Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Islam Post-September 11: A Community Structure Approach

Abstract

Using a community structure approach exploring links between city characteristics and coverage frames, this systematic national cross-section sample of 19 US newspapers tracked newspaper coverage of Islam during the year after the September 11, 2001 attacks, combining “prominence” and “direction” scores to yield a single “Media Vector,” measuring issue projection. Most (14) cities revealed favorable/neutral coverage of Islam. Pearson correlations yielded two prominent “stakeholder” characteristics negatively correlated with favorable coverage of Islam. Contrary to expectations, the higher the percentage of foreign-born citizens (r=−0.539; p=0.009) or number of Arabic/Farsi speakers (r=−0.537; p=0.011), the less favorable the coverage of Islam, the latter accounting for 29 per cent of the variance.

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