Characterising Australians who have high levels of anger towards Islam and Muslims

Abstract

This article reveals the characteristics and demographics of non-Muslim Australians who express levels of anger towards Muslims and Islam. Using data from a 2018 national social survey of a random, stratified sample of Australians, we identify key demographic characteristics amongst those expressing above-average degrees of anger towards Muslims and the religion of Islam, separately. We identify the proportion of different typologies of people who hold anger towards Islam and Muslims. We aim to establish which combinations of demographic and personal characteristics are most strongly associated with the expression of anger so that policy and interventions targeted at reducing this emotion might be effectively directed. We draw on the literature about Muslimophobia and Islamophobia, along with key studies that have examined attitudes towards Islam and Muslims in Australia and elsewhere. Our findings are relevant to organisations and government bodies in Australia, with implications for policy and social cohesion programs.

Exploring the Influence of News Consumption on Non-Muslim Australians’ Attitudes towards Muslims

“…Inclusion of measures of demographic characteristics in Model 3 had no meaningful effect on either the explanatory power of the model or the size and strength of the relationship between hours of news consumed and anger towards Muslims, supporting our previous finding that the complexity of demographic characteristics' influence on Muslimophobia in Australia, and likely other jurisdictions, creates confusion in interpreting effects through the use of regression modelling (Walding and Ewart 2022). As a result, we chose not to include this block of variables in any further models in the interests of model parsimony.…”

“…Much of this coverage is negative, with a range of problematic practices associated with stories about or involving Muslims (Poole 2002;Saeed 2007;el-Aswad 2013). There is also a wealth of research that provides insights into the factors, mostly demographic, that characterize non-Muslims' attitudes, both positive and negative, towards Muslims in Europe, the United Kingdom, North America, Australia, and New Zealand (Erdenir 2010;Triandafyllidou 2015;Shaver et al 2016;Shaver et al 2017;Sibley et al 2020;Dunn 2005;Walding and Ewart 2022). We know a lot less about whether news media consumption is a factor in the type of attitude non-Muslims hold towards Muslims, and how that works.…”

“…There is also some research, albeit in its infancy, showing that news media consumption has an influence on attitudes towards Muslims (Shaver et al 2017). While research already explored non-Muslim Australians' attitudes towards Muslims (Walding and Ewart 2022;Mansouri and Vergani 2018), we decided to explore whether non-Muslim Australians' consumption of news media affected the extent of anger they felt towards Muslims. We frame our investigation using media effects theory because research suggested that news media has a significant role in shaping attitudes of non-Muslims towards Muslims, particularly those who have little or no contact with Muslims.…”

“…Age, gender, education, socio-economic status, and residence in urban or regional areas are inextricably linked in Australian samples (Walding and Ewart 2022), and as discussed, the variability of effects on attitudes towards Muslims according to contexts of characteristics rather than each characteristic alone resulted in an inconsistency in evidence of relationships between demographics and Muslimophobia in samples from a range of countries. Rather than engaging in detail with the modelling difficulties of such interrelated concepts, we examine the effect of news consumption on Muslimophobia, and the mediating effects of political viewpoint and religiosity, as well as personal engagement with Muslim people, on a representative sample of Australians while controlling for the effect of their demographic characteristics.…”