Assertions of identities through news production: News-making among teenagwe Muslim girls in London and New York

Abstract

British Muslim frustration with the media is well researched and documented; their main concern is how news discourses on Islam influence opinions of majority audiences. This article argues that production-based audience research methods give insight into how minority audiences see themselves in relation to the majority and how groups negotiate a sense of belonging through media discourses. The study used a technique whereby Muslim teenagers in London and New York were asked to produce a two-minute news story on the 'War on Terror' that combined images from a digital archive with an accompanying voiceover. The article analyses how the participants position themselves as representatives of a global Muslim community-in-suffering to imagined mainstream audiences in the UK and US.