European Television Representations of Islam as Security Threat: A Comparative Analysis

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Nature and context of the projectThis three-year project offers the first cross-national study of televisual representations of Islam as security threat. It examines three countries (Britain, France and Russia) which share similarities in their postcolonial relations with Islamic states, resident Muslim populations, and concern with the 'war on terror', but also exhibit differences of media and political cultures, international alignments, and policy towards Muslim minorities. Theory and methodThe study combines insights from media/cultural and political research. (i) Any pluralistic political culture is subject to ideological competition for domination of political language and public policy. To compare the political/social values and assumptions underpinning the framing of the Islam/security issue in each of the three countries, the project draws on recent advances in the theorisation of ideologies as distinctive, evolving configurations of concepts which can be grouped by family resemblance but also analysed in terms of local variation within each group.(ii) Academic literature on political communication (the interface of politics and the media) provides tools to analyse the intersection between ideological and technical factors shaping representations of the Islam/security issue through editorial choices (of inclusion/exclusion, running order, duration and salience), alongside journalists' news values and news-gathering practices, in relation to the structures and resources of the news organizations involved. (iii) Analysis of how the media communicate ideologically coloured understandings of the issue requires attention to the verbal dimension in the light of discourse-sensitive, media studies models of the relationship between language, legitimacy and power. This will enable scrutiny of how different 'voices' on the subject of Islam/security are assimilated into the broadcasts' discursive structure. (iv) Since the visual impact of broadcasters' choices is essential to the representation of Islamic/security concerns, text-based approaches will be complemented by those dealing with screen media-specific codes, alongside models of the word/image interplay which structures TV messages. ObjectivesThe project will (i) differentiate French, British and Russian television representations of the Islamic dimension to the 'War on Terror'; (ii) examine how security issues link with immigration and integration questions; (iii) analyse the relationship between the 'War on Terror' and the assertion of national identities; (iv) compare the ideological systems underlying the framing of a key issue; (v) set out a methodological synthesis combining recent developments in political theory of ideology with cultural studies approaches to media representations.Specifically, it will examine where the respective broadcasts position the nations whose official voices they articulate within the 'geopolitical space' in which the 'War on Terror' is unfolding. It will establish how images of 'terrorists', 'ethnic minorities' and 'Muslim Fundamentalists' are produced and linked within the different representational regimes and how they reflect historical and current relationships with Islamic cultures. Execution and applicationsThe data sources are news broadcasts on the three principal public channels. The proposers bring complementary expertise, not only in their disciplinary approaches, but also in their experience of researching related fields and their knowledge of the societies under investigation, including competence in the relevant languages. Their work will be supported by two research officers, operating bilingually in French-English and Russian-English, to monitor, and help analyse, the broadcasts, and to contribute to the dissemination of findings. The publications will promote understanding of the political/cultural construction of meanings attributed to a threat currently preoccupying Europe.