Gratifying the “Self” by Demonizing the “Other”

Abstract

This qualitative study examines the U.S. media portrayals of African, Arab, and Islamic countries and sheds light on the response to these portrayals by a number of international students (Africans, Arabs, and Asians) in a middle-sized public university in the United States. The study uses Foucault’s power–knowledge constructs, Bhabha’s cultural difference, Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, and Said’s Orientalism as well the framing theory as a conceptual framework. It concludes that negative U.S. media portrayals of Africans, Arabs, and Asians were based on an Orientalist discourse and elicited negative reaction from the African, Arab, and Asian respondents.