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://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/ecbc3a96-16be-4605-b8ca-9f6e786d72bd