Global Media Image of Islam and Muslims and the Problematics of a Response Strategy

Author(s): FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ and SADOLLAH
AHRARI
Source: Islamic Studies, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 5-25
Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23643922
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Islamic Studies 51:1 (2012) pp. 05-25

Global Media Image of Islam and Muslims and the

Problematics of a Response Strategy
FAZAL RAHIM KHAN
ZAFAR IQBAL
OSMAN B. GAZZAZ
SADOLLAH AHRARI

Abstract

The discourse on Islam and Muslims in the Western media is negative. Neverth
a viable media response strategy at the global level from the Muslim scholars i
existent. The present paper aims at initiating a theory-based discourse on the co
of such a response strategy and argues that Cultivation Effects & Cultural Indi
(CI) paradigm, by being located at the juncture of critical cultural theor
postpositivist research traditions of mass communication scholarship, could be u
a theoretical and empirical home for initiating and sustaining a response strateg
accomplishing such a theory-based response strategy, the paper discusses sets
problematics in three broad domains of research and concludes that for designin
implementing a viable response strategy a sustained program of research int
complex composite of the mass communication process in Muslim countries w
needed.

The Imperative of a Response Strategy

A widespread concern found in the Muslim world is that Islam and Muslims
are negatively portrayed in the globalized Western media. This generates and
sustains negative public images of Islam and Muslims in the world today. The
issue is immensely serious for if the globalization of negative media packaging
of Islam and Muslims is allowed to continue unaddressed and unchecked, it
may eventuate into some kind of clash of civilizations1 with horrendous
consequences for human civilization on the planet. The Western mass
communication scholarship has already argued that the Western media's

1 Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?," Foreign Affairs, 72 (1993), 22-49; and
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

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£ FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI

misrepresentation of Muslims has been influential in the spread of

Islamophobia in the West.2 That is, the spread of Islamophobia, underscores the
impact potential of the negative media packaging of Islam and Muslims. As a
social construct, Islamophobia may be said to consist of affective and
behavioural components derived from a cultural prejudice of Islam and
Muslims. To some it is 'a shorthand way of referring to a dread or hatred of
Islam — and, therefore, to a fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.'3 More
alarming, perhaps, is the notion that the Islamophobis among the Western
public tend to regard hostility to Islam and Muslims as something natural and
normat that finds expression in several forms of societal level Islamophobia
like marginalization, derision, intimidation — denigration, vilification,
criminalization, and even dehumanization of Muslims.5
We believe that since the Western mass communication or culture
industry is responsible for the global purveying of a negative symbolic
packaging of Islam and Muslims, the response too should inter alia include a
mass communication policy as its major component. At the moment, scholars
in the Muslim world6 do not offer any concerted and theoretically grounded
mass communication policy initiative geared to producing and distributing an
alternative image within the West dominated global public sphere.7
Nevertheless, for Muslims the need to have a voice of their own in the world
media, a credible informational and a cultural presence, representing the
mainstream Islam and vast majorities of Muslims as they actually are, is an

2 Allen C. "From Race to Religion: The New Face of Discrimination" in T. Abbas ed., Muslim
Britain: Communities under Pressure (London: Zed Books, 2005), 24-47; P. Gilroy, "The End of
Antiracism" in J. Donald and A Rattansi eds., Race, Culture and Difference (London: Sage, 1992),
49-61; E. Poole, Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims (London: I. B. Taurus,
2002); E. Poole and J. Richardson eds., Muslims and the News Media (Lonson: I. B. Taurus, 2006);
and B. Zelizer and A. Stuart Journalism after 9/11 (London: Routledge, 2002).
3 Mayor of London Report, The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, non-Muslims and the UK
Media retrieved on January 26, 2007. http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/equalities/docs/
4 Runnymede Trust, Islamophohia: A Challenge for Us All (London: Runnymede Trust, 1997).
5 Ataullah Bogdan Kopanski, The Siege of Islam: Psychological Warfare & neo-Crusaderism in the
Era of Mass Communication (Infowar). Paper presented in July 2008 at the International
Conference on the Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
6 Although the Muslim world does not represent a monolithic entity but the global arm of its
televised culture industry appear generally patterned on its Western prototype and is an
unwitting instrument of perpetuating cultural hegemony of the West.
7 J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1989). Our use of the term here, however, does not imply the presence of a generalized
monolithic global sphere. Its use here is more limited in the sense of the television reality of
global TV that is truly Western. And the Anglo-American dominated Western television reality
in portrayal of Islam and Muslims presents a well-nigh undifferentiated stereotypical picture of
Islam and Muslims.

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY -j

exigency that cannot be neglected any more. But since the global public sphere
remains hegemonized for indoctrination of ideology8 by well-entrenched
Western media companies, and since the media impact on culture is an
overtime process,9 and since its wholesale distribution and mass impact comes
primarily through electronic products in audio-visual dramatized
entertainment and infotainment formats, the mass communication policy
response will also need to exploit the potential of traditional and new
electronic media technology. This response-strategy will primarily comprise
an alternative packaging of Islam and Muslims within the symbolic world of
satellite and cable television message system. More importantly, this packaging
will need to be based on some viable theory with clearly laid-out operational
and effects' benchmarks and objectives for monitoring. Close and cyclical
correspondence and interaction between the higher order theoretical and the
lower-order empirical plane would need to be realized for the effectiveness of
the response strategy. We are making this observation as we believe that the
symbolic world of television continues to be the dominant electronic media
product of the 21st century. The symbolic world of television has also found
way into cyberspace and onto cellphones as downloadable content and its
enormous appeal has given birth to a number of theories about its
consequences for individuals, society, and culture.10 Indeed, most of today's
social experience in human society is television-mediated experience and such a
mediated experience has the ability to transform human society by extending
"institutionalized public acculturation beyond the limits of face to face and
any other personally mediated interaction."11
The present paper, therefore, primarily aims at explicating the theory and
research problematics of such a television message system-based policy because
any response strategy that is not based on proper explication of the research
problematics will lack adequate scientific or logico-empirical foundations to
operate from. The term problematics is used here as a noun and it implies
problems that may well be dynamic and dialectically evolving in nature. This
is because any response strategy that aims at producing and infusing an

8 See Althusser, as cited in M. Wheeler, Politics and the Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,
1997), 24; and H. Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964).
' G. Gerbner and L. Gross, "Living with Television: The Violence Profile," Journal of
Communication, 23 (1976), 173-179; and E. Mastro, E. Behm-Morawitz and M. Ortiz, "The
Cultivation of Social Perceptions of Latinos: A Mental Models Approach," Media Psychology, 9
(2007), 1-19.
10 D. McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory, 5th ed. (London: Sage, 2005), 129; S.
Baran and D. Davis, Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future, 6th ed.
(Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012).
11 George Gerbner as cited in McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory, 129.

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI
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alternative packaging of Islam and Muslims without a dynamic research-based

monitoring system will not be logically sustainable in the face of the cultural
challenges stemming from the global reach of the Western culture (mass
communication) industry. Specifically, such a prospective response strategy
will have to contend with a system of contradictory audio-visual stimuli that
shall impinge on the strategy's mass communication process at each one of its
three interactively linked composite nodes of production, consumption, and
consequence.12 Moreover, these problematics may as well be dynamic and ever
changing in the presence of a constant dialectics of the contradictory message
systems and audience effects.

The term television message system refers here, per George Gerbner's
Cultural Indicators (CI) paradigm,13 to an entire system of electronic messages
as distinct from a single and a one off message. As used here, the term also
implies that such a message system will need to be lastingly sustained within
the symbolic world of satellite and cable television and the cyberspace in order
to create specific conceptions of cultural social reality of Islam and Muslims
among its users. Moreover, the term subsumes all types of content genres
(news and information as well as all sorts of entertainment contents including
advertisements and animations, reality shows as well as fictional programs,
lifestyle and cultural shows etc).

The Problematic of a Mass Communication Response Strategy

The following discussion of the nature of the problematic assumes a response
strategy that is grounded into a systematic theory of macro-scopic cultural
effects of audio-visual electronic infusions. We believe, the cause of our
response strategy in countering an entrenched, and a pervasive phenomenon in
the Western world's global media may be best served by: (a) use of theories
that focus on over-time and macroscopic (cultural) effects of television; (b) a
constant infusion of the alternative message system into the target market;
(c) a continual monitoring of the resultant mass communication process
within the target audiences; and (d) a constant adjustment or fine-tuning of the
message system's tactical mechanics in view of a constantly unfolding

12 F. Khan, H. Zafar and A. S. Abbasi, "Mass Communication Research as a Social Science

Discipline in Pakistan:- Status, Problems and Opportunities," Asian Journal of Communication, 8
(1998), 11-131.
13 G. Gerbner, "Towards Cultural Indicators: The Analysis of Mass Mediated Public Message
System," A V Communications Review, 17 (1969), 137-148; and G. Gerbner, "Cultural
Indicators: The Third Voice," in G. Gerbner, L. Gross, and W. Melody eds., Communication
Technology and Social Policy (New York: Wiley 1973), 555-573.

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY 9

interplay of audio-visual electronic message system's infusions and the

audience-effects.14

At a minimum, we believe, the research problematic of the just stated

response strategy can be teased out for discussion into three broad areas or
domains; viz., (i) the domain of the message system(s) production and infusion
into target market; (2) the domain of the strategy's goal or objective; (3) and
the domain of the strategy's implementation.

The Problematic of Message System Production and Distribution

The main problematic under this composite subhead will be to situate message
system production and distribution into an appropriate theoretical context
because the aim of the proposed strategy is not to endlessly produce and
distribute television fare for the effects to automatically happen in some
stimulus-response (S-R) fashion. Such an approach is not only too simplistic
and stands rejected in the mainstream mass communication literature,15 but it
may as well be counterproductive and dysfunctional for the strategy's
objective. The failure of the crudely propagandists Soviet media system in
recent times (where even the members of the Communist party distrusted the
Pravda testifies to the fact that effective message systems have to be sufficiently
subtle, flexible, savvy, attractive, and plausible for the audiences,).16 Only a
theory-based production of message system can keep the message system from
being grossly propagandistic and more subtly attuned to the goals of the
strategy.
Although the issue of images of Islam and Muslims in the global
television-dominated public sphere has not yet attracted any serious and
concerted attention from Muslim mass communication scholars and social
scientists, this does not mean there has been no discourse on the issue among
the Muslims at all. To the contrary, there is and continues to be a discourse
galore. Nevertheless, the narrow level of the discourse and the questionable
epistemology behind it has rendered the discourse of little, if any, response
utility. Merely asserting negative portrayal of Muslims or counting or
recording anecdotal evidence of the Western media bias is of no practical
utility in devising a full-blown television-based response strategy. Indeed,
anecdotal discourse is seldom antidotal. For example, most often, the Muslim

14 The use of the term electronic media is done here to allow for the distribution of television
message systems through the cyber media.
15 See, for example, McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory.
16 J. D. Downing, "Drawing a Bead on Global Communication Theories," in Y. R. Kamalipour
ed., Global Communication, 2nd ed. (Calif.: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2007), 29, for details see, 22
38.

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B, GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI
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communication researcher have looked at the coverage of Islam and Muslims

from the perspective of "objectivity and bias" paradigm. That is, how
objective, or, how biased are the media portrayals? This paradigm now stands
largely replaced with broader media framing paradigm, which is thought to
have more subtle and powerful influences on audiences than does the bias in
news stories.17

The above reference to the framing paradigm is made here merely to

underscore the point about what exactly has gone missing from the Muslim
world18 discourse on the West's negative media packaging of Islam and
Muslims. Clearly, it has been the absence of an, all too important, empirically
grounded theoretical perspective from the Muslim scholarship that is a specific
remiss. Theory and practice are inherently intertwined. Indeed, there is
nothing as practical as a good theory. A good theory does not just help
predicting a phenomenon but contains explanatory mechanisms that also help
to control the phenomenon by alerting and guiding researchers and
practitioners to relevant problematics. Therefore, what is needed is a program
of theory driven research that should put theory into mass communication
action and integrate it with the needs and requirements of a "wholesale"
production and distribution of television message systems and stimuli. Such a
program of research should continuously test and provide conceptual and
theoretical perspectives and wisdoms on an ever evolving discourse.
Now, searching for a theoretical perspective that posits macroscopic
cultural effects which are empirically and statistically testable (verifiable) too
puts us squarely on the horn of a theoretical dilemma. Critical cultural studies
theories that focus on culture and postpositivist theories, and that examine
media effects on individuals are two major but conflicting schools of mass
communication research. Problem with critical cultural theories of mass
communication is that, in the absence of hard quantitative data supporting its
causal assertions, these tend to be mostly speculative of the media's cultural
role in society. Their theoretical expectations and causal assertions are not
empirically testable through postpositivist social science methodologies. For
example, Stanley Baran and Dennis Davis in their reputed text book on mass
communication theory remark,

In the 1980s, when cultural theories began to be taken seriously in the discipline
fin the US], a furious debate broke out between adherents and postpositivist

17 W. J. Severin and Jr., J. Tankard, Communication Theories: Origins, Methods and Uses in the
Mass Media, 5th ed. (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 2001), 277-278.
18 The Muslim world here implies the discourse of individual Muslim scholars on the issue and
the collective impressions discursively constructed in the work of Muslim scholars.

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY
11

opponents. The field was declared to be in ferment. Advocates of media effects

perspectives said their theories were more scientific because they were based on
highly structured empirical observations and they were falsifiable — new
evidence could lead to their rejection. They attacked cultural theories as
speculative and based on loosely structured qualitative research methods. These
theories couldn't be disproved because there was no way to test their causal
assertions. But since that time, cultural theories have gained acceptance ...19

Contemporary cultural theories in mass communication research, like the

symbolic interactionist perspective of Don Faules and Dennis Alexander,
social constructionist perspectives of Alfred Schutz, the construction of social
reality perspective of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the framing
perspective of William Gamson and his colleagues, and the cultivation effects
and the CI perspective of George Gerbner and his colleagues are all primarily
meaning making perspectives arguing that our perceptions and expectations —
social stereotypes, attitudes, social reality beliefs, and biases — are socially
constructed through signs, symbols, signals, typification schemes, and hyper
ritualism. These theories also contend that the amount of agency exercised by
individuals in this symbolically and socially constructed world is limited and
usually over-ridden by social institutions like the institution of television
(electronic media) that dominate the social world and transmit culture to us.20
Of these major macroscopic cultural perspectives the cultivation theory
of George Gerbner and his colleagues, a later offshoot of their Cultural
Indicators (CI) paradigm, holds great promise. The utility of this theory from
the standpoint of our proposed response strategy is that it utilizes traditional
postpositivist empirical research methods to address essential humanistic
questions, a property absent from the postpositivist theories on the one hand
and the rest of the cultural theories on the other. Perhaps this prompted one
of the most influential cultivation critics Horace Newcomb to remark: "More
than any other research effort in the area of television studies the work of
Gerbner and Gross and their associates sits squarely at the juncture of the
social sciences and humanities."21 The cultivation theory is now "widely
accepted as a useful way to understand and explain media effects."22 The core
argument of the theory is that television is a "message system" that cultivates a
wordview that, although possibly inaccurate, becomes the reality simply

" See, for example, Baran and Davis, Mass Communication Theory, 315.
20 See chapter 11, for a very good discussion of these cultural theories, definitions of the relevant
constructs and the role of mass media in construction of our world for us, in Baran and Davis,
Mass Communication Theory.
21 As cited in ibid., 343.
22 Ibid, 340.

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI
12

because the audience members believe it to be the reality and they base their
judgment about their own everyday worlds on that reality.

More specific to the purpose of the present paper, an insight into the
nature of the problematics of message system production and infusion can be
had through a description of the assumptions and procedures of the cultural
indicators and cultivation theory paradigm. Although originated in early 1970s
by George Gerbner and his colleagues, media cultivation remains a "grand
theory embracing a wide range of phenomena"23 and is among a few most
active research traditions in mass communication scholarship.24 The CI
paradigm and media cultivation are "more than just an analysis of effects from
a specific medium; it is an analysis of institution of television and its social
role."25 This is our belief that, with some modifications, the CI paradigm offers
necessary theoretical and methodological acumen to serve as a theoretical and
operational home for a TV production and infusion based response strategy.
Therefore in the following pages we will first provide a quick overview cf the
CI paradigm gleaned from the work of George Gerbner and his colleagues and
then we will try to infer wisdom from it by way of a main theoretical context
for developing a TV-based mass communication policy response to the global
media's negativization of Islam and Muslims.

The CI paradigm has developed through a programmatic research strategy

consisting of a systematic content analysis and a social survey based cultivation
effects analysis by George Gerbner and his colleagues.26 Their research
program involves a three-pronged overtime research strategy: (1) the
institutional process analysis prong which inquires into mass media decision
making and policy formation — the formation of policies born out of
institutional needs and objectives of directing a massive flow of television
messages; (2) the message systems analysis prong that studies aggregates of
television message through systematic content analysis to chart out cultural
patterns, images, and trends that the world of television presents to its viewers
as a social reality; (3) the cultivation analysis prong that examines the cultural

23 Tae-Seop Lim and Sang Yeon Kim, "Many Faces of Media Effects," in Raymond W. Preiss, et
al., eds., Mass Media Effects Research: Advances through Meta-Analysis (New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2007), 315-325; and L. W. Jeffres, Mass Media Effects, 2nd ed. (Prospect
Heights, IL.: Waveland Press, 1997).
24 J. Shanahan and V. Jones, "Cultivation and social control," in D. Demers and K. Viswanath,
eds., Mass Media, Social Control and Social Change (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1999.
25 Ibid., 32.
26 G. Gerbner, et al., "Growing up with Television: the Cultivation Perspective," in J. Bryant
and S. Zillman, eds., Media Effect: Advances in Theory and Research (New Jersey: LEA, 1994), 17
41; and G. Gerbner and L. Gross, "Living with Television," 173-179.

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY

effects of images found in television social reality on audience members.27

The CI program of research is based on the assumption that television's
mass-produced messages and images form the mainstream of a culture's
symbolic environment in which people live and die, define themselves and
others, and develop and maintain beliefs and assumptions about social reality.28
That is, television, through its various program genres, including news
information, entertainment and commercial fares, constructs and cultivates
audience members' perceptions of social reality through the use of commonly
recurring aggregate patterns of messages and images. These aggregate patterns
of messages and images, through a continuous repetition of popular plots and
themes, become a prime source of audience social reality and cultural ideology,
it is assumed. Moreover, since much of the society is beyond the immediate
and direct physical reach of the audiences, they become dependent on
television's message system for forming such impressions. Thus for Gerbner
and his colleagues, TV is a pivotal source of not just discreetly informing
people of their socio-cultural landscape but also in shaping the background
canvas of meanings and preferred ways of viewing the world. In other words,
in the CI work, television is assumed to be responsible for a major cultivating
and acculturating process as it systematically exposes people to and bends their
social reality to a selective view of society, a view which influences the
audience members' beliefs and values.29 This is because, according to the CI
group, in many cultures around the world, television, like a key member of a
family, tells most of the stories most of the time and thus gradually forms a
coherent though mythical world in every home.30 It is hypothesized that
heavy exposure to the world of television over long periods of time results in
television social reality getting progressively absorbed by the audiences, with
their perceptions, beliefs and images of society changing in the direction of the
social reality found in the television message system.31
Apart from the theoretical wisdom of the CI paradigm, the procedures
used by this program of research are also instructive in developing and

27 Gerbner, "Cultural Indicators," 555-573.

28 M. Morgan, "Cultivation Analysis," in E. Barnouw, et al., eds., International Encyclopedia of
Communication (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 430-433.
29 McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory, 129.
30 G. Gerbner, et al., "The Demonstration of Power: Violence Profile No. 10," Journal of
Communication 29 (1979), 177-196.; for a summary of these and other assumptions behind the
CI work, see S. J. Baran and D. K. Davis, Mass Communication Theory, 322-335. F. Khan, S.
Siraj and B. Soomro, "Ideological Identity of Muslims and Cultural Invasion through
Television: Need for a theoretically Grounded Policy Initiative," Islamic Studies, 38: 2 (1999),
235-253.

31 Gerbner, et al., "The Demonstration of Power."

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI
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strategizing a TV-based mass communication policy. The CI and cultivation

researchers have used elaborate message system analysis techniques for
identifying and assessing the most recurrent content including images,
portrayals and values. All programming is monitored for attention, emphasis,
tendency, and structure of the elements of existence or cultural representation
in the television programming.32 According to Gerbner, attention means
selecting phenomena for observation. A measure of attention is an indication
of the presence and frequency of subject elements (i.e. topics, themes, values,
and so on) in a message system. Emphasis establishes a context of priorities of
importance or relevance. In other words, emphasis sets out a field of
differential appeal for audience members in as much as emphasis is expressed
through certain topics, and/or themes and/or values as the major points of the
TV fare. Tendency refers to the directionality of presentation and the explicit
or contextual judgment of qualities of phenomenon expressed in the
presentation. Structure is that aspect of the presentation's context that reveals
relationship among the elements. Gerbner and his colleagues focused on
proximal structures called "clustering" and tried to explicate the implicit logic
in clustering as a property of large message system not readily available to
scrutiny.33 For example George Gerbner notes:

...the reasoning employed in the assertion that "John loves Mary and will marry
her" (whether expressed in a sentence, a story, a series of visual images etc.) is
apparent in that single statement. But if we compare two large message systems
and find that the proximal occurrences of the words or concepts of "love" and
"marry" are significantly more frequent in one than in the other, we have
discovered an element of comparative linkage or structure, and a kind of "logic"
that would not be revealed by inspecting propositions.34

The CI researchers' elaborate study of violence in the message system of

US television is particularly instructive in as much as they have developed a
quantitative index of violence by observing what they call prevalence, rate and
roles of violence in units of programming of primetime and non-primetime
broadcast hours. In the case of their violence index, prevalence, rate, and roles
seem to broadly capture the elements of attention, emphasis, tendency, and
structure.

Data from these and other systematic content analysis of televisi

used to formulate questions about audiences' conceptions of social re
These questions are then posed to samples of audience members in a

32 Gerbner, "Towards Cultural Indicators," 137-148.

33 Ibid.
3< Ibid., 146.

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY
15

survey design. Most of the questions have a television answer (the way things
appear in the world of television) and a real-world answer that more closely
reflects the ground reality. The relationship between the amount of viewing
and the tendency to respond to these questions by giving television answer
indicates television's contribution to viewers' conception of social reality.35
But the CI cultivation analysis prong of research is not limited to the
comparisons of television "facts" with real-world statistics. The "fact" of the
world of television can become the basis for a broader, more general
worldview, thus making television a subtle but significant source of general
values, ideologies, perspectives as well as specific assumptions, beliefs, and
images.36 George Gerbner's conceptualization of the construct mean world
syndrome is an example of extrapolation to a more general perspective from
facts of television violence. For example, TV content does not explicitly say
much about people's selfishness or altruism and there are no real world
statistics about the extent to which people can be trusted yet the cultivation
effects research suggests that one "lesson" viewers derive from regular heavy
exposure to violence in TV message system is that most people cannot be
trusted, and they feel insecure and apprehensive of the mean world. So they
suffer from what Gerbner calls the mean world syndrome.
Moreover, cross sectional and longitudinal studies under the CI paradigms
have consistently demonstrated television's ability to cultivate beliefs, images
of violence, sex role stereotypes, conceptions of occupations, education,
health, family life, political orientations and other aspects of culture3' Indeed,
consistent evidence in support of the CI's work has led George Gerbner to
identify 3 Bs of television, viz. television blurs traditional distinctions of
people's views of their world, blends their realities into television's cultural
mainstream, and bends that mainstream to the institutional interests of
television and its sponsors.38 In sum, on the basis of the above noted
theoretical and methodological wisdom of the CI research tradition, the
problematic of message system production and infusion as a necessary
component of the proposed policy shall entail addressing the following
minimum requirements:

1. A baseline social scientific intelligence (knowledge, data, and information)

will need to be generated on the current packaging of Islam and Muslims in
the message system of global television. This will help in identifying the

35 Morgan, "Cultivation Analysis," 430-433.

36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.

38 Baran and Davis Mass Communication Theory, 330.

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI

exact nature and the extent of the opprobrium that is being associated with
Islam and Muslims.

2. Creating such a scientific data would not be possible without a sustained

program of carefully and continuously monitoring, coding, and analyzing
the values, portrayals, and images of Islam and Muslims across all TV
genres. The content will have to be monitored for the amount of attention,
emphasis, tendency and structure of cultural representation of Islam and
Muslims. This type of information will serve as part of the inputs for the
alternate cultural packaging of Islam and Muslims.
3. Once major elements in the nature of the current negative portrayal of
Islam and Muslims are thus identified then an alternative packaging of Islam
and Muslims contradicting, undermining, scuttling, and or diluting the
major negative cultural premises in the Western packaging can start. But
this will have to be done in a cyclical process of Research and Development
(.R & D). The main R&D task would be to develop formula-like production
indices that would result in the production of entertainment and
informational fares that at once can attract and hold audience attention and
also subtly contain positive cultural images of Islam and Muslims by way of
"trace contaminant."

4. Specifically, message system(s) will need to be created carrying positive

constructions of Islam and Muslims through the strategies of attention,
emphasis, tendency, and structure. Translated into the proposed policy
objective, attention, for instance, would mean whether the program genres
carry allusions to Islam and Muslims and the extent of their frequency.
Emphasis would mean making themes, values and topics about Islam as
major points in the TV fare (e.g., the themes and values of respect for
minorities in Islam, Muslims respect for fellow humans, sabr as holding on
to one's values despite odds rather than a fatalistic state of helplessness, the
Islamic value of Jihad in its widest sense etc.). Tendency would mean the
directionality of the theme or value being emphasized (whether favorable or
unfavorable, good or bad etc.). That is, some valuation will need to be
attached to the emphasis. Structure would imply what more general or
worldviews the presented theme or topic is being associated with through
the use of "proximal clustering." The proximal clustering has to do with the
latent rather than the manifest logic. For example, manifestly a role may be
cast as enduring the odds but what if that effort always ends in the role
failing in his goal achievement then this would lead to a proximal clustering
of "sabr" with powerless. These elements, in short, may define the overall
property of the alternate message system(s) that can be quantified through
constructing indices that capture prevalence, rates and roles of particular
aspects of culture. George Gerbner and his colleagues have successfully done
this with regard to violence and other political values in the American
television's message system. Their violence profile index has been validated
and George Gerbner and his colleagues, and others have repeatedly

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY
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demonstrated the cultivation effect in the form of common consciousness

among the heavy viewers of television or cultivation of television
mainstream. In fact, their work led to the US government legislation for
controlling the level of violence in the US television programming and the
level of its subsequent cultivation into society. It implies that indices created
to measure aspects of television social reality can also provide wisdom on
how social reality can be modified in the television programming. It,
therefore, means that indices can also be created about TV social reality
relevant to Islam and Muslims. These indices and scales will need to be
developed on the pattern of the CI's violence index that captures
prevalence, rates, and roles of violence in units of television programming.
5. These alternate message system infusions into global public and cultural
spheres will need to be closely monitored for viewers' appeal, exposure
patterns, cultivation effects and for identifying and profiling market
segmentations based on the markets' psychography and socio-demography
etc. That is, the alternate cultural infusions will need to be followed up,
after an appropriate time lag, with cultivation effects surveys. The wisdom
attained from these surveys will need to be fed back into the productions to
adjust the positive representational potential and increase their cultivation
effects potential.
6. Furthermore, these TV infusions (news and information, fiction and
entertainment content richly targeting the young, the old alike) containing
positive representation will need to be released in the form of thematic TV
channels on global cable and satellite networks.
7. This means a strategic research and application based massive TV
productions and distribution policy will need to be devised. This policy will
act as a cultural arm of Islam diffusing Islamic values into global public
sphere through news and information, and entertainment television genres.
This policy will need to integrate all the three nodes of the tri-nodal mass
communication process of TV production and distribution, consumption
by audience members, and subsequent audience effects.39
8. Theory-based programmatic research will have to be the lynchpin of the
policy that will primarily integrate the CI message system analysis prong of
research with its cultivation effects prong through strategies of message
system production and infusion. The purpose behind this integration would
be to help mass communication researchers develop and synthesize various
indices capable of indexing a television production's potential for positive
representation of Islam and Muslims. The cultivation effects analysis will
help validate these indices.
9. To materialize the foregoing a wide ranging institute of mass
communication policy and research will be needed that will bring together

39 Khan, Zafar and Abbasi, "Mass Communication Research as a Social Science Discipline in
Pakistan," 11-131.

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^g FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI

under one roof mass communication researchers and social scientists, media
practitioners and TV producers.

Mass communication literature, in the Muslim world, offers evidence of

one such attempt made in the form of an entertainment TV model of Pakistan
ideology cultivation.40 The above noted requirements for the problematic of
message system production and infusions may be conceptualized, we believe,
through a modified version of that model as shown in Figure 1. The posited
model in the figure may be taken as a depiction of one version of TV based
mass communication policy response as outlined above. There may, of course,
be other possibilities involving other theoretic traditions.

TV
TV
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through
.. .

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system analysis, framinganalysis,
8 framing & Cultivation
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effacts
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analysis
agenda-setting
ag end abettingtechniques techniques

Institute
Instituts of of
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and
(IMCPR):
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cultivation
cultivation
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Figure 1. A model of Packaging and Cultivating Positive TV Images of Islam and

Muslims

The posited model in the figure is not a simple short-term and a cross
sectional effects model. Rather, it is a long-term model of intended effect
predicated on creating and cultivating positive television representation o
Islam and Muslims. As such this model is closer to Denis McQuail's process
model of collective consciousness forming and reality structuration.41

40 Khan, Siraj and Soomro, "Ideological Identity of Muslims and Cultural Invasion through
Television," 235-253.
41 D. McQuail, Mass Communication Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 1987).

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY
19

The figure contains a base of an institute of mass communication policy

and research (IMCPR) and a superstructure of television productions and
infusions into society. In line with the CI and the cultivation effects research,
the model assumes that a wholesale production and distribution of positive
television stimuli through TV production and infusion channels will cultivate,
overtime, cultural perceptions and ideology of audience members in the
presence of or in interaction with their socio-demographic and psychographic
characteristics. The institutional base of the IMCPR does two things:
(a) through social surveys it generates data on cultural cultivation effects and
assesses the nature, size/amount and direction of cultural cultivation among
audience members; and (b) through the CI message system and discourse
analysis techniques, determine the positive representational potential of the
TV productions in terms of the degree, the nature, and the pervasiveness of
positive images of Islam and Muslims in TV infusions (including all non
fictional and fictional dramatized entertainments,commercial fare, and news
and informational programs).
Under the model, the institute will be required to: (1) generate yearly
profiles of cultivation effects in broad categories of supranational and national
audiences; (2) determine nature and extent of positive representational
potential of broad aggregates of television content in terms of various cultural
indices; and (3) suggest specific prescriptions to televison production and
infusion channels. Similarly, the initial indices — put together on the basis of
the coneptual parameters of Islamic culture and ideology as well as the Islam's
socio-cultural reality as depicted in the Western satellite and cable channels —
will be refined in accordance with the findings of the cultivation effects. This
cylce will thus go on in research and development (R&D) mode. The IMCPR
in the model will thus be a research and development apparatus. The model
thus underscores the need for institutionalizing the social scientific
foundations of applied mass communication research in a formal setting of a
mass communication research institute.
Our posited model though inspired from the work of George Gerbner
and his colleagues diverges from their work in important ways. For one we
have not seen the CI and the cultivation effects hypothesis reduced inte one
integrated model of purposive media productions/infusions and effects. This
may well have been due to the fact that their theory and both of its prongs
were developed in the context of a free-market commercial media system in
the US, which in line with the Westley and MacLean modél assigns non
purposive role to media professionals and organizations. So Gerbner et al.
developed their theorization within the context of that particular media
system. It may, however, be noted that the Westley and MacLean model of

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI
20

mass communication process fits the American system of free-market media

and does not adequately describe more purposive state-run media system or
even the European sytem of public broadcasting.42 The model in Figure 1
above more fully integrates the media institutions with policy and research.
Secondly, their violence index is primarily passively reflective, whereas we are
proposing dynamic indices that once validated will not only index the message
system profile but on the basis of the wisdom learned from the cultivation
analysis these indices will be meant as heuristic devices that can be modified,
experimented with, and purposively refined and developed. In other words,
the settings within which Gerbner and his colleagues proposed their theory
did not provide them with any control over the nature of the message systems,
whereas we are proposing a media network that would be based on an
institute of mass communication policy and research (cf. the arrows that link
up production/infusion of the message system with monitoring and effects
with indices formulation and the message-system) and as such we are
proposing a strategy of planned media inputs into a social system and the
resultant effects.

The Problematic of the Strategy's Goal

The success or failure of the above policy would depend on careful
conceptualization of its goals because the mechanics of the policy will have to
be tailored to the goals and any ambiguity on the goals is bound to
compromise the success of the response strategy. Indeed, the proposed policy
goal of countering the negative image of Islam and Muslims in the Western
media-hegemonized global television programming contains more than what
is apparent. This goal implies a complex of multi-dimensional and multilevel
problems that would need to be carefully explicated.
For example, one problem that will need addressing has to do with the
target audiences; i.e., countering the image among which audience group.
Demographically, the global public sphere is as diverse as it can be. Diverse
audiences imply diverse message system(s). Can we differentiate the global
public sphere into two broad audience segments of the Muslim and the non
Muslim audiences? How advisable would it be to chunk up the global audience
into somewhat finer audience segmentation? What audience calibration will be
more functionally attuned to the goals of the proposed policy or do we need
to prioritize targeting specific types of audiences first? How about placing the
global audiences on some such Islam relative continuum like the Islamophobes,
the neutrals, the Islamophiliacs, etc.?

! McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory, 70.

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY
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Again, knowing about the target audiences will help determine the extent
or the scope of the television channels or network(s) needed and the nature of
the impact required which in turn will determine the nature or the cultural
properties of the television message system(s) inputs. In terms of the extent or
scope of the TV networks or distribution system, we may differentiate
between short-term or an initial stage and a long-term or a mature policy stage.
For example, at the initial policy stage the global public sphere could be
targeted through a set of thematic satellite channels (both DTH and cable
channels) in the English language focusing primarily on news and information,
adult entertainments, children fare, and religious content. These global
channels, in the long term, can further diversify into regional and local
markets through regionalizing and localizing the programming fares with local
perspectives and through the use of different distribution mechanisms and
arrangements with local networks. In this regard, the 30-year developmental
history of the CNN, for instance, from a local US operation in early 1980s to
CNNI to CNN's regional channels to the CNN country-specific local
operations like CNN Germany, CNN Spanish, CNN Turk, CNN-IBN and
the CNN-Chile has many lessons to offer.
In terms of the nature of the cultural impact the response strategy will
have to distinguish, at least, between two broad categories of audiences; viz.,
the Muslims and the non-Muslim audiences. The kinds of the impact needed
for the non-Muslims may be qualitatively different from those needed for the
Muslim audiences. For example, among the non-Muslims we may need to
manage the Western Islamophobia and keep it below a certain threshold level
or more specifically to dilute some of the negative stereotypes that the
Western TV audiences might hold about Islam and the Muslims like the
opprobria of the Muslims being basically backward, poor, anti-development,
terrorism prone, given to insurgency, fanaticism, and killings etc. For the non
Muslim audiences, less challenging strategy would involve use of 24-hour all
news channel. Somewhat altered a la Aljazeera English would be a safe bet. Use
of the entertainment channels for this particular audience segment would be
fraught with problems of market penetration and lack of exposure and
implying much attenuated effect-potential.

The Muslim audiences, on the other hand, who are being exposed to a
massive though subtle doses of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim propaganda and
alternatively to the so called ideal Western culture, the need would be one of
empowerment. The policy would need to make them proud of being a
practicing Muslims and to build-up their self-identity or self-esteem through
Islamic values. Needless to say, today, in an average Muslim home one of the
most likely and the earliest experiences that the blinking eyes of even an infant

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI
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has is that of a busy TV screen promoting and selling aspects of Western

culture and the Western ways of life. So television has become the main
socialization agency or as some scholars tend to say is 'a new parent' at home.
Among the Muslim audiences, therefore, enculturation or cultural capacity
building may be the main cultural impacts sought. So the best strategy here
would be to diffuse among these audience segments the news and information
as well as the entertainment fares in local as well as such global languages like
the English or the French languages. In sum, decisions like these and others
would need to be made in advance for the success of the policy will be
contingent on our ability to meticulously explicate its scope and goals.
Nevertheless, for ensuring and obtaining informational and cultural
dividends a number of problematics in the domain of the implementation of
the strategy will need to be addressed. To these we turn to in the following
section.

The Problematic of the Strategy's Implementation

As regards the politics of implementing the above policy response or for that
matter any policy option, the governments in the Muslim world would need
to understand that the current anti-Islam and anti-Muslim discourse in the
Western global media is not a chance happening or a mere indication of some
kind of a professional deficit. It, instead, seems part of a carefully planned
policy born out of an underlying consensus within the oligopoly of the global
media corporations. Indeed mass communication literature has documented
symbiotic relationship between corporate capitalism, media industry and
political power that biases their discourse in favor of the government
policies.43
More important perhaps is the fact that in the absence of a credible
alternative media system, the US dominated Western media industry seems to
have hegemonized the public sphere not just about Islam and Muslims but also
on nuclear issues, trade policy, human rights or international law.44 As such
implementation of any mass communication policy that in any way scuttles or
challenges the West's hegemony over the global public sphere is bound to
touch raw diplomatic nerves in the Western capitals. This has been only too
obvious in the case of the New World Informational Communication Order

43 D. Hallin, We Keep America on Top of the World: Television journalism and the Public Sphere
(New York: Routledge, 1994); E. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media (London: Vintage, 2002); P. Taylor. War and the Media:
Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1992).
44 D. K. Thussu, International Communication: Continuity and Change (London: Arnold, 2002),
166.

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY
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(NWICO) and the matter is likely to be even touchier because of the current
World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements and more so because the
positive representation of Islamic culture may impinge on the present Western
ideological dominance of the global public sphere, where the Western political
and cultural ideology is the ruling ideology.
Antonio Gramsci, the Italian scholar, defines the notion of hegemony as
control of consent producing cultural system for the purpose of perpetuating
the dominant ideology.45 Indeed, the dominant ideology has hegemonized
global public and cultural spheres by shaping the production of news and
entertainment in a monopolistic media environment.46 Mass media though
notionally free from direct government control act as agents of legitimization
of the dominant ideology in terms of Gramsci's concept of hegemony. In the
arena of global mass communication, according to Thussu,47 Gramsci's notion
of hegemony implies that mass media have to play the political and cultural
function of not merely propagating the dominant ideology but continuously
maintaining it too. Hegemony is more a process — continually reproduced,
secured or lost — rather than a fixed or achieved state.48 Hence, the possibility
of a more intense counter response will be very real.
Clearly, the stakes for the Western governments are bound to be high and
so will be the diplomatic pressures. The mass communication action that is the
wholesale TV production and infusions would therefore need to be located
away from the exclusive control of a single Muslim government rather it
might need to be protected under some kind of a collective protection
mechanism like the one affordable by the Organization of Islamic Conference
(OIC). The OIC may take a lead from the European Union's Geneva-based
administrative set-up of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and its
subsidiaries like the Eurovision and the Euronews. The former, in particular,
maintains 80-satellites and 50 video channels and a news exchange service as
well. The Eurovision essentially selects television programming from the
member countries and then make that programming fare available as a pool
for the member countries. European Broadcasting Union (EBU) or its
subsidiaries do not do research and theory-based programming for bringing
about cultural transformation. Whereas some lessons in administrative
dispensation and content distribution can be learned from the EBU's
experience, what we are suggesting here is much wider in scope and deeper in
theoretical purpose. It integrates communication action or message system

45 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971).
46 Hallin, We Keep America on Top of the World.
47 Thussu, International Communication, 68.
48 Ibid.

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 FAZAL RAHIM KHAN, ZAFAR IQBAL, OSMAN B. GAZZAZ, SADOLLAH AHRARI
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production and infusions with an ongoing and an interactive cycle of theory

and research.

A multilateral dispensation from actors in the Muslim world is being

suggested in view of the most recent experience of the Arabic language Al
Jazeera. Indeed the vulnerability of the Arabic language Al-Jazeera to foreign
and the Qatari government's pressures has many lessons to offer. Hence,
implementing the policy will require wholehearted and collective
commitment of all Muslim governments to mass communication focused
social science scholarship. That means the Muslim governments will have to
muster up a collective will at the OIC level to take on the challenge and invest
economic resources and intellectual capital, and mandate teams of researchers
to institute the above noted programs of research, and mass communication
action within the structural and functional requirements of the institutional
setting as we have proposed.
The sheer scope of the undertaking also prohibits it to be sourced out to
non-profit charity organizations. For example, the Islamic Research
Foundation's (ERF) Peace TV network initiative despite its bold and
commendable efforts cannot serve as a model for several reasons: (1) its scope
in terms of access and availability is quite limited. It is available in Europe,
Asia, and in the American content on a few satellites systems and is also
carried by cable operators in some countries but is not as pervasive as it is
required to be; (2) the whole initiative is essentially atheoretical and its impact
potential is far from known; (3) it is only a non-political, purely religious
channel that bases its appeal on information only; (4) it needs to include
journalistic as well as dramatized entertainment content, enlarge its appeal and
diversify the scope of the services offered.
The main challenge that the proposed policy would need to overcome
would be the challenge of capturing the TV audience market share. If the TV
fare fails to capture the audience market share, the theory underpinning the
policy loses relevance. Specifically, cultivation effects occur among heavy
viewers and these effects accretively accrue over a period of time as a result of
audience exposure to entire message system of a channel. This clearly means
that one has to have media channels that have high audience ratings. The best
way to do this is to increase the centrality of the news and information and
the entertainment service to the audiences. This will be particularly more
challenging in the case of penetrating the Western markets. For the
entertainment channels, market penetration would not be easy despite the
facilitative WTO trade regimes because of the message-system production
constraints, cultural divergences between Islam and the modern day Western
culture and the resultant near insurmountable cultural resistance to core

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GLOBAL MEDIA IMAGE OF ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THE PROBLEMATICS OF A RESPONSE STRATEGY
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Islamic values. Nevertheless, attempts can be made through the private

Hollywood production companies with Western casts.
For the news and information channels, however, penetration of the
Western markets could be assured through the use of highly respected
professional journalists, a la Aljazeera, English.

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