The Immigrant Muslim American at the Boundary of Insider and Outsider

Abstract

Studies of Orientalized portrayals of Muslims have generally been distinct from studies on the Othering of immigrant Americans. This study employs concepts of insider/outsider status, applying theories of Orientalism and representations of the Other to newspaper coverage of the Muslim and Pakistani American perpetrator of the 2010 attempted Times Square bombing. Newspapers constructed a seemingly contradictory representation of Faisal Shahzad, as the apparent insider/American who becomes the alienated outsider/Other. This portrayal of the Orientalized insider establishes an emerging discourse on the “homegrown” terrorist who exists at the boundary of self and Other.

When Scale Meets Depth: Integrating Natural Language Processing and Textual Analysis for Studying Digital Corpora

“…Recent research indicates that Muslims continue to be represented either (i) as an Other-an outgroup-to mainstream America, with a very different culture, traditions, and ways of thinking, and especially (ii) as a dangerous Other, a group of people determined to destroy Western civilization and especially the United States. Their characterization as terrorists has become particularly prevalent since the 9/11 attacks, and news media have effectively internalized this stereotype (Chuang & Roemer, 2013;Kumar, 2012;Powell, 2011;Reese & Lewis, 2009). …”

Are Unidentified Terrorist Suspects Always Muslims? How Terrorism News Shape News Consumers’ Automatic Activation of Muslims as Perpetrators

“…Terrorist attacks may be committed by a variety of different actors and organizations, including right-wing and left-wing political groups, nationalist groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, or lone operators (Global Terrorism Index 2017). In particular, news coverage of terrorist attacks committed by so-called radical Islamist terrorists has received vast research attention (e.g., Chuang and Roemer 2013;Ibrahim 2010;Mahony 2010;Hussain 2007;Powell 2011Powell , 2018Woods 2007). Islamism is described as a set of ideologies that are supposed to guide an individual's social as well as political life (Berman 2003).…”

Shifting Signifiers of Otherness: The 2002 “DC Snipers” in the U.S. Press

“…The trajectory of contemporary news-media studies on race and Other identity, particularly in relation to crime and terrorism, has focused on the evolution of stereotypical representations that tend to focus on a single signifier of Otherness (blackness, immigrant identity, Muslim identity, etc.) and link perpetrators' violent, deviant motives to that identity feature (Campbell, 1995;Chuang, 2012;Chuang & Chin Roemer, 2013;Covington, 2010;Entman & Rojecki, 2000;Gandy, 1998;Jaysane-Darr, 2010;Karim, 2000;Kumar, 2010;Lipschultz & Hilt, 2003;Nacos & Torres-Reyna, 2007;Wilson et al, 2013). This theoretical case study sought to challenge that paradigm by applying semiological analysis to a high-profile crime case in which the perpetrators embodied multiple salient Other identities, some distinct, some overlapping-and each with its own history and patterns of representation.…”

“…This study builds on previous work that analyzed more typical newspaper coverage of minority perpetrators, in which one or two dominant signifiers were assigned to them. These studies examined Jiverly Wong, a mass shooter primarily characterized as an Asian immigrant (Chuang, 2012), and Faisal Shahzad, a homegrown terrorist primarily characterized as an apparently assimilated, but ultimately alien, Muslim immigrant (Chuang & Chin Roemer, 2013). By conducting a similar analysis on Muhammad and Malvo, this study suggests that representation of insider versus outsider status can be understood through a more complex lens, and that news media do not always arrive at a conclusive representational pattern.…”