Islamophobia in China: news coverage, stereotypes, and Chinese Muslims’ perceptions of themselves and Islam

2018/03/28 by Luwei Rose Luqiu, Fan Yang · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Computer Science · Psychology · #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Islamophobia #Islam #China #Stereotype (UML) #Framing (construction) #Perception #Political science #Gender studies #Media studies #Sociology #Social psychology #Psychology #History #Law

paper · doi:10.1080/01292986.2018.1457063

openalex publication_date 2018/03/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

An analysis spanning 10 years of news reports about Muslims and Islam in Chinese state news media (N = 15,427) demonstrates that Chinese news reports project an overall negative view of Muslims. An implicit association test performed in the non-Muslim Chinese population (N = 1479) reveals negative stereotypes of Muslims. In addition, a survey of Chinese Muslims (N = 384) shows that they perceive negative coverage of Muslims and Islam in Chinese media, and that real-life discrimination might be a consequence of such negative stereotyping. This study reveals that (1) there is an overall negative framing of news coverage of Muslims and Islam; (2) non-Muslim Chinese hold a negative stereotype of Muslims and Islam; (3) Chinese Muslims are cognizant of a negative media portrayal of Islam and of themselves; and (4) some Muslim Chinese experience discrimination in their daily lives. The present study contributes to the literature on global Islamophobia, a phenomenon that is understudied in China.

Citations

• The Second-Level Agenda-Building Function of the Xinhua News Agency
• Towards a definition of Islamophobia: approximations of the early twentieth century
• Islamophobia: examining causal links between the media and “race hate” from “below”
• Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses
• Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm
• What Is Islamophobia and How Much Is There? Theorizing and Measuring an Emerging Comparative Concept
• Framing as a Theory of Media Effects
• How terrorism news reports increase prejudice against outgroups: A terror management account
• Discourse and manipulation
• Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis
• Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test.

Cited by

• Anti-muslim sentiment on social media in China and Chinese Muslims’ reactions to hatred and misunderstanding
• Islamophobia and Antisemitism are Different in Their Potential for Globalization
• Racism in China [wikipedia]