Reporting the Lee Rigby Murder and Anti-Muslim Hostilities in the UK in 2013: The Cultural Clash Communication and Human Wrongs Journalism Nexus

Abstract

The way different cultures are mediated in the mainstream press goes a long way in influencing how people are perceived across cultures. According to recent research (Khiabany and Williamson, 2012, Shaw, 2012a, and Ogan et al., 2014) the representation of Islam and Muslims in the mainstream press in the past two decades has largely been influenced by Samuel Huntington’s prediction in his ground-breaking book in 1996 that the source of the great divisions and conflicts between peoples of global society will be cultural, and not necessarily ideological or economic, as in the last century. Yet, not many people took Huntington’s prediction seriously until the 9/11 terrorist attacks that have been followed by many others from Madrid, London, Mumbai, Philippines, and most recently, to Sydney and Paris. In the post-Cold War era, ‘the friendly/enemy country dichotomy is determined not necessarily by east/west/communist/capitalist ideologies but by who is on our side in this “war on terror”‘ (Shaw, 2012a, p. 4). Thus Muslims and the Islamic World, who are largely perceived in the West as targets, and not helpers in the ‘war on terror’, have since the end of the Cold War replaced the ‘Soviet Union’ as the new ‘uncivilised’ enemy of the ‘civilised’ Western world.