Muslims and Europe, part III: Images of Europe
May 29th, 2007 · 6 Comments
This is the third and (probably) last post from the recent workshop on Muslims and Europe, jointly organized by the Reuters Institute and the European Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. The second day of the workshop turned to representations of Europe in Muslim-majority countries, with case studies from Turkey (by Andrew Finkel), Bosnia-Herzegovina (by Eldar Sarajlic of UNDP Bosnia) and Egypt (by Dr Hanaa Ebeid), as well as a shorter presentation on Pakistan by William Milam.
Taken together, these case studies gave a very comprehensive picture of how Europe is represented in Muslim-majority countries – and how dependent the representation is on the geographical and geopolitical position of the country in question. Of the four nations discussed, Pakistan is the furthest away from Europe, politically as well as geographically. Thus, in Pakistan there are hardly any news media representations that are specifically ‘European’; instead, Europe gets bundled into the wider category of “The West”, which really mainly refers to the US. “The West” is generally represented in a very negative manner, as the source of most problems that now face the Muslim world.
In nations closer to Europe, like Turkey and Bosnia (the latter country of course being inEurope rather than merely close to it), representations of Europe are more integrated with representations of the own nation. Andrew Finkel emphasised how the political situation in Turkey does not readily conform to the stereotypes and generalisations of Western European media: the current Islamist government is very pro-Europe. This pro-European stance is broadly transferred to the news media as news media are very close to the political sphere in Turkey. According to Finkel, the Turkish press also has a strong nationalist streak, which affects representations as well: newspapers frequently express how important Turkey is to Europe (rather than the other way around), for example.
Similarly, in Bosnia a nationalist press heavily engaged in identity-building and self-presentation projects also attempts to integrate a positive image of Europe with a national self-image where religion is important: Mr Sarajlic noted that “European Muslim” is the self-description of choice among many Bosnian Muslims: i.e. there is no contradiction between being a Muslim and being European. Interestingly, Europe is held up as an ideal that stands for democracy, affluence and success – and the opposite of this ideal is not Islam (as it was in the French case study), but rather the rest of the Balkans, which are viewed as conservative, traditional and potentially non-democratic.
Europe also gets “good press” in Egypt: Europe is most often presented as a force of modernisation (particularly economic modernisation), a positive agent of globalisation and above all as a counterweight (or counterhegemon, to use Dr Ebeid’s term) to the US and Israel in international politics. This view is consistent with the dominant ideology of the Egyptian press, according to Dr Ebeid: the newspapers in Egypt generally present a view of the world that is secular, nationalist, anti-American and pan-Arabist (rather than pan-Islamist). Europe thus becomes a model for Arab unity, and when Europe sides with the US in international politics, this is often presented as a “betrayal” of European ideals. However, there are important exceptions to this general trend: in conjunction with the Mohammad cartoon affair, most Egyptian newspapers remained broadly secular in their coverage, whereas many satellite TV channels adopted a strong anti-Europe agenda and acted as mobilisers of audiences and conduits of religious interest and feeling: Europe became more visible on TV, and not in a positive way.
In summary, it seems like the figure of “Europe” in Muslim majority country news media plays a similar role to the figure of “Islam” in European media: as a symbol for various issues of identity and belonging, and one that gets activated particularly in times of “crisis”: the 2001 September 11th attacks, the 2003 Iraq invasion, and the 2005 Mohammed cartoons controversy. But that observation must be tempered by the observation that most presenters used "media" in a very general sense, when they in fact mean "newspapers" (Credit goes to Dr Ebeid, who explicitly highlighted differences between the press and television) - and one wonders how important newspapers are in nations where newspaper readership is in fact very low.
And of course, none of the presenters mentioned online media representations at all.
Tags: Research · Events · Media representations · Islam · International journalism
6 responses so far ↓
Antony // May 31, 2007 at 1:59 am
I’m surprised that no-one mentioned online media at all. It’s exactly what turns us non-academics off.
Here we are (Americans and Brits), engaged in a bloody war in a Muslim country, with consequences that are hard to exaggerate. Traditional European and U.S. media are pretty useless, holed up in fortified hotels, ignorant of the language and the culture, repeating what they are told by the Pentagon, or giving us body counts. The only sources of information that seem to me to be somewhat knowledgeable are blogs by Iraqis, flawed as they may be.
So while academics are happy to waste six years of their lives and a book’s worth of ours on such things as the revolutionary character of Cobbett’s pamphlets, they ignore the media revolution in front of them now.
Three days spent on the confluence of government institutions, government-controlled press (Egypt for goodness sakes!), and government-controlled television (Al-Jazeera is an interesting exception), while ignoring online media — what’s a thinking person to make of it?
Henrik // Jun 1, 2007 at 11:36 am
This seems to me to be quite the exaggeration (and a sweeping generalisation about the nature and character of journalism research, but I’ll let that slide for the moment). Internet user penetration in Egypt is about 7% (figures from 2005), up from under 0.4 % in 2000 (see article here), hardly a “revolution” in my view. The fact is that TV and radio are still way more important media in most parts of the developing world (is this “media revolution” going on in the many sub-Saharan African nations where Internet penetration is still no more than a couple of per cent?)
The “thinking person’s” view (assuming I am one of those) would be that in order to understand media, information and communication issues in Egypt, we need to study television, clearly the most influential medium in that nation (it might well not be influential in a good way, but that is not the point here).
Antony // Jun 4, 2007 at 12:04 am
The link showing Internet penetration going up to 7% in Egypt is broken, fyi.
I assumed that when you reported that no-one mentioned online media, you were referring to all the sessions, not just the one dealing with representations of Europe in Muslim-majority countries. In the developed world, the Internet has clearly revolutionized media. And I wonder if it’s justified to dismiss its influence in less-developed Muslim countries. A 30-fold (rapidly accelerating) increase in Internet penetration in Egypt is hardly peanuts, and that’s just to 2005. Furthermore, in developing countries especially, ISP subscriber counts are a very poor method of counting Internet usage — many people use cybercafes because they’re faster, much cheaper, and — no small matter in a politically repressive country such as Egypt — anonymous. See here and here.)
Surely studying how Europe is portrayed on television and in the press in Egypt is a proxy for achieving an understanding of how people there actually think about Europe. If not, the question of “influential” hardly matters — one would be studying media for the sake of media; an audience of two or two million would hardly make a difference. From this perspective, the Internet is far more influential than user accesses might at first suggest. In Egypt, where media are government controlled and censorship is common, groups who have had an undeniably profound effect on the entire globe, including especially Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, and who have a loud and influential voice on in characterizing Europe — al Qaeda, to name but one — use the Internet, not the television. That these clandestine groups can hardly hope to have direct access to government-controlled television studios does not seem to have lessened their influence one whit — perhaps the opposite is the case. The samidzat character of their web sites may strengthen their appeal and influence. The Egyptian state, which has outlawed Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and which assuredly does not portray them favorably on television, has not been able to dampen their appeal despite exclusive access to the “most influential medium.”
Of course word of mouth has been important in growth of these groups, but it cannot be the whole story. One can either argue that media has no influence at all, or one must find another medium besides television, radio, and the printed press to explain how they are getting the message out. Unless I’m missing something (always a possibility), the Internet, absent other candidates, must be it.
So a thinking person (assuming also that I am one) is left, again, to wonder how the Internet can be left out of a discussion of how Europeans are portrayed in Muslim-majority countries.
Henrik // Jun 4, 2007 at 8:57 am
It’s funny that I ended up criticising you for agreeing with me - the reason for my comment at the end of my post was precisely that I thought it problematic that none of the speakers mentioned online media and online representations at all.
However, what I was hearing from you I interpreted (perhaps wrongly) as going to the other extreme: that it is a complete waste of time to study any medium but the Internet - but surely that is not what you are saying? Islamist groups in Egypt are clearly still very interested in using television to reach their audiences - as in the controversial al-Zawraa channel, for example. Surely they wouldn’t be doing this if the Internet had already solved all their problems? But again, that does not mean I am arguing that the Internet is unimportant (just as I assume you are not arguing that traditional media are unimportant) - shortly after its launch, Egypt shut down al-Zawraa, so presumably many viewers will look to the Internet instead.
NB: There are actually some “non-useless” academics trying to understand the media in the Arab world - the recently launched online journal Arab Media & Society is an excellent example. This journal looks at traditional media as well as various online media, blogging etc and to my mind offers quite a comprehensive view of the contemporary media environment of the Arab world.
Antony // Jun 5, 2007 at 5:18 am
Great, I’ll have a look at Arab Media & Society. I’ve been looking for something of that sort.
Personally I think the time is not so distant where all these media “outlets” will merge in various ways to the point where the same people work in all of them and the distinctions are not clear and useful as they may be now.
TV (and radio) are clearly hugely influential everywhere. I suppose if we have a difference of opinion it’s in how fast they are losing that influence. From my perspective, it’s happening fast. I see it here in the U.S. when I look at advertising spend on TV and the Internet; in where my friends get their news (often, the NY Times, but the online edition only); and also the attitude of people I know to the trustworthiness of the different media. I know that as an Internet person I’m dealing with a skewed sample, but I have no doubt that this is where it’s trending.
Henrik // Jun 5, 2007 at 7:31 am
The recurring question in our Institute seminars is in fact not whether change (in the form of convergence) is happening (everyone is agreeing on that), but at what pace change is occurring. The “traditional media” representatives (from the BBC and the like) who come to visit us usually think (or hope?) that they will remain important and that change is not outrunning them. Academic visitors are not so sure - Professor Terhi Rantanen (Chair of Media and Communication at the London School of Economics - I would link but the LSE home page seems down right now) who visited us recently opened her seminar by saying “News as we know it is dead” (precisely because of the changes you talk about).
In my (likewise skewed) sample, it is not the academics who are blind to the pace of change, is the people working in traditional media…
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