Islam, the Western Leaders and the Media

Abstract

This study adopted both quantitative content analysis and qualitative approach to investigate the tone of coverage of the Western political leaders about Islam and Muslims by The Guardian (UK), The Washington Post (USA), The Australian (Australia), and National Post (Canada) from January 2015 to December 2016. The study also aims to analyze the underline sentiments of the coverage of the Western politicians on Islam and Muslims as positive, negative, or neutral. It was found out that in all the selected newspapers, coverage of the Western politicians was more harsh and hostile than positive towards Islam and Muslims. However, the Guardian in this regard has given more coverage to a negative tone than other selected newspapers. After applying Python's sentiment analysis technique, more words came out with negative connotations such as terror, inflammatory, gullible, notorious, nasty, extreme, fearful, guilty, unsuccessful, ferocious, conservative, controversial and radical, etc.