Uncovering the Anti-Islamic Sentiment in The New Yorker Cover Issued on July 21, 2008: A Semiotic Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32585/ijelle.v3i1.1450Keywords:
Anti-Islamic Sentiment, Magazine Cover, Semiosis, SemioticsAbstract
An image is deemed as one of the tools through which a magazine communicates particular messages. The messages may include various purposes, such as commercial or political purposes and values. Thereby, understanding a magazine cover image constitutes an essential issue for the underlying purposes and values that a magazine tries to communicate through it can be revealed. One of the most controversial magazine covers is that which was issued by The New Yorker on July 21, 2008, depicting Obama and his wife, Michelle. The portrayal was perceived as controversial on account of sentiment to a particular religion, namely Islam. Hence, this study aimed to figure out the meanings of the magazine cover, particularly in association with the anti-Islamic sentiment. Besides, the qualitative method, a semiotic analysis based on Barthes' (1986) theory of signification, were employed. The findings revealed that the signs had some indications for the anti-Islamic sentiment represented through the portrayals of the figures of Obama, Michelle, and the other pictures surrounding them. Moreover, some conclusions drawn from the analysis asserted that the magazine cover image represents signs having to do with the portrayal of Obama and Michelle during the election campaign and these also represents some attitudes vis-à-vis the anti-Islamic sentiment of some people in the US then. Finally, the present study advocates some considerations to reduce such a negative sentiment to Islam and Muslims, namely through education, appropriate and thorough framings from the American media, and intensive communication through inter-religious rapport and contact.
Downloads
References
Adriyadi, T., Megah, S. I., & Razali, N. A. (2020). Attitudinal analysis of ideology inside Barack Obama’s inaugural speech. International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE), 2(2), 142–150.
Ahmed, S., & Matthes, J. (2017). Media representation of Muslims and Islam from 2000 to 2015: A meta-analysis. International Communication Gazette, 79(3), 219–244. DOI:10.1177/1748048516656305
Akbarzadeh, S. (2016). The Muslim question in Australia: Islamophobia and Muslim alienation. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 36(3), 323–333. DOI:10.1080/13602004.2016.1212493
Amnesty International. (2012). Choice and prejudice: Discrimination against Muslims in Europe. Amnesty International.
Barthes, R. (1986). Elements of semiology. Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Blitt, B. (2008). The Politics of Fear. The New Yorker. Retrieved on March 28, 2021, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21
Brooks, M. C., & Mutohar, A. (2018). Islamic school leadership: A conceptual framework. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 50(2), 54–68. DOI:10.1080/00220620.2018.1426558
Chandler, D. (2005). Basics of semiotics (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Charles, C. (2018). Backtalk: Visual language and the representation of black women. Florida Antlantic University.
Christophe, S. (2011). Creative colours specification based on knowledge (COLorLEGend system). The Cartographic Journal, 48(2), 138–145. DOI:10.1179/1743277411Y.0000000012
Ciftci, S. (2012). Islamophobia and threat perceptions: Explaining anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 32(3), 293–309. DOI:10.1080/13602004.2012.727291
Cobley, P., & Janz, L. (2012). Introducing semiotics. Icon Books Ltd.
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Dagremond, S. (2021). The oval office through the years, in photos. Retrieved on March 28, 2021, from https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/g12090469/oval-office-pictures-through-the-years/?slide=13
Danesi, M. (2004). Messages, signs, and meanings: A basic textbook in semiotics and communcation theory. Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.
Dar, A., & Ali, S. (2015). How Pakistani and the US elite print media painted issue of drone attacks: Framing analysis of the News International and the New York Times. Global Media Journal: Pakistan Edition, 8(2), 1–17.
Delibas, K. (2009). Conceptualizing Islamic movements: The case of Turkey. International Political Science Review, 30(1), 89–103. DOI:10.1177/0192512108097058
Devereux, G. (1966). The exploitation of ambiguity in Pindaros O. 3.27. Rheinisches Museum Für Philologie, 4, 289–298.
Diamond, M. (2002). No laughing matter: Post-September 11 political cartoons in Arab/Muslim newspapers. Political Communication, 19(2), 251–272. DOI:10.1080/10584600252907470
Eco, U. (1984). Semiotics and the philosophy of language. The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Foner, N. (2015). Is Islam in Western Europe like race in the United States? Sociological Forum, 30(4), 885–899. DOI:10.1111/socf.12199
GaneaBassiri, K. (2013). Islamophobia in American history: Religious stereotyping and out-grouping of Muslims in the United States. In C. W. Ernst (Ed.), Islamophobia in America: The anatomy of intolerance (pp. 53–74). Palgrave Macmillan. DOI:10.1057/9781137290076
Ghosh, B. (2010). Islamophobia: Does America have a Muslim problem? Time Magazine, 1–6. Retrieved on March 28, 2021, from http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2011936,00.html
Goria, S., & Papadopoulou, M. (2012). Icons versus symbols: investigating preschoolers’ cartographic design. Meta-Carto-Semiotics, 5(1), 1–18.
Gray, M., & Myers, J. (2017). “I’m just trying to make myself laugh”: “New Yorker” artist shares his cover stories. Retrieved on March 28, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/2017/10/20/558777025/im-just-trying-to-make-myself-laugh-new-yorker-artist-shares-his-cover-stories
Grow, G. (2002). Magazine covers and cover lines: An illustrated history. Journal of Magazine and New Media Research, 5(1), 1–19.
Guba, E. G. (1981). Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries. Educational Communication & Technology, 29(2), 75–91. DOI:10.1007/BF02766777
Guba, E. G. (1990). The alternative paradigm dialog. In E. G. Guba (Ed.), The paradigm dialog (pp. 17–27). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Guldberg, J. (2012). Design as communication? If design is communication, the who is the sender, who is the receiver and what is the message? The 10th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS) Universidade Da Coruna, 1233–1244.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social semiotic perspective. Oxford University Press.
Haq, A. S., & Mahdi, S. (2020). Investigating the use of modal auxiliary verbs in Tempo editorial. International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE), 2(1), 49–56. DOI:10.32585/.v2i1.671
Held, G. (2005). Magazine covers-A multimodal pretext-genre. Folia Linguistica, 39(1–2), 173–196.
Helwig, C. C., & Prencipe, A. (1999). Children’s judgments of flags and flag-burning. Child Development, 70(1), 132–143.
Jackson, L. (2010). Images of Islam in US Media and their educational implications. Educational Studies, 46, 3–24. DOI:10.1080/00131940903480217
John, A. E., & Olajoke, A. S. (2012). Engaging with old testament stories: A multimodal social semiotic approach to children bible illustrations. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1(5), 219–225. DOI:10.7575/ijalel.v.1n.5p.219
Khan, M. K., Wu, F., Pratt, C. B., & Akhtar, N. (2019). Satires, narratives and journalistic divides: Discourses on free speech in Western and Islamic news media. The Social Science Journal, 1–19. DOI:10.1016/j.soscij.2019.05.012
Lincoln, Y. S. (2007). Naturalistic Inquiry. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. DOI:10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosn006
Ly, T. H., & Jung, C. K. (2015). Multimodal discourse: A visual design analysis of two advertising images. International Journal of Contents, 11(2), 50–56. DOI:10.5392/ijoc.2015.11.2.050
Macneill, P. (2014). Modern painting and morality [Springer, Dordrecht]. In Macneill (Ed.), Ethics and the Arts. DOI:10.1007/978-94-017-8816-8
Marinov, R., & Stockemer, D. (2020). The spread of anti-Islamic sentiment: A comparison between the United States and western Europe. Politics and Policy, 48(3), 402–441. DOI:10.1111/polp.12354
Megah, S. I., & Noor, S. N. F. (2020). Representation of social actors of the press statement of the president of Indonesia in the issue of COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE), 2(1), 79–89. DOI:10.32585/.v2i1.660
Mehrabian, A. (1969). Methods & designs: Some referents and measures of nonverbal behavlor. Behavior Research Method and Instruction, 1(6), 203–207.
Meier, M. R., & Medjesky, C. A. (2018). The office was asking for it: “that’s what she said” as a joke cycle that perpetuates rape culture. Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies, 15(1), 2–17. DOI:10.1080/14791420.2017.1394578
Moore, R. C. (2018). Islamophobia, patriarchy, or corporate hegemony?: News coverage of Nike’s Pro Sport hijab. Journal of Media and Religion, 17(3–4), 106–116. DOI:10.1080/15348423.2019.1595840
Ogan, C., Willnat, L., Pennington, R., & Bashir, M. (2014). The rise of anti-Muslim prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States. International Communication Gazette, 76(1), 27–46. DOI:10.1177/1748048513504048
Powell, K. A. (2018). Framing Islam/creating fear: An analysis of U.S. media coverage of terrorism from 2011–2016. Religions, 9(9). DOI:10.3390/rel9090257
Ribberink, E., Achterbert, P., & Houtman, D. (2017). Secular tolerance ? Anti-muslim sentiment. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 56(2), 259–276.
Rossing, J. P. (2011). Comic provocations in racial culture: Barack Obama and the “politics of fear.” Communication Studies, 62(4), 422–438. DOI:10.1080/10510974.2011.588077
Schlag, G. (2016). Imaging security: A visual methodology for security studies. In G. Schlag, J. Junk, & C. Daase (Eds.), Transformations of security studies: Dialogues, diversity, and discipline (pp. 173–189). Routledge. DOI:10.4324/9781315707839-11
Schmidt, W., & Schmidt, W. (2005). Mass media and visual communication popular posters in West Africa. Third Text, 19(3), 307–316. DOI:10.1080/09528820500049296
Schreier, M. (2012). Qualitative content analysis in practice. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Sebeok, T. A. (1994). An introduction to semiotics. University of Toronto Press.
Sklar, R. (2008). David Remnick on that New Yorker Cover: It’s satire, meant to target “distortions and misconceptions and prejudices” about Obama. Retrieved on March 28, 2021, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/david-remnick-on-emnew-yo_n_112456
Smith, C. (2013). Anti-Islamic sentiment and media framing during the 9/11 decade. Journal of Religion & Society, 15, 1–15.
Smith, W. (2013). Images, imagination and impact: War in painting and photography from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.
Stockdale, N. (2004). “Citizens of Heaven” versus “The Islamic Peril”: The anti-Islamic rhetoric of Orlando’s holy land experience since 9/11/01. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 21(3), 89–109. DOI:10.35632/ajis.v21i3.509
Stoker, W. (2017). The representation of violence as evil in contemporary art: The power of the image in Kiefer, Richter, and Bin Laden. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 78(4–5), 432–443. DOI:10.1080/21692327.2017.1294501
Uenal, F., Bergh, R., Sidanius, J., Zick, A., Kimel, S., & Kunst, J. R. (2021). The nature of Islamophobia: A test of a tripartite view in five countries. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(2), 275–292. DOI:10.1177/0146167220922643
Wieviorka, M. (1998). Is multiculturalism the solution? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(5), 881–910. DOI:10.1080/014198798329702
Zainiddinov, H. (2013). What factors account for black-white differences in anti-Muslim sentiment in the contemporary USA? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(11), 1745–1769. DOI:10.1080/01419870.2012.664280
Zourbanos, N., Tzioumakis, Y., Araújo, D., Kalaroglou, S., Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Papaioannou, A., & Theodorakis, Y. (2015). The intricacies of verbalizations, gestures, and game outcome using sequential analysis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 18, 32–41. DOI:10.1016/j.psychsport.2014.12.003
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with the International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE) agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.