I look at how stories are shared, as well as who shares the stories, in my research on the news media. In a former life, I worked as a journalist, and it\u2019s given me good understanding of journalism practice and a fair bit of empathy for the journalists, even as it sharpens my own critiques: tradespeople can see slack and sloppiness where the uneducated eye sees just a pretty good job.<\/p>\n
Much of my work up to now has concerned who gets to tell stories in the news \u2013 the sources who give the information that journalists shape into news articles. It\u2019s unfortunate, as John E. Richardson wrote back in 2006<\/a> <\/u>, that only a small percentage of Muslims were quoted in British broadsheet newspapers when those papers reported on stories about Muslims. Muslims were not given space to talk about their own stories.<\/p>\n Fast-forward to some quick analysis of US television media discussing President Donald Trump\u2019s proposed ban on travellers from certain Muslim-majority nations: Media Matters found only 14 out of 176 sources discussing the story were Muslim <\/a>. News organisations are not learning the lessons.<\/p>\n But I am optimistic. I don\u2019t think the picture is necessarily as bleak as that, and I do believe it\u2019s changing. In January, I published an article that characterised the increase of Muslim voices contributing to news coverage about Islam in Scotland\u2019s media <\/a>\u00a0(the article is Open Access, so you don\u2019t need a library card or an expensive subscription to read it).<\/p>\n Recently, I had a chance to speak about the research with Khalida Ashrafi on Radio Asian Fever<\/a>, from Leeds. (You can hear the full programme here<\/a>\u00a0)<\/p>\n