collective identity of islam

ORIENTALISM

§The paintings, created by European artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, depict the Arab World as an exotic and mysterious place of sand, harems and belly dancers, reflecting a long history of Orientalist fantasies which have continued to permeate our contemporary popular culture.

§Said explained that at the start of European colonization the Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries of the East. They found their civilization and culture very interesting and established the science of orientalism (the study of the orientals/people from these exotic civilization).

§Said argues Europeans divided the world into two parts; the East (Orient)and the west (Occident) or the civilized and the uncivilized-an artificial boundary

§The Europeans used orientalism to define themselves. Some particular attributes were associated with the Orientals.  Europeans defined themselves as the superior race compared to the orientals; and they justified their colonization by this concept. They said that it was their duty towards the world to civilize the uncivilised world

Characteristics of Orientalism

•a society in which Muslim lives are apparently not as important as lives of other Europeans, Americans (The Occident).

•sees Muslims as uncivilized and inherently violent;

•societies in West are being socialized believing that Islam is inferior, savage and irrational system of beliefs, with extremist followers more then ready to kill in the name of their God.

•Post-colonialism explains demonization of Islam with concepts of orientalism, imperialism and (neo)colonialism.

•West needed justification for subordination of East, thus depictions of Orient as inferior, undeveloped and uncivilized.

•These inaccurate and Eurocentric cultural representations have persisted and developed into stereotypes we are very familiar with today and represent an important foundation of current conflicts in western societies as well as around the world.

•Demonization of Islam serves the imperialistic ambitions of political elites in West, which act on behalf of capitalist greed and multinational businesses.

Runnymede Trust’s newly established Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (Head 2014).

•The report identified eight patterns of behaviour that characterise Islamophobic attitudes:

•“Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.”

•“It is seen as a separate ‘other’. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.

• “It is seen as inferior to the west. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.”

•“It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supporting of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilisations.”

•“It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.”

•“Criticisms made of ‘the west’ by Muslims are rejected out of hand.”

•“Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.”

• “Anti- Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal”. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34967994

I do not believe that 1 in 5 Muslims really sympathise with Jihadists. The questionnaire asked if they sympathise with young Muslims who leave to join fighters in Syria, never once were Jihadis mentioned in the questions. The answers were then mediated to make the audience feel a certain way towards Muslims living in the UK. The Sun would have done this to make audiences fear Muslims and to get them to associate them with the extremists that we hear about so often. They only used the statistics of the people who answered "some" sympathy as that was the answer that had generated the most responses. They rounded that up to 20% to make it 1 in 5 and then completely changed what had been asked by turning the questions as if they had been asked about Jihadis when in fact they were never mentioned.

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-cover-cartoon-jokes-about-death-of-drowned-syrian-toddler-aylan-kurdi-10499645.html 

Charlie Hebdo decided to create a cartoon of the syrian child who had just recently drowned whilst fleeing to Greece from Syria. The reason behind it in his opinion was to highlight the western consumerism going on whilst there are people risking their lives to find a better one. However this satire has extremely offended people as it has come across as though the French are against immigrants and that this cartoon has been produced to mock them. 

http://harvardpolitics.com/world/portrayals-violence-abroad-dehumanization-home/

I feel that the lack of media coverage of the chapel hill shootings is absolutely sickening because if the three people who had been shot were all white americans and had been shot by a Muslim it would be front page news everywhere. Giving these three Muslims no publicity just puts across the message that there lives do not matter. It also sort of supports the killer as it is not humiliating him and shaming him in front of the world. It asks the question, would we be protecting him from humiliation if he was Muslim? If the killer was Muslim it is almost certain that he would be called a terrorist for killing a number of atheist because of they opinion on religion, however if a white man does the same does that make it ok? This brings forward the idea that the western world do not find importance in the lives of Muslims. 

•As of 2010, Christianity was by far the world's largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth.

•Islam was second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23% of the global population.

•the fastest-growing major religion in the world.

•4% of the British public claim that they know 'nothing or next to nothing about Islam’

•64% of the British public claim that what they do know is ‘acquired through the media’

•Research from 2006 suggests that the press coverage relating to Muslims and Islam in British National newspapers had increased by approximately 270% over preceding decade

•91% of that coverage was deemed negative

•84% of press coverage represented Islam and Muslims either as ‘likely to cause damage or danger’ or as ‘operating in a time of intense difficulty or danger’

(Dr Chris Allen 2012)

Mediation and the effects it can have on representations essay

Collective identity is the term used to describe an individuals sense of belonging to a group,who share a set of traditions and values. This is not to be confused with representation, the two definitions are very different to each other. Representation is the way ideas , objects , people, groups  and life forms are depicted by the mass media, this is an objective view. The important point to pick out in that definition is that these views are depicted by the mass media, that is the main difference between collective identity and representation, the representation is the product of the collective identity once it has been mediated through the media. 

So why is mediation so important in the role of representation? Everything we are told on the TV, newspapers, radio, adverts are all mediated to make us think a certain way, the idea comes from the Hypodermic Needle theory. This theory suggests that audiences are a blank canvas that just sit in front of the TV and digest everything as being true, wholesome facts. If this is in fact true then the media has a greater effect on our thoughts then we think, and when mediation comes into play, it is hard to differentiate between what is a true representation and what has been made to make us feel a certain way towards a certain topic. 


Mediation is the process of selection and shaping, creating meaning from an original event. There are social, economic and political factors weighing on those who have to make decisions in the mediating process. Numerous decisions are made in this process, for example: the selection of material, the type of language, the framing and composition of shots, the style of presentation etc. So in summary, mediation is the way in which media edit what is being shown to us in order to create a specific opinion on the topic shown. For example, during the general election it turns out the newspaper you read at the time would depict which way you would vote. Newspapers are highly opinionated to fit the beliefs of the owners of the newspaper company, so if you read the Telegraph or Daily Mail you are more likely to have voted for Conservatives as that is a very right wing newspaper. Whereas if you were to read the Guardian or the Mirror you were more likely to have voted Labour as they're a very left wing newspaper.So therefore hegemony has a very big impact on mediation. Hegemony leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others. Enforcing the beliefs of one dominant group onto the other. If we take the example of newspapers, mentioned previously, it is very clear to see that the beliefs of the head executives of these papers are forcing their views onto the readers. Rupert Murdoch is a great example of how your socio-economic status can give you such power to enforce your beliefs onto millions. 


To conclude, the mediation of a text can change the way that audiences perceive different groups of people. The collective identity and representation can be confused and the representation perceived by the media can be wrongly assumed to be the collective identity. For example, the representation of the youth after the 2010 London riots was depicted by the media as criminals. 565

Critical Perspectives In Media

Section A:  Theoretical evaluation of production. (50 marks)

•Question 1(a) requires candidates to describe and evaluate their skills development over the course of their production work, from Foundation Portfolio to Advanced Portfolio. The focus of this evaluation must be on skills development, and the question will require them to adapt this to one or two specific production practices. The list of practices to which questions will relate is as follows:
•Digital Technology
•Creativity
•Research and planning
•Post-production
•Using conventions from real media texts

Section A:  Theoretical evaluation of production.

•Question 1(b) requires candidates to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept. The list of concepts to which questions will relate is as follows:

•Genre

•Narrative

•Representation

•Audience

•Media language

Section B: Contemporary Media Issues (50 marks)

•One question to be answered from a choice of six topic areas offered by OCR.

–There will be two questions from each topic area. 

Section B: Contemporary Media Issues•You will be investigating••Media and Collective identity

Media and Collective Identity

–How do the contemporary media represent: nations, regions and ethnic / social / collective groups of people in different ways?

–How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?

–What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

–To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’

Candidates may analyse the representation of and / or the collective identity of one or more group(s) of people. 

•National cinema, television representations, magazines and… gender, representations of youth and youth culture, post-9/11 representations of Islam, absence / presence of people with disability in two media. 

Collective identity

 I have chosen this picture to represent the youth because it shows that young people spend the majority of their childhood in education being tested on their intelligence.

 This picture shows how the youth care a lot about their appearance and what other people thing about how they look.

 This is a picture of young people drinking and having a good time, which is what most teens do spent their time doing with their friends.

This picture shows a group of teens hanging out in the street which can be seen in many towns as there is not a lot of places for teens to go. These teens can be seen as troublesome in some cases.

The papers portrayed the youth as criminals within their newspaper articles during the London riots, they also used the crimes committed as a representation of all youth even though it was just a small minority of people. The sun and the Daily Mirror are both very much right wing and have used the words "yobs" to describe our whole generation as rebellious people. It portrays that youths have no care for their country or others and only care about themselves.

Glossary

Hegemony-leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others. Enforcing the beliefs of one dominant group onto the other.

Collective identity- Collective identity: the individuals sense of belonging to a group who share a set of traditions and values, (part of personal identity).

Mediation- Is the process of selection and shaping, creating meaning from an original event. There are social, economic and political factors weighing on those who have to make decisions in the mediating process. Numerous decisions are made in this process, for example: the selection of material, the type of language, the framing and composition of shots, the style of presentation etc. 

Representation- the way ideas , objects , people, groups  and life forms are depicted by the mass media.

Primary research-Primary research is new research, carried out to answer specific issues or questions. It can involve questionnaires, surveys or interviews with individuals or small groups.

Secondary research-Secondary research makes use of information previously researched for other purposes and publicly available. This is also known as 'desk research'. Secondary research includes published research reports in a library, surveys or the Internet.

Orientalism-The representation of Asia in a stereotyped way that is regarded as embodying a colonialist attitude.

Encoding- The intended message 

Decoding- The way the message comes across to the public