So in order to get a rough idea of what people already thought about Islam, I started watching some social experiments that were posted on YouTube.
One that stuck out the most to me was done by word association. The YouTubers asked New Yorkers to say the first thing that came to mind when shown words like Jihad, Islam, Muslim, Ramadan etc.
While I was watching it was surprising to see that someone people really had no idea what they were talking about. My favorite word association was for "Ramadan" (fasting) when a girl said "Ramen" (noodles).
Some people were really aware of the media's role and the topics they were discussing while many others did not know what the words meant at all. If you have time, take a look and let me know what you think:
Of course this is just an example of just a couple of people, but these are the types of responses that I'm probably going to be expecting. Some people just don't know enough about Islam to give an answer, some have the view of the stereotype while others understand that the media portrays a skewed perception of Muslims/Islam.
Here is another word association one that is (I think) more experimental. It starts the word association with things that have nothing to do with Islam to clear the subjects' minds.
I'm interested to hear why you think the media portrays a skewed perception of Islam. Is this related to their own ignorance or do you think it's a purposeful agenda?
ReplyDeleteI think it can be a little bit of both. I can't say for sure if the media does it on purpose or not but I am sure that not everyone who talks about Islam or Muslims is an expert.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I found this picture just last night (here's the link):
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/f0/22/64f022f0e1733d24fdbd0b3ca8a549cd.jpg
So in this example, the media probably choose that picture by accident. They wanted to portray a very scary demonic version of "Satan" and it turns out that the image was in fact a creature from Lord of the Rings. Did they know that? I don't know, but the whole reason the media choose that picture in the first place was to instill fear.
Similarly, the media does have some sort of agenda:headlining the bad aspects of Islam. And these "bad aspects" aren't always accurately portrayed. Again, is that on purpose? Maybe. Or they really don't conduct full research and that's why we have this problem in the first place.