Ethnic minorities as a threat

Van Dijk (1991) – common news stereotype that ethnic minorities are posing a threat to the majority white culture (moral panics):
Immigrants ( seen as a threat in terms of their numbers and their impact on the job supply, housing, etc),
Refugees and asylum seekers (seen as abuser of the welfare state and taking,
Muslims – islamophobic media coverage following the 9/11

Race, migration and media

Philo and Beattie (1999) – moral panics tend to focus on immigrants and asylum seekers,
Stories by journalist usually presented in a negative and alarmist way,
News coverage on the rise of illegal immigrants coming into Britain highly racist
“the result was a news which was sometimes xenophobic in tone which reinforced our identity and their exclusion and, perhaps more importantly provided a rationale for the apparent need for exclusion”

Media representation of Islam and Muslims

Poole (2000) – demonized and distorted by the media as a threat to Western ideologies,
Patel (1999) – Islam is purposely misrepresented as it challenges Western cultural power,
Richardson (2001) – empirical study of British Muslim in the press found that they are mostly negatively represented,
Whitaker (2002) – Muslims are represented as intolerant, misogynist violent or cruel as well as strange and different.

Ethnic minorities as abnormal

BBC (2002) - survey of Asian audiences and their feelings about how they were portrayed in the mass media,
Ethnic Focus (2004) – complaint with regards the representations of the Asian community as divided n two camps those forced into miserable loveless marriages and those who have become millionaires.
Ameli et al (2007) – media discussion over the wearing of the Hijab and the veil is always problematic suggesting that it is an inferior form of dress. The Hijab and the veil somehow reinforce Western beliefs that Islam is misogynist and patriarchal.

Ethnic minorities as invisible

1. Limited roles,
2. Cultural irrelevance,
3. Invisibility,
4. Tokenism,
5. Realism,
6. Ghettoization,
7. Media personnel

Limited roles

In popular drama the perception of ethnic minority audience is when ethnic minority actors appear usually taking on the roles of cleaners (african) and shopkeeper (Asians),

This reflect their low status in