ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science Press Reaction to Woolwich Incident Professor Tony McEnery Robbie Love Lancaster University
Some Background Islam in the British Press, 1998-2009 200,037 newspaper articles about Muslims and Islam Published between 1998-2009 Guardian/Observer, Independent, Times, Telegraph, Business Star, Sun/NOTW, Mirror, Express, Mail, People 143 million words in total
Muslims and conflict The word terrorism (and related forms) is more frequent than the word Islam (and related forms) 200000 150000 100000 50000 0 Islam* terror*
All reporting about Mo Farah, August 2012, 330,000 words only 23 mentions of muslim To find himself the new centrepiece of a tolerant, multicultural Britain - the Londoner and devoted Arsenal fan is not just an Olympic champion but a champion of his Muslim faith - astonishes him. (Times, August 13, 2012) Being a Muslim has helped me a lot. You've got to believe in God. Everything happens for a reason, so you shouldn't get wound up. (The Star, August, 11, 2012)
Muslims and Conflict RESOURCES TRANSPORT/ TRAVEL LEISURE/ SPORT FOOD COMMUNICATION ISLAM RELIGION/ CULTURE/ EDUCATION FINANCE/ BUSINESS HUMAN ASPECT CONFLICT Over half of the most frequent 4,000 words in the articles relate to conflict When compared to a large random set of news articles, the Muslim articles have a statistically significantly higher number of conflict words.
Extremism About 1 in 20 instances of the word Muslim or Muslims occurs directly next to a word which refers to extreme belief like hardliner or fanatic. This figure rises to 1 in 6 for Islamic. References to extreme forms of Islam or Muslims are 21 times more common than references to moderate Islam or Muslims. The tabloids do this most, The Guardian does it the least.
Devout Muslim = not normal "He was a devout Muslim, but he was a normal kid who loved Manchester United and played football and cricket." (The Mirror, 1 April 2004) FORMER classmates of Miss Begum said she had gone from being a 'normal' girl to a devout Muslim almost overnight. (Daily Mail, 11 February 2006)
Welcome to Muslim World Community and World are most common words that come after Muslim (occurring about 11,000 times altogether) Both are used to imply that all Muslims are the same across the UK or the whole world, and often in conflict with the West. Given the sketchiness of the evidence released to the public by the US and UK governments there is widespread denial in the Arab and Muslim world that Osama bin Laden had any involvement in the attack on America on September 11. (The Guardian, 24 October 2001)
The Mail s Moslems By the year 2000 most newspapers had dropped the archaic spelling Moslem. In 2001, the Express and Mail started using it again. In 2002 The Muslim Council asked these newspapers to stop using Moslem as it sounds like the Arabic word for oppressor The Express stopped immediately. The Mail continued to use the spelling for a year.
Text Maniacs in The Star all our money goes on asylum & mosques. samwigan (16 May 2005) Y shud we change r way of life just 2 stop offending muslims. they aint neva gonna change theirs. Maybe they shud try eating pork. a nice bacon sarnie cud change any1's mind. (25 October 2005) The credit crunch could be a blessing in disguise. All the poles and muslim scroungers will go home if theres no money left to give out! (18 September 2008)
Columnists and Horror We let shroud-swishing zombies flout OUR standards of freedom and tolerance every day. (Julie Burchill, The Sun, 24 June 2009) women are being forced to dress like daleks (Jon Gaunt, The Sun, 7 August 2009) How long before non-muslim women are compelled to dress like bats to enter certain parts of certain British cities? (Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 16 July 2006)
Summary of Background The overall picture is that Muslims and Islam are connected to conflict, terror, extremism and even horror. The tabloids newspapers are the most negative focussing on Muslims like Abu Hamza Opinion columnists and reader s letters opinion as a defence at the PCC. Much of this negativity is of very long standing, reaching back to at least the 17 th Century
Woolwich In May 2013, British soldier Lee Rigby was murdered by two men on a street in Woolwich, south east London. A major news story. The Muslim identity of the perpetrators and their motivations for killing Rigby were widely discussed as part of the reporting.
Our Data Corpus of every single article published by the British national press about the Woolwich murder within one month of the attack. 3,632 articles in total, nearly 2.5 million words. Our goal to see how Muslim people and Islam were discussed in reporting of the attack.
500 450 400 350 300 250 200 Frequency Linear trendline 150 100 50 0 22/05/2013 23/05/2013 24/05/2013 25/05/2013 26/05/2013 27/05/2013 28/05/2013 29/05/2013 30/05/2013 31/05/2013 01/06/2013 02/06/2013 03/06/2013 04/06/2013 05/06/2013 06/06/2013 07/06/2013 08/06/2013 09/06/2013 10/06/2013 11/06/2013 12/06/2013 13/06/2013 14/06/2013 15/06/2013 16/06/2013 17/06/2013 18/06/2013 19/06/2013 20/06/2013 21/06/2013
Method Keywords reference corpus BE06. Aim to discover the aboutness of the Woolwich reporting. Keywords were then sorted, themes developed and concordancing used to look at the context surrounding the keywords. Cyclical.
Comparison to BE06 Keyword Freq. Woolwich Freq. BE06 Keyword Freq. Woolwich Freq. BE06 1 Woolwich 7744 2 21 ENGLISH 3645 1 2 Rigby 5513 0 22 Copyright 3632 3 3 May 6637 112 23 Rights 3760 30 4 Lee 5463 22 24 CODE 3299 0 5 said 16148 2007 25 JOURNAL 3299 0 6 police 7190 255 26 SECTION 3122 0 7 Adebolajo 4670 0 27 BYLINE 2987 0 8 attack 5495 96 28 Muslim 3776 76 9 soldier 4711 21 29 # 67177 19642 10 murder 4938 57 30 Edition 2788 1 11 Drummer 4078 0 31 NEWS 2686 1 12 London 7164 452 32 Michael 3357 69 13 TYPE 3635 0 33 words 4004 192 14 DATE 3635 0 34 Newspaper 2263 6 15 PUBLICATION 3632 0 35 All 4127 271 16 Reserved 3632 0 36 killing 2526 32 17 DOCUMENTS 3632 0 37 Adebowale 2112 0 18 LENGTH 3632 0 38 Islam 2475 42 19 LANGUAGE 3632 0 39 arrested 2364 31 20 LOAD 3631 0 40 Pg 1899 0
Comparison to Press Section of BE06 Freq. BE06 press Freq. BE06 press Keyword Freq. Woolwich Keyword Freq. Woolwich 1 Woolwich 7744 1 21 JOURNAL 3299 0 2 Rigby 5513 0 22 attack 5495 55 3 May 6637 21 23 Rights 3760 9 4 Lee 5463 4 24 Muslim 3776 10 5 # 67177 3170 25 SECTION 3122 0 6 Adebolajo 4670 0 26 BYLINE 2987 0 7 soldier 4711 9 27 London 7164 124 8 Drummer 4078 0 28 words 4004 23 9 TYPE 3635 0 29 police 7190 134 10 DATE 3635 0 30 Edition 2788 0 11 LANGUAGE 3632 0 31 NEWS 2686 1 12 PUBLICATION 3632 0 32 was 28554 1274 13 Reserved 3632 0 33 All 4127 44 14 DOCUMENTS 3632 0 34 Michael 3357 22 15 LENGTH 3632 0 35 Newspaper 2263 0 16 Copyright 3632 0 36 Adebowale 2112 0 17 LOAD 3631 0 37 Pg 1899 0 18 ENGLISH 3645 1 38 Islam 2475 11 19 murder 4938 30 39 Choudary 1859 0 20 CODE 3299 0 40 killing 2526 15
Forms of MUSLIM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 muslim* Raw Freq. Relative Freq. (per million) Muslim 3,776 1540.23 Muslims 2,091 852.92 MUSLIM 25 10.20 MUSLIMS 13 5.30 muslims 8 3.26 muslim 2 0.82 Muslimhater 1 0.41 Muslimified 1 0.41
Singular and plural forms appear, though not frequently, in full lower case. In standard English this might be considered an incorrect way of writing a proper noun. However, only one out of the ten lower case MUSLIM forms occurs directly within the copy of an article: Fanatical Ashraf has also promised muslims they would be rewarded with a string of virgins in the afterlife if they started killing christians. (The Sun, 4 June 2013) The other nine forms either occur in text in your thoughts sections of newspapers that have been reproduced in the corpus (where standard English spelling may not be expected), or in direct quotes of speech from notable people who have discussed the Woolwich attack: Choudary refused to say he abhorred and was horrified by the attack He said: "What he said in the clip which is being televised, not many muslims can disagree with it."
The forms Muslimified and Muslimhater are more noteworthy. They only occur once each in the entire corpus, so we can reproduce both their contexts below. He posted on his Twitter account: "This country has gone to the dogs if it gets anymore Muslimified we will all be wearing burkhas and raping and abusing white women and kids. (Daily Star Sunday, 9 June 2013) This use appears to derive a verb from the original noun, implying a process under which one is made a Muslim. It is used in a quote from Cody Lachey, who apparently posed as a British army veteran in the aftermath of the Woolwich attack to express anti-muslim views on popular television shows, including BBC Newsnight and ITV Daybreak (Islamophobia Watch 2013). Using WordSmith Tools Concord feature (Scott 2008) we observe that the article distances itself from the views expressed by Lachey, using the revelation of his fraud to criticise the BBC for allowing him to appear on Newsnight. In other words, it is clear that the author of the article disagrees with Lachey s views: But we can reveal Lachey is a racist and a fantasist who has never served in the war- torn country. (Daily Star Sunday, 9 June 2013)
The other low frequency form, Muslimhater, is a compound noun which appears to label one who hates Muslims: He then threatened to expose the Sunday Times reporter who questioned him "for the closet Muslimhater that you obviously are". (The Sunday Times, 2 June 2013) Looking again to the wider context of this occurrence, this is a quote from the hate preacher (ibid.) Anjem Choudary, when questioned about claiming housing benefits while living in a relative s property. It appears that the form Muslimhater is used by Choudary as a strategy to divert the focus of enquiry away from himself and accuse the reporter of Islamophobic bias in their journalism strategy.
15 ISLAM 4 1.63 Forms of ISLAM islam* Raw Freq. Relative Freq. (per million) islam* Raw Freq. Relative Freq. (per million) 1 Islam 2,475 1009.56 16 Islamicist 4 1.63 2 Islamic 1,888 770.12 17 Islamiyya 4 1.63 3 Islamist 1,064 434.01 18 Islamophilia 4 1.63 4 Islamists 279 113.80 19 islamic 3 1.22 5 Islamism 142 57.92 20 Islamicain 3 1.22 6 Islamophobic 70 28.55 21 Islamicinspired 2 0.82 7 Islamophobia 66 26.92 22 Islamifi 2 0.82 8 Islamaphobic 14 5.71 23 Islamism's 2 0.82 9 Islam's 14 5.71 24 ISLAMIST 2 0.82 10 ISLAMIC 13 5.30 25 Islamization 2 0.82 11 Islamisation 12 4.89 26 Islamophobe 2 0.82 12 Islamically 11 4.49 27 Islamicised 1 0.41 13 Islamaphobia 10 4.08 28 Islamistrelated 1 0.41 14 Islamophobes 5 2.04 29 Islamofascists 1 0.41
Islamism, however, appears to have a particular semantic preference within the Woolwich corpus. It is construed as an Islamic political ideology that is a violent threat to British society. It is very clearly different to Islam in the standard sense. In 72 cases (50.70% of Islamism) it is linked to violence and war by being associated with terms like comrades, recruits, violent, extremism, victimhood, victims, militant, extreme, radical, fascistic, gang culture, gangsterism and war. But the truth is that violent political Islamism - abhorrent though it certainly is - is a fringe view among Britain's small Muslim minority (The Independent, 16 June 2013)
Another set of islam* terms are grouped as Islamophobia words. These are Islamophobic, Islamophobia, Islamaphobic, Islamaphobia, Islamophobes, Islamophilia, and Islamophobe, and work to describe the phenomenon of a fear of Islam or Muslim people (Baker et al. 2013). 171 out of the 6,100 ISLAM tokens (2.80%). Islamophobia (or, it seems, its less frequent variant Islamaphobia) is an important topic in the context of the Woolwich attack because of the violent anti- Muslim reactions that took place in some part of Britain in the weeks following the murder. Indeed, most instances of these types of words (89 occurences, 52.05%) refer to Islamophobia-related violence that had occurred in the aftermath of the Woolwich murder. This use of Islamophobia words occurs with terms like attacks, violent, targeting, backlash, hate crimes and incidents.
Collocates Collocates of muslim* Freq. as collocate MI Collocates of islam* Freq. as collocate MI 1 MUSLIMS 42 10.21 ISLAM 44 9.98 2 CRUSADES 25 10.18 CONVERTED 391 9.55 3 FED 73 9.96 UNRESERVEDLY 76 9.22 4 MUSLIM 366 9.46 BASIS 133 9.13 5 DYING 107 9.23 BANNED 172 9.08 6 COUNTRIES 217 8.90 MUHAJIROUN 145 8.83 7 BRITANNIA 25 8.69 CENTRE 342 8.80 8 STRUGGLE 60 8.41 WORD 113 8.38 9 CONVERT 180 8.39 TURNING 44 8.27 10 COUNCIL 212 8.33 RADICAL 107 8.07 11 INMATES 73 8.30 EXTREMISTS 220 8.00 12 NON 208 8.28 AL 219 7.93 13 REPRESENTATIVES 21 8.27 SOCIETY 132 7.86 14 VAST 36 8.20 FANATICS 75 7.74 15 RADICALISING 29 8.18 SOMALIA 45 7.71 16 RAMADHAN 22 8.18 RADICAL 147 7.31 17 MAJORITY 47 8.16 CONDEMN 85 7.27 18 WAVE 29 8.11 RELIGION 81 7.06 19 CONVERTS 41 8.10 WITHIN 109 7.03
Majority 77% of the uses of the word majority in the context of Muslims occurs as the phrase vast majority, used to reassure readers that most British Muslims are completely opposed to the actions of the Woolwich murderers. 57% of the time, Muslims are listed alongside non- Muslims as unified in their opposition to extremist attacks coordination with and/or) Anti-Muslim attacks (on Islamic centres and mosques throughout the UK) are condemned by the press who, more than 50% of the time, describe such attacks as Islamophobic.
Religion 95% of the occurrences of the word religion referring to Islam serve to separate it not only from the Woolwich attack but also Islamism and extremist behaviour in general. Reporting is careful to show that the murder should not be viewed as representative of the wishes of Islam but rather that it is an isolated example of horrific violence by two individuals. In turn, over 90% of the time, Islamism is described as a radical form of Islam and a violent threat that is spreading through Britain like a virus. By standing united, we can isolate the virus of Islamism; Those responsible for the Woolwich atrocity must not be allowed to provoke and divide us, writes Boris Johnson (telegraph.co.uk, 26 May 2013)
Extreme belief words Word Frequency (% of collocate frequency) Perpetrators Other Muslims Total extremists 96 (43.64) 124 (56.36) 220 (100) fanatics 56 (74.67) 19 (25.33) 75 (100) radical (Islamists) 5 (13.89) 31 (86.11) 36 (100)
Dying Collocates with Muslims because of the widely quoted words of Michael Adebolajo. Remember the keywords said and words. But what were those words? A. "The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers," (44 occurrences out of 98, 44.90%) B. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. (39 occurrences, 39.80%) C. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day (13 occurrences, 13.27%) D. the only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day". (1 occurrence, 1.02%) E. the only reason we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily (1 occurrence, 1.02%)
Crocodiles in the Swamp the difference between and and or While most coordination was with and for Muslim and non-muslim, two were with or as noted. Both occur in copies of the same article published by The Daily Telegraph ( How to spot the crocodiles in the swamp ) and the Telegraph s website ( How to spot a terrorist living in your neighbourhood ): They might forbid or avoid music, collect jihadi material, withdraw from contact with non-muslims or Muslims who are not extremist there [sic] may be singleissue conversation, vociferous hatred of the West and Israel, and perhaps attempted travel to troubled regions or misleading vagueness as to where they've been. (The Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2013) The spot the terroist theme occurs in the Mail also, and features to watch out for also include: being young, male and of Asian or African origin, disproportionately well educated (Daily Mail, 24 May 2013), having an obsession with physical fitness or adopting traditional Arab dress (The Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2013).
Conclusion Much of what was reported in the wake of Woolwich was predictable given, and consistent with, what went before. The moves of the press to limit damage to community relations was also predictable. But inaccurate reporting and a tendency to scaremonger had the potential to undermine the work the papers were trying to do to support community relations.