Week 6

I have been doing more research this week and found an interesting study pertaining to my project.

It turns out that Islam and Muslims are more negatively portrayed than cocaine, alcohol and cancer!

Wut...? Wow...

 Yup... This study was conducted using New York Times headlines between 1990 and 2014 by Owais Arshad, Varun Setlur, Usaid Siddiqqui, Jai Setlur, Di Yan and Steven Zhou. The headlines were then compared to a dictionary of words with sentiment ratings which created in 2005 by research done by Minqing Hu and Bing Liu at the University of Illinois along with "Violence Vocabulary" that was compiled in 2015.

Headlines were then broken up to get rid of words including "as", "and" and "the" to isolate the content of the headline. Each individual word was then given a rating (0 if neutral, +1 if positive and -1 if negative). With each word scored, the total score of the headline would be calculated by adding the rating of each word. If the total was above 0, then it was classified as a positive headline, if it was below 0 then it was a negative headline and if it was 0 then it was classified as neutral.

 

At the end of all the classifications, the data revealed that out of all the headlines with regards to Islam, only 8% were positive while 57% were negative. Look at the charts below to see the comparisons between other topics.

 

So, without a doubt, Islam presence in the media highlights more negative aspects of the religion than positive. This makes sense in the recent rise of ISIS and many attacks, but again, the extremists that hare highlighted in the media don't represent the majority of Muslims. 

In fact, the researchers discussed how collective responsibility has alienated many groups in history, including the Jews, the Germans and the Japanese. The media's focus on these groups has caused the public to fear Muslims and Islam in general causing the increase in unrest now days. 

It is said that fear comes from the unknown, but I think it can come from the known as well.

I have a story to share:

So, my family and I were coming back from a trip to California where our cousins live. On our way back, we stopped by at a gas station where a man in traditional Muslim clothing was standing and smoking. 

Well, needless to say, we had a reaction. We weren't violent and we didn't approach the man but we were all a bit nervous. 

I guess we were fearful too. My family and I study about Islam every Saturday so we know about our religion, but I guess it was odd to us that we found the man there. We were fearful that there might be an incident. Either on onlooker would instigate or he would. These were the types of thoughts we were having, so what about the others there? I know that I was keeping alert.

Well, thank goodness that nothing happened. The man had left by the time we came back to our car after stretching our legs and buying some snacks. 

So my main point is that this stereotype has not only affected those who don't know about the religion but those who are part of it too. 

Here is the link to the complete research paper: 

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/558067a3e4b0cb2f81614c38/t/564d7b91e4b082df3a4e291e/1447918481058/nytandislam_study.pdf