Week 3 Theoretical- Islam and Mediatization

I plan to use this week's theoretical reading and apply it to a specific example of Islam and mediatization. Firstly though, credence and respect must be payed to the relationship between modern media and religion. Modern media's discussion and portrayal of religion through movies, news reporting and so forth has made the intangible, tangible. Hjarvard states that 'the metaphysical realm is no longer something you can only imagine or occasionally see represented in symbolic forms in fresco painting or pillars of stone' as now movies like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings has made the supernatural a lived experience, albeit vicariously (Hjarvard 2008, p.9). Hjarvard here clearly exemplifies how ironically in our currently perceived secular state, we are put into contact with the numinous exponentially.

The media does not seek just to represent facts about religion but it also stakes opinions and incites changes to 'the ways in which people interact with each other when dealing with religious issues' (Hjarvard 2008, p.11).  For instance Hjarvard discusses Joshua Meyrowitz's discussion of media as conduits, where media engages in a cycle of sending and receiving symbols and images between audience and writer. Media colloquialisms and messages in this context can embody acrimony, as they implement negative trending attitudes towards groups of people, such as Muslims. For instance, on news television shows that report on Islam, the majority of reports embody images of violence, bombings, patriarchy and home made terror videos. This consistently portrays part of society in a certain demoralizing light and alters the way the public views Muslims perennially. 

Secondly, if we examine media as languages our focus turns to the way media constructs negative stories about Islam, which in turn legitimizes the fear as a real and substantiated fear in the reader or watcher. A model of this was when the rumor of piggy banks being removed from British banks adverts due to Muslim offense. The media jumped at this opportunity, even in Australia where the story went to print like wildfire in the Daily Telegraph, the Mercury, the Advertiser, the NT News, the Newcastle Herald and the Courier-Mail, as well as online websites of Channel Nine, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald (Aly 2011). One particularly prominent Australian newspaper's version told the public quite manically that the banks were 'not merely withdrawing piggy banks from advertising, but no longer giving them to children...[and how]... the Muslim world is starting to control our thinking and actually our lives' (Aly 2011, p.50). This in particular reminds me of a certain character of The Simpsons, who always cries out at opportune moments "will someone please think of the children!". This example of media as languages through online, printed and oral news, shows the power between religion and the media and how the media if given the right mustard seed, can pugnaciously grow from it a moral panic.

Thirdly, we can examine media as environments, as how different facets of media operate communicatively with the subject, the story and the listeners. An example of this would be on talkback radio, when screening callers for a discussion on Islam and Muslims, only the most vehement callers would actually feature on a negatively inclined show for aggrandizement. This also allows the media to attempt to scapegoat societal problems on the current opinion of the most dangerous and threatening "other". An example of this scapegoating holds 'Muslims falsely responsible for an impressive range of social crimes from banning Christmas to risking the lives of hospital patients with unprofessional hygiene standards and mob violence against returned soldiers' (Aly 2011, p.53). In this instance the media exploits an already seated fear of the "other" in the once passive listener and transforms him or her  into an agent for perceived justice, or more rightly incited moral panic. The media in such cases acts with ideological fundamentalism, that is the media heightens "us" and "them" attitudes to meet societal attitudes and fear, for impact and for entertainment.

This is a funny video of Uncle Sam, a comic from the show Salam Cafe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSsAY0U66hE

References

Aly, W 2011, 'Monoculturalism, Muslims and Myth Making' in Gaita R (ed.), Essays on Muslims & Multiculturalism, Text Publishing, Melbourne, pp. 49-92.

Hjarvard, S 2008, 'The mediatization of religion: A theory of media as agents of religious change', Northern Lights, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 9-26.

Photos

Muslim woman- http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=490619

Newspapers- http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=527555