to which they are met among audiences. The research reveals a disconnect between producers and their target audiences in terms of the media consumption of those audiences, despite a similarity in their sociopolitical concerns. Perhaps more importantly, an analysis of participant discussions about media practices and life in the United Kingdom reveals more about the politics of representation and belonging in a period of considerable instability and change than it reveals about reported practices.

Islam, Security and Television News

the outset claiming that ‘a reader may suspect that my advocacy for some of the soldiers may cloud my judgment or introduce bias into this discussion’ (p. 274). He then proceeds with a rather strange, somewhat petulant diatribe against those whom he labels as ‘captains of the culture industry’ (in this case the filmmakers Errol Morris and Rory Kennedy), for their failure to include him in their respective films. Most disturbing for me when reading this chapter is Mestrovic’s conviction of his own possession of the ‘truth’ about the events of Abu Ghraib that he obtained through his interactions with the accused soldiers, and which, he argues, the filmmakers were not privy to. But equally disturbing to some readers will be Mestrovic’s erasure of the victims of the abuses of Abu Ghraib and his tendency to mitigate the actions of the abusers through appeals to their PTSD. Nonetheless, this strange and rather weak conclusion to the volume should not dissuade interested readers. Flynn and Salek have gathered together a collection of essays that will have wide appeal to communication scholars, film scholars and graduate students, particularly those who see academia and political practice as concomitant.