Muslims are erased and stereotyped in TV series, a study finds
Despite making up one quarter of the world’s population, Muslims are severely underrepresented on television — and when they are represented, they’re depicted as shallow stereotypes, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism analyzed over 200 TV series that aired between 2018 and 2019, hoping to understand how Muslims were portrayed on popular shows.
They found that only 1% of speaking characters were Muslim — whereas 25% of the world’s population is Muslim.
The research focused on scripted, episodic series from the US, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. A total of 87% of the shows studied didn’t include even one Muslim speaking character, says the study.
The researchers identified several tropes that dominated the depiction of Muslim characters on TV.
Muslims tended to be depicted as “foreign,” speaking accented English or not speaking English at all. Almost a third of Muslim speaking characters were violent against other characters — and 40% were the targets of violence.
These portrayals have real-life impact on the ways that viewers think about Muslims, argued the researchers. The Pew Research Center has consistently found that Americans have the most negative views of Muslims as compared to other religious groups.
“Attitudes toward Muslims may be formed by a variety of factors,” they wrote. “However, one in particular, the mass media, is a component within the control of storytellers and content creators.”
