Who differentiates between Muslims and Islamist terrorists in terrorism news coverage?

Autor(en)
Jörg Matthes, Ruta Kaskeleviciute, Desiree Schmuck, Christian von Sikorski, Claudia Klobasa, Helena Knupfer, Melanie Saumer
Abstrakt

The present study took an actor-based approach to explain news differentiation in terrorism coverage. Actors were defined as non-Muslim sources, Muslim sources, and journalists. Actors who generateundifferentiated statementsactively link Muslims to terrorism, whereas actors who usedifferentiated statementsexplicitly distinguish Muslims from terrorism. We examined actor-specific, media-specific, and event-specific predictors of differentiation using a quantitative content analysis in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, 2015-2017 (12 quality/tabloid newspapers,N = 1071 articles). Results reveal that non-Muslim sources and journalists are more likely to make undifferentiated statements and less likely to make differentiated statements compared to Muslim sources. This gap between Muslim sources on the one side and non-Muslim sources as well as journalists on the other side is more accentuated for severe terroristic attacks and for articles mentioning dead and injured victims. For differentiated statements, the gap is also more pronounced in tabloid newspapers as compared to quality newspapers.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft
Externe Organisation(en)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Universität Koblenz-Landau
Journal
Journalism Studies
Band
21
Seiten
2135-2153
Anzahl der Seiten
19
ISSN
1461-670X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1812422
Publikationsdatum
2020
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft, 508014 Publizistik
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Communication
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG 16 – Frieden, Gerechtigkeit und starke Institutionen
Link zum Portal
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/who-differentiates-between-muslims-and-islamist-terrorists-in-terrorism-news-coverage(ecbc3a96-16be-4605-b8ca-9f6e786d72bd).html