Terrorists or Pilgrims: A Comparison of Attributes of Chinese Muslims in the World Press Hongxia Wei Minzu University (China) Mariam F. Alkazemi, Ph.D. Gulf University of Science and Technology (Kuwait) Wayne Wanta, Ph.D. University of Florida (USA)

RQ 1 : How does the frequency of coverage of Chinese Muslims differ in newspapers published in various world regions? Our analysis will examine news reports of Chinese Muslims in 27 countries, ranging from the United States and Canada to Jordan and Pakistan.

RQ 2 : How do the cognitive attributes of Chinese Muslims differ in Chinese newspapers and other newspapers worldwide? In other words, what characteristics get linked to Chinese Muslims in Chinese newspapers and other newspapers around the world? Do English-language newspapers, especially those in the U.S., concentrate their coverage of Chinese Muslims on attributes such as terrorism and other controversies?

RQ 3 : How do the affective attributes of Chinese Muslims differ in Chinese newspapers and other newspapers? In other words, do Chinese newspapers link positive attributes to Chinese Muslims more often than other newspapers worldwide?

Data were collected through the use of content analysis methods. The content analysis included 330 news items published in 40 Chinese newspapers. The content analysis also included 274 news articles published in major newspapers from around the world. Data were collected from Chinese newspapers through a Chinese database that archives published news. The terms “Chinese Muslim” and “Hui Minority” were used as search criteria for both the Chinese and international media. All the news items were checked to ensure that they were published in newspapers. Data were collected from newspaper articles published in major world publications in the English language from between July 5, 2009, and October 10, July 5, 2009, was chosen because it marks the date of large protests of Chinese Muslims, which made international headlines. October 10, 2012, allowed our study to include more than three years of news reports. The news items were then categorized, based on location of publication, into a category called “country”. A total of 574 news items published in both Chinese and international media, and 20 percent of the news items were coded by two researchers to establish intercoder reliability. Intercoder reliability of the variables is shown in Table 6 below.

A total of 574 news articles were included in the content analysis: 331 from 40 Chinese newspapers and 244 from 122 major world newspapers. The articles came from 27 countries. Research Question 1 asked how the amount of coverage of Chinese Muslims differed across nations. As would be expected, Chinese media had the most coverage with 331 stories. The United States had the second most articles after China, with 65, followed by Pakistan with 51. Other countries with more than 10 stories were: Canada (25), Jordan (22), Australia (16), United Kingdom (15) and Malaysia (11). Turkey and Japan did not have any articles dealing with Chinese Muslims.

Research Question 2 asked how the coverage of Chinese Muslims differed across nations on cognitive attributes – attributes dealing with topical information. The results can be seen in Tables 2 and 3. Stark contrasts can be seen across several countries, especially when comparing Chinese media to U.S. media. Chinese news media mentioned Chinese Muslims most often in feature stories (212 mentions) and stories dealing with domestic issues (151) and international relations (134). Only one mention of Chinese Muslims was linked to terrorism. In contrast, the U.S. news media most often linked Chinese Muslims to terrorism (53 instances), followed by domestic issues (36) and international relations (11). For example, on October 8, 2009, the Washington Times reported that a Chinese delegation in Washington focused “mainly on large numbers of Chinese reports on Muslim Uighurs in western Xinjiang province. Some of them are linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, but many are dissident Chinese Muslims seeking independence from communist rule” (Gertz, 2009, n.p.) In the Chinese media, on the other hand, Chinese Muslims are rarely mentioned within the context of terrorism. Clearly, the U.S. media had a very different cognitive attribute atop their coverage agenda. Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia also linked terrorism to the Chinese Muslims more than the other cognitive attributes. While terrorism was the most prevalent attribute in western media, other Muslim countries tended to concentrate on either features and/or international relations. Jordan, for example, tied Chinese Muslims to features and international relations 12 times each. Malaysia had 11 instances of Chinese Muslims linked to features and six to international relations. While features ranked fourth on the Pakistani attribute agenda, the issue of international relations was first.

Research Question 3 asked how the coverage of Chinese Muslims differed across nations on affective attributes – the positive, neutral or negative tone of the articles. Table 1 lists the frequencies of the affective attributes linked to Chinese Muslims. The vast majority of the articles linked neutral attributes to the Chinese Muslims. Chinese newspapers tended to cover Chinese Muslims more positively than negatively (76 positive attributes to just 2 negative). The only other country that devoted a significant amount of positive media coverage to Chinese Muslims was Pakistan (15 positive attributes to 11 negative). Coverage in the U.S. was overwhelmingly negative (45 negative attributes to 1 positive). Three countries devoted substantial negative coverage with no positive coverage: Canada (25 negative attributes), England (11 negative attributes) and Australia (9 negative attributes). Table 4 lists the mean scores for tone across the nations. Here, a mean of 3 would demonstrate all stories were positive, while a mean of 1 would show all stories were negative. Most scores were near 2.0, suggesting neutral coverage. The country with the highest mean score surprisingly was Israel. However, the Israeli media devoted just two stories to Chinese Muslims, one positive and one neutral. China, Singapore, Malaysia and Pakistan all had means above 2.0. Afghanistan, Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand and India all had mean scores below 2.0. It should be noted that Afghanistan had just one story and Ireland only two stories dealing with Chinese Muslims, all of which were negative. Table 5 shows T-test results comparing both coverage in China and coverage in the United States to stories from media in other nations. A clear trend emerged. Coverage in China differed the most strongly with coverage in western countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. Coverage in the U.S. most strongly differed from the mostly Muslim countries of Pakistan, Jordan and Malaysia.