Portrayal of Islam and Muslims in Western Media: A Study of Fox News

Abstract

The study is aimed to analyze the portrayal of Islam and Muslims through the content that is being disseminated by western media all over the world. Nowadays, the perception about any nation, religion, and society is building through media perspective. Media is playing a major role to bring peace, war, and alliance among the nations of the world. The mediated propaganda by western media is leading the world towards Islamophobia. Muslims are not freely enjoying their rights in many non-Muslim societies. This study is a content analysis of "Fox News Report", "Fox News Alert" and "The Five" programs of Fox News. The data were examined to identify common terms, words, and patterns of meaning that come up repeatedly in context with Muslim's portrayal in Western media. The result shows that prejudice and prejudgment are portrayed in western media against Islam by representing it as a religion of terrorism and extremism.