Appraisal and Ideology in Social Media Discourse: Islamophobia in Facebook Users’ Comments on Selected British News Articles (2017)

Abstract

Our everyday discourse is ideological. This is evident when we refer to the ideas and practices of the Others, Their ideology, and how We are the only bearers of the truth. Our discourse always refers to the polarization of the Us and Them, the in-group and the out-group. This does not mean that ideologies are negative orthat the people who share these ideologies are bad. Under various circumstances, groups develop their own ideologies to be able to protecttheir interests, keep their cohesion as a social group, and to guarantee the loyalty and theon-going cooperation of the group members. Therefore, sometimes ideologies are employedto dominate and oppress like racism, sexism, and many others, while at other times they areused to resist such domination. One example ofracial ideologies and practices is Islamophobia. Therefore, the focus of the present study is examining Islamophobia in social media discourse. This can be achieved through a quantitative analysis of Facebook users’ comments investigating themes, concordance, and collocations of the words Islam and Muslims, in addition to an analysis of the attitude of the users in comments - following Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework - to highlight how users perceive the Islamic and Muslims’ ideology and consequently to see to what extent is the circulated discourse Islamophobic. The data chosen for analysis are 2321 comments on 11 posted news articles. The articles report and discuss 5 terror attacks by Muslims and against Muslims in the UK that took place in 2017. The comments under analysis express users’ opinion towards Islam and Muslims. Comment on social media is a significant data since social networking sites (SNSs) are an important source from where we gather information about people, their attitudes, their value system, their preferences, as well as what is happening around us in the world. Moreover, comment writing on social networks stands as a particular type of expository text, the structure of which highlights the exposition of arguments that support a belief or an opinion that sometimes is not expressed directly.After analysing the comments, it can be concluded that Islamophobia is prevalent across the comments. This is evident since negative attitude of Islam and Muslims is expressed in a wider number of instances than the neutral or positive attitude. It is also evident since the attitude is almost always graduated through intensification and quantification. Furthermore, the assertive and taken-for granted monoglossic voice prevails the heteroglossic voice, and the dialogically contractive voice of disclaim that de-emphasizes negative aspects about the “Other” prevails the dialogically expansive tone that entertains variety of dialogic alternatives.On the other hand, this conclusion is supported by the collocation analysis. The overall collocational picture, where the node words Islam and Muslims are the focal points of seemingly negative associations prove that the Islamophobia is prevalent in the comments.The study detected some limitations and directs towards recommendation for future research. Last, the results of the study stresses the importance of facing and addressing Islamophobia in more creative ways, rather than the traditional conferences, symposiums, and published books and research. The study urges Muslims and those keen on banishing any form of racism to employ the new media and education to fight Islamophobia and repair the negative stereotypical image of Islam and Muslims.