News Framing as Identity Performance

Abstract

This study examines how two publications with a common religious affiliation—“Muslim/Islamic”—but different racial affiliations—“indigenous/Black” and “immigrant/Arab”—frame news events. It develops two interrelated ideas. First, identity is not simply an “individual level” but also a higher, “organizational level” of influence on news. Second, news organizations perform their identities in how they frame news. Comparative frame analysis reveals that identity performance, even at the organizational level, is context sensitive. The two publications, Muslim Journal and Islamic Horizons, use similar news frames when their shared religious identity is salient, but framing diverges in contexts where their differing racial identities become active. Racial identities also color how these publications construct and relate to “America.” Conceptualizing news organizations as reflexive actors with fluid identities and news frames as the contextual identity performance of these actors allows us to see how news media simultaneously reflect and reproduce social reality.

Framing Terror

“…The depiction of the perpetrator constituted the first building block of the framing in both incidents. Previous studies on mass shootings have shown that if perpetrators are immigrants, or from what is considered to be foreign racial or ethnic origins (such as Asians, Arabs, or Jamaicans), the media tend to disregard their citizenship status, resort to negative racial stereotypes, conflate racial/ethnic/religious identity with foreignness, and represent them as permanent foreigners (e.g., Chuang, 2012; Chuang & Roemer, 2013, 2014; Holody et al, 2013; Powell, 2011; Shahin, 2015; Szpunar, 2013). The portrayal of Major Nidal Malik Hasan in the newspapers after the Ft.…”

Reciprocity and asymmetry in digital diplomacy: Geopolitics of national identity in South Korea–Japan and South Korea–US relations

“…Shahin and Huang's (2019) study of digital diplomacy illustrates how the values, beliefs, and motivations of a nation are reflected in the tweeting practices of their foreign missions and vary by context as manifestations of national identity. Their research examines the tweets of US Embassies in three countries with which the United States has very different types of bilateral ties: Britain, India, and China.…”

Framing Islam/Creating Fear: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of Terrorism from 2011–2016

“…Given the limited knowledge of Islam and Muslim countries, the U.S. public has consumed a media framed Islam from abroad as the major terrorism threat (Powell 2011). That fact that Western media participates in bias and creates stereotypes against religions and peoples (Brummett 1994;Chesebro and Bertelsen 1996;Markham and Maslog 1971;Semati 2010;Shahin 2015) against Islam is accepted in the academic world, and Said (1978) explains that since most do not separate Islam and Muslims, the actions of one Muslim are equated with all Muslims. So if one Muslim is a terrorist, we should fear all Muslims, setting up an Islam versus the West mentality, or as Huntington (1993) predicted, a Clash of Civilizations.…”