from salon.com: - Michele Bachmann wins: How the anti-Muslim fringe hacked the media

[Douglas Carpenter]

A new report shows that it's not just Fox News. Anti-Shariah groups are pulling the conversation to the fringe

By Alex Seitz-Wald

In the months following 9/11, Republican President George W. Bush spoke passionately about the need to respect Muslim-Americans and “the vibrant faith of Islam, which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality.” This year, every Republican presidential candidate united in seeing Islamic Shariah law as a threat to the United States, despite a total lack of evidence.

Anti-Muslim attitudes are now much higher than they were immediately following 9/11. Islamophobic rhetoric once unacceptable in public discourse is now commonplace. And there are now over 50 controversies raging across the country about whether Muslims should be allowed to construct houses of worship. How did we get from there to here?

In a new quantitative analysis published in the American Sociological Review, Bail reports that radical anti-Shariah groups’ messages have been “heavily overrepresented” in the public discourse, whereas pro-Muslim voices have been largely underrepresented. The lopsided media coverage has had far-ranging consequences, elevating the visibility of these radical groups, their perception of their credibility, and creating “a gravitational pull on the mainstream” that moves it towards the fringe position.

Bail used plagiarism detection software to trace how the language from press releases of over 120 different groups with a diversity of views on Muslims ended up in the media. He compared the language in the press release to over 50,000 news articles and TV transcripts and found the fringe views to be vastly more represented than mainstream or pro-Muslim views. Meanwhile, looking at IRS disclosure forms, he found that over time, fringe groups increasingly shared board members and personal ties with mainstream conservative groups like the American Enterprise Institute as their views were mainstreamed by the media.


http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/michele_bachmann_wins_how_the_anti_muslim_fringe_hacked_the_media/

[Ian David]

1. This October, a Muslim family moved into my neighborhood, and the trees started losing leaves!

I thought only Astronauts caused that sort of thing.

[Blunt477]

2. Bachmann Claims They're Everywhere