The Rise of Islamophobia in American Digital Media after the Attacks on 9/11 or How the Fear of Terr

Тhe contemporary mainstream media agencies as well as the digital media outlets in the United States (U.S.) are still stagnant by the sense fear of terror which occurred after the Al-Qaeda attack in New York city on 9/11. This statement can be verified through an observation of the current online media manner of gathering and spreading stories and information concerning Islamic communities which are residents in the American nation.

Modern Media Development in the United States

The digital network technology has a huge impact on U.S. traditional democratic media since the 1990s. By passing through various and intensive processes, e.g. changes in business, industrial and market policies, civil uncertainty regarding the state`s new economic strategies and media efforts to analyse and inform the public about the future outcomes towards all these practices, the digital media appears to be more influenced by huge variety of financial standpoints and social critical views than ever before.

The rise of Internet enabled the traditional democratic media to develop not only its commercial side but to envelope its maximum potential by betting on more innovative information technics such as popularization of the journalistic investigation and report style, spread of topics related to foreign correspondence and turning the news agencies into observers and prosecutors of the American policy and economic makers. As a result, the public audience has received free access to new or upgraded media outlets and became an active participant as regards all topics which emerge into the web space, i.e. half (50%) of the social network users share or repost news stories or videos while nearly as many (46%) discuss issues or events on social network sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google Plus.

Moreover, the highly competitive atmosphere which has been developed during the multiplication of media outlets caused the creation of speculative news which frequently claim to attract the attention though the discussion of subjects based on ethnic and cultural differences with the goal to achieve greater marketability rather than being objective and neutral in their informative dialogue with the public, i.e. since the 9/11 the information and communication technologies (ICTs) used by the media were recognized as digital tools which facilitate the spread of transnational terrorism, its ideology and following activities.

The current American online media condition demonstrates that the field succeeded in producing trendy range of stories and innovative manners for media distribution, i.e. thirty of the largest digital-only news organizations account around 3 000 working positions and one area of investment in global coverage, but at the same time it’s truly commercial side transformed the digital space into a dynamic but overwhelmed with hate and fear area.

The Course of American Digital Media after 9/11 and the Fear of Terror

According to David Altheide (2009), both Internet and digital news have been recognized by the mainstream media organisations and social audience as contributors to the development of individual and collective self-determination and as providers of different forms of network connection between public sphere and administrative institutions since the last 20 years.

In the particular case of the contemporary American social and media evolution, the content of online news has been mostly associated with the sense of fear. Since the terror attack in New York city organized by the Islamic group Al-Qaeda on 9/11, the U.S. media has been marked by the fear of terrorism and the implementation of ICTs as irreplaceable component for the provision of good quality news as regard the subject, i.e. ICTs were used to gather documentary evidences regarding the events which emerged during the U.S. war against Al- Qaeda, Iraq and Afghanistan including the distribution of pictures and videos of killed, tortured or kidnaped individuals.

Briefly, the message of terrorism and the national demand for protection against it became commonly used practice by the American media organizations to avoid the routine and repetitiveness in mass-media stories concerning incidents with citizens and certain governmental policies. Thus, the news related to terrorist crimes and narratives about fear of attack have been incorporated in almost every informational context and public considerations as regards human behaviour and social activities.

Defining Islamophobia within the Rise of American Social Intolerance after 9/11

Islamophobia is a considerably new term which refers to the description of distinctive forms of social intolerance towards Islamic groups and their cultural affairs. Although the definition was known in different academic and cultural fields in Europe and Great Britain since 1990s, the notion appeared to be wildly recognizable as an American post- 9/11 phenomenon within the worldwide scholar and public auditorium.

The anti-Muslim concept is not clearly specified by the academic, policy and intellectual circles since the forms of ungrounded hostility towards the Islamic religion as well as the discriminative and exclusive practical experiences towards non-Christian individuals and ethnic groups require new research, administrative and analytical methods to explain the matter. Among the traditional scholars, e,g, Werbner 2005; Cesari 2002 and Wieviorka 2002 who examine classical models of discrimination such as race, ethnicity and class gender intolerance and anti-racist political activism, the use of the notion as a scientific term is still not recommendable due to the fact that it applies to complex shapes of social prejudices which cannot be completely explained.

Meanwhile in the years after 9/11, while the academic researchers around the world were still struggling with the provision of clear definition of Islamophobia, American social activists and governing agencies concentrated on the debate of Islamic radicalization by identifying the Muslim common cultural practices in U.S. as terrorist thread towards the society. This anti-Islamic propaganda can be explained on certain level by the digital media development and the intensively growing far-right social preferences which found a favourable environment in the online information field so to amplify their voices. Among all media organizations the news outlets, web blogs, online newspapers and magazines such as Jihad Watch, NewsReal Blog, The Washington Times newspaper and website, National Review magazine and its website and FrontPage Magazine appeared to be the most attractive for readers who seek for more supporters regarding their negativism towards the Islamic groups and who wish to succeed in distributing their extreme anti-racist message.

Islamophobia in American digital media and the Story of Park51

The Anti-Muslim media campaign which has expanded after the events on 9/11 became truly intense in the U.S. during the early 2010 after a dispute which were caused by the arranged project of building an Islamic Community Centre near the Ground Zero zone in New York city. The construction plan of the Centre which has been named Park51, after its street address, provoked serious social tensions and vigorous discussions due to its future status of activity and location, i.e. according the citizens the project supposed to start too soon after the Al-Qaeda terror attack and close to the destroyed twin brother buildings.

The Centre`s establishment was a project planned by Imam Faisal Absul Rauf. His idea was to build a memorial of the 9/11 victims and to create a special place which would function as a space for multi-cultural dialogue and would encourage a social support of inter-community tolerance. However, the highly negative media performance regarding Park51 has produced considerable acts of public disaffection which spread quickly on national level, i.e. 68% of Americans and 72% of New Yorkers combined against the project although the President Barak Obama officially stood behind it.

Many online media outlets also have assisted during the anti-Park51 campaign and thus became supported by citizens with extremely radical standpoints towards the subject, i.e. just before the 9/11 commemorations a minister from a Gainesville, Florida church made official treads concerning the burning of the Quran. Moreover, Twitter and Facebook digital platforms facilitated the concentration and filtration of the anti-Islamic practices by providing a free space for dialogue based on cultural, ethnic and identity preferences, i.e. number of Facebook groups targeting the issue of Islamic Community Centre were created including the following: Against the Mosque at Ground Zero, Stop The Ground Zero Mosque, Yes to the Mosque Near Ground Zero, New Yorkers Against the Mosque at Ground Zero, Cordoba Initiative and 1,000,000 Against The Mosque at Ground Zero. Each group was joined by a significant amount of followers who participated actively by sharing the stories which the mainstream media had distributed towards the dispute.

The blogosphere also took part into the general media anti-Park51 trend. According to the Pew Research Centre’s New Media Index which examines millions of blogs on a weekly basis, the story of the Islamic Community Centre was the second most popular subject for comment during the week of 9–13 August 2010. During the same week, 18% of the blogs` news links were related to this topic by being dominated of opinions from anti-Muslim character.

Reasons for the American Far-right Social Tendency and spread of anti-Islam Propaganda into the Digital Media

According to Teun A. van Dijk (1995), the news media organizations and digital platforms are not the single performers of Islamophobia today but they are surely the most effective and successful players who coordinate the information trends as regards the ethnic and multicultural consensus in the American states. Moreover, the appearance of the current anti-Muslim media propaganda which seems to have a goal of completely changing the public opinion towards the existence of minority groups depends actually on the media general internal and external relations with other elite groups such as politicians, police agencies, juridical and educative institutions and social bureaucrats.

A further and deeper analysis of the U.S. government policies and parliamentary rhetoric which appeared after 9/11 demonstrates that in spite of the official institutional discourse based on diplomacy, tolerance and hospitality, the attitudes of other American elites concerning Islamic communities are not different from those which were spread by the media. The case of Park51 can be used as an example for the general political tendency of administrative far-right executive practices which also emerged in other world states since the last decades, e.g. severe immigration restrictions, institutional violent measures against protesters and support of political parties and representatives that defend far-right parliamentary platforms. In this sense, the U.S. digital media prospered to expand its economic achievements by following the already established mainstream media technics of gaining popularity and bigger audience but this process did not increase its innovative potential.

At last, it seems that the shared elite interests in America tolerate the development of anti-Islamic ideological positions, which are also transferred in other spheres of the national welfare state affairs such as educative institutions, public administration and common daily social relations. By maintaining the common anti-Muslim media practice, the digital news outlets in U.S. not only restrain their ability to progress in other ICT domains but they also become in contradiction with the universal democratic concepts related to human rights and social equality which still found a strong presence into the international political field.

References:

Altheide, L. D. (2009), Terror Post 9/11 and the Media, New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Archetti, Ch. (2012), Violent Extremism, Media and Communication: Understanding Terrorism in the Age of Global Interconnection, Manchester: University of Salford.

Cesari, J. (2002). ‘’Islam in France: The Shaping of a Religious Minority’’ in Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 36-51.

Dijk van A. T. (1995). ‘’Power and the News Media’’, in Political Communication and Action, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 9-36.

Matsa. E. K. & Mitchell, A. ‘’8 Key Takeaways about Social Media and News’’, Pew Research Center, March 2014, <http://www.journalism.org/2014/03/26/8-key-takeaways-about-social-media-and-news/> (29.03.2015)

Mitchell, A. & Page, D. (2014), State of the News Media 2014: Overview. Washington: Pew Research Center.

Ogan, Ch., Willnat, L., Pennington, R. & Bashir, M. (2014), ‘’The rise of anti-Muslim prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States’’ in The International Communication Gazette, Vol. 76, No. 1, pp. 27-46.

Samson, E. ‘’Why the Park51 debate remains unresolved’’, The Guardian, Oct 2010, <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/28/ground-zero-islam> (09.04.2015)

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