Media Portrayals of Minorities: Muslims in British Newspapers

To better understand how minorities are viewed, we propose a procedure for measuring the standing of different groups that relies on the tone of daily newspaper stories containing the names of minority groups that uses software to analyze large numbers of newspaper stories. This paper assesses and accounts for the portrayal of Muslims in the British media between 2001 and 2012. We measure the positive and negative associations about Muslims, in order to compare their prevalence across time and between newspapers of different political affiliations and formats. We find that portrayals of Muslims and Islam have not been consistently negative since 2001. While there have been years where they have been more negative than positive, there have been more years where portrayals were net positive. In addition, there has been no overall shift in tone in a positive or negative direction since 2001. We find that the tone of headline coverage is significantly affected by the political leaning of the newspaper. Left newspapers are much more likely to have a net positive portrayal of Muslims than right newspapers. Portrayals are also affected by newspaper type. Tabloids are more likely to portray Muslims and Islam in a negative light than broadsheets, but the effect is smaller than that of the political leaning of the paper. Our evidence does not support the argument that the occurrence of a major terrorist event systematically renders the tone of coverage more negative.