Reporting Islam

Jacqui Ewart is a former journalist and Professor at Griffith University, Australia. She researches news media representations of Muslims and disasters communication. She is the co-author and author of several books about news media coverage of Muslims and has published widely in related international journals. Kate O’Donnell is the Reporting Islam Project’s Principal Research Fellow based at Griffith University, Australia. She is a career public servant turned academic whose research interests also include terrorism, policing and critical infrastructure resilience.

‘This book presents a compelling structure for studying and advancing the coverage of Islam. It combines scholarly interests with a real sensitivity to the pressures facing both individual journalists and the journalism industry.’Fred Vultee, Associate Professor of Journalism, Wayne State University, USA‘Urgent and timely, this book advances existing research on the reporting of Islam by offering solutions to its findings.’Elizabeth Poole, Programme Director in Media, Communications and Culture, Keele University, UK‘A fine book. A pro-active book. A book that creates a new model of journalism to intervene, to challenge and to question. Working through the complex layering of otherness in journalism, alongside the pressure to summon workable narratives under time pressures, Ewart and O'Donnell create a new way of summoning evidence, developing interpretations and presenting complex ideas. This book is rare. It is practical but also high theory. It is interventionist, but never summons the subjectivity that would weaken the argument. In a time of fake news, Ewart and O'Donnell are the scholars to teach all of us to look widely and deeply for evidence, and evaluate the consequences of our choices.’Tara Brabazon, Dean of Graduate Research and Professor of Cultural Studies, Flinders University, Australia

• Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Setting the scene Chapter 3: Theoretical frameworks for analysing media coverage of Islam: Orientalism, Islamophobia and racism Chapter 4: Problems and effects: news media coverage of Islam and its potential implications Chapter 5: Approaches to more ethical coverage: peace journalism, constructive journalism and solutions journalism Chapter 6: Journalists’, educators' and Muslims’ views on the reportage of Islam and Muslims Chapter 7: A model for transformative journalism Chapter 8: Reporting radicalisation, terror incidents and arrests Chapter 9: Reporting Muslim women – veiling Chapter 10: Muslim, migrant, refugee? conflating identities Chapter 11: Reporting sharia and halal Chapter 12: News media coverage of mosques Chapter 13: Best practice approaches Chapter 14: Conclusion: Implementing inclusive approaches to reporting on Muslims, production and audience considerations