Islam and Muslim Representation in Popular Media

How has the media represented Muslims and how has this influenced the viewpoints of college students? My project aimed to investigate the University of Illinois???s student newspaper, The Daily Illini, and its propagation of Islamic society???s characteristics. I examined the online archive of The Daily Illini and viewed articles of which Muslims were the subject matter to see if there has been a historical trend negative trend in portrayal, one that would indicate that the primary student newspaper of the University of Illinois is progressively illustrating Muslims in a pejorative light. I compared student attitudes on Muslims (as evidenced by posts in the archive) to views of the editors as depicted through their selection of news articles in the Daily Illini. The opinions of the editors were examined through interviews and student attitudes were examined through research of opinions posted in response to the articles. The main methods of research were interviews of editors of the Daily Illini and also compared historical trends of articles that have been posted in the Daily Illini archive.unpublishednot peer reviewe