Media portrayals of Muslims and Islam and their influence on adolescent attitude: An empirical study from India

Empirical evidence suggests that media influences attitudes towards Muslims and Islam. However, the majority of the research in this area focuses on adult population. This study, being the first to focus on adolescents, reviewed media influence on their attitude towards Muslims and Islam in India. Survey results from a sample of 343 non-Muslim Indian adolescents revealed a significant association between media as the primary source of information and negative attitude towards Muslims and Islam. Users with preference to BBC, Fox News and Aaj Tak showed a greater mean negative attitude. However, there is a relative change in the overall attitude of those adolescents who have close associations with Muslim friends. Adolescents with media inclination believe media portrayals of Muslim and Islam to be positive, but users with Muslim friends feel the portrayals to be negative. Also when the level of knowledge was measured, media had no role to play. Finally, sentiment analysis of media content concerning Muslims revealed a dominant presence of negative sentiments as compared to positive sentiments. Western media showed greater negative sentiments than the Indian media, with Fox News, BBC and New York Times being the most negative in their coverage.