Ground Zero mosque in the context of America's post-9/11 religious pluralism: CDA of mainstream news media's coverage of the discursive event

Abstract

This article analyzes the Ground Zero Mosque discursive event and the discourses surrounding the American Muslim Community and explores the role of the media in the production and reproduction processes of anti-Muslim frames. To understand Islamophobia in the United States in the context of religious pluralism, this article adopts Critical Discourse Analysis, under which two theories unfold: sourcing theory and framing theory. The sourcing analysis targeted the media voices monitoring the discourses and contributing to the discursive construction and interpretation of mosque proposal into an agenda-led image. The second theory is framing, which consists of including a perceived reality-in the news-, making it more salient, and presenting it to the audience. The data analyzed were collected from CNN and Fox News via Lexis Nexis online academic database. A total of 225 media transcripts-(n=138) Fox News and (n=87) CNN-constituted the text and were coded and analyzed using Atlas.ti data mining software program. The critical analysis has resulted in a number of 180 voices-e.g. journalists, politicians, academics, officials, etc. - contribution of the discursive construction of the non-violence event, of which 150 were anti-Muslim activists, journalists, politicians, reportedly former Muslim Brotherhood member, etc. The study has also resulted in two main frames: frame of illegitimacy and frame of terrorism, transforming the nonviolence event into a celebrated violent one, thereby providing a vivid image of America's project of religious pluralism and its capacity to accommodate the religions existing within the American confines.