Misrepresentations of Muslims in the Media the Role of Fox and Friends in the Construction of Fear

Misrepresentations of Muslims in the Media The Role of Fox and Friends in the Construction of Fear

1st Semester Project Report Group members: Wiktoria Jablonska, Dina Aryani Sanjoto Pedersen, Kübra Bahadir, Maiken Kuld Nielsen Supervisor: Kimberly Renée Chopin Number of characters: 144798 Abstract Despite what statistics show on domestic terrorism in the United States of America, news outlets still have a tendency to misrepresent Muslims and the religion of Islam. The 2017 New York City truck attack was promptly announced an act of terrorism by the news media, while the cause of the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting was attributed to the mental health of the perpetrator. However, the common denominator for both cases is that they, by some definitions, conform to the characteristics of terrorist acts.

This project is comprised of a critical discourse analysis of the Fox and Friends news/talk programme’s coverage of the aforementioned cases of terrorism, where the key differentiator is the religious and ethnic background of the perpetrators. This project aims to examine the discursive practices that revolve around the cases, and how the discourse changes accordingly. In extension to this, the study looks to determine, through the use of the theory of moral panic, if the changes in the coverage play a role in the negative perception of Muslims. More specifically, this project looks at how the conservative news media, Fox News, changes their discourse according to the case in question, and how this might aid in the construction of moral panic. On the basis of these measures, the project concludes that Fox News changes its discourse depending on the ethnicity and/or religious background of a perpetrator, resulting in the misrepresentation of Muslims. Consequently, the programme contributes to the construction of moral panic, whereas the moral panic is understood as Islamophobia.

Abbreviation List CDA: Critical discourse analysis

POTUS: President of The United States

CEO: Chief Executive Officer

CPRLV: Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence

DOD: Department of Defense

ISIS: Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

NBC: National Broadcasting Company

NYC: New York City

NYPD: New York Police Department

UAE: United Arab Emirates

US: United States

Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...... 6 1.1. Research area and problem formulation ...... 7 1.2. Project Dimension ...... 8 2. Literary review ...... 9 2.1. What is terrorism? ...... 9 2.2. What is radicalization? ...... 9 2.3. The Rise of Islamophobia in the United States ...... 11 2.4. Presidential Election 2016 ...... 13 2.5. Fox News ...... 14 2.5.1. Fox News’ political standpoint ...... 15 3. Methodology ...... 17 3.1. Philosophy of Science ...... 17 3.2. Research Design ...... 18 3.3. Empirical Material ...... 20 3.4. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) - as a theory and method ...... 20 3.4.1. Key concepts ...... 22 3.4.2. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model ...... 23 3.5. Delimitations ...... 24 4. Theoretical framework ...... 26 4.1. Moral Panic Theory ...... 26 4.1.1. Moral Panic and the Media ...... 29 5. Analysis ...... 31 5.1. Analytical Strategy ...... 31 5.2. Case 1 - The New York City Truck Attack ...... 31 5.2.1. Analysis of the broadcast 1 (Appendix 1) ...... 32 5.2.2. Analysis of the Fragment 2 (Appendix 2) ...... 34 5.2.3. Analysis of the Fragment 3 (Appendix 3) ...... 36 5.2.4. Analysis of the Fragment 4 (Appendix 4) ...... 38 5.3. Case 2 – The Sutherland Springs Church Shooting ...... 39 5.3.1. Analysis of the Fragment 5 (Appendix 5) ...... 40 5.3.2. Analysis of the Fragment 6 (Appendix 6) ...... 42 5.3.3. Analysis of the Fragment 7 (Appendix 7) ...... 45 5.4. Social Practice ...... 47 5.4.1. Case 1 ...... 51

5.4.2. Case 2 ...... 53 6. Discussion ...... 55 7. Conclusion ...... 62 8. Bibliography ...... 64

1. Introduction Conflicts between Muslim and Western societies is a phenomenon that has been observed for centuries, starting with Christian imperialism and Muslim expansion into Christian lands (Smith, 2017). In more recent times, since the 1980’s, the alleged threat of Muslims has been upheld by a number of journalists and politicians in the Western world. Nowadays, especially following the 9/11 attacks, there has been a substantial increase in frequency of resentment and negative attitudes towards Islam in some (Clay, 2011). With the rise of far-right populism in the United States, a possibly amplified sense of fear and animosity towards Muslim communities has developed within the American society. While the recent rise of ISIS and the election of the US President Donald Trump and his arguably discriminatory rhetoric can be connected to the recent growth in Islamophobia inclinations, many scholars argue that the American media plays a significant role in increasing the anti-Muslim tendencies (Arana, 2015).

This project is looking to determine how FOX News as a news outlet covers and portrays two separate acts of terrorism, where the most significant differentiator is the background of the perpetrator. One of the cases chosen for this project is the truck attack which took place in New York City in October of 2017. A driver of a rented truck drove onto a bike path in Lower Manhattan, resulting in eight casualties while twelve people were injured. The driver, who migrated to the US from Uzbekistan in 2010 on a visa from the Diversity Visa Lottery programme, is believed to have ties to radical Islamic communities. According to the NYPD, the suspect had left a suicide note, pledging his allegiance to ISIS. Nevertheless, he was pacified by gunshots of a police officer, and was later treated for his injuries at a hospital, thus remaining alive despite his note (Yan and Andone, 2017). The second chosen case is the Sutherland Springs church shooting, which took place in Texas in November of 2017. A white man entered the church with a rifle and killed 26 church-goers and injured 20 people. He was a former US Airman and has been described as an atheist. At the scene, the suspect was subject to gunshot wounds, but was later found in his vehicle, which he had crashed, possibly deceased by a self- inflicted gunshot wound (Carissimo and Martinez, 2017).

One of the motivational factors for this project was the aspiration to examine how some news outlets may have a tendency to frame certain violent events differently depending on the background of the perpetrator, and how their framing of these events can create moral panic among the American people. The majority of news outlets, and mass media in general, tend to

6 show either liberal or conservative bias, thereby remaining unable to present entirely objective views to their readers and viewers. Therefore, another motivational factor was the ambition to investigate how a Republican-run news outlet acts regarding the cases at hand (Mitchell, Gottfried, Kiley and Matsa, 2014).

1.1. Research area and problem formulation The terrorism in combination with the focus that has been put on terror by the news media, has resulted in a rise in fear of radicalism and in a sceptical view of Islam. This, along with the refugees from war-torn countries in the Middle-East, have developed an expanded sense of hostility to them and immigrants alike (Bouie, 2015). While some American citizens describe ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ as a great threat to the Western societies, studies actually suggest that acts of terrorism committed by perpetrators of Muslim backgrounds make up a smaller percentage of the hundreds of acts of terrorism committed in the US. In fact, between 2008 and the end of 2016, a total of 201 domestic acts of terrorism were tracked – 115 of these incidents were committed by right-wing extremists, while 63 of the cases were carried out by Islamist extremists (Neiwert, 2017).

Furthermore, researchers from the Georgia State University found out that terrorist attacks carried out by individuals with ties to Islam receive 4.5 times more news coverage than their non-Muslim equivalents (Betus, Kearns and Lemieux, 2017). Taking into consideration the influential role of news outlets and their ability to shape public opinions, it is seemingly apparent why some Americans have an exaggerated feeling of fear towards Muslims, as the news outlets’ ways of portraying certain events have an ability to affect the attitudes of their viewers (Kahneman and Tversky, 1981). This is a common phenomenon among Republicans and conservative individuals, whose preferred news outlet is most often Fox News (Mitchell, Gottfried, Kiley & Matsa, 2014). With these things in mind, the following research question was composed:

How does FOX News’ coverage of terrorism change depending on the ethnicity and/or religious background of a perpetrator?

Additionally, in order to approach the overall research question more specifically, the following sub-questions have been composed:

• How are the 2017 New York City truck attack and Sutherland Springs church shooting covered on Fox and Friends?

• How might Fox News’ discourse on terrorism influence the attitudes towards Muslims? • Does Fox News’ discourse on terrorism play a role in the construction of moral panic? If so, how?

1.2. Project Dimension The project is grounded mainly in the Text and Sign dimension. This dimension deals with the methods and theories used when working with descriptions and analyses of communication, whether it be verbal or written text. Firstly, the project includes the Text and Sign dimension, because it is analysing transcriptions of different fragments from the conservative news/talk programme Fox and Friends from the Fox News Channel. To analyse the different fragments, the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been used, which covers some of the sign disciplines of Text and Sign. The analysis of the transcriptions incorporates also other central disciplines of Text and Sign such as theoretical linguistics, semiotics and communication and media studies. By incorporating the media and communication studies, the focus of the project is to examine how media constructs identities, representations and the reality of the recipients, and how the media outlets frame different cases and create specific discourses. The concept of intertextuality is also relevant to the project in the sense of the broadcasts being a communicative event, and should not be analysed in isolation, but as a fragment of an intertextual change in wider social context. Moreover, by analysing the language and the linguistic features, and going in depth with the texts by looking at the meanings and implications of them, this project is making use of theoretical linguistics and semiotics.

2. Literary review This chapter is an explanatory part of the projects that provides the necessary background information concerning the problem area.

2.1. What is terrorism? Terrorism is a word that people have come to be familiar with through the years by experiencing and hearing about atrocious incident, all from attacks such as the 9/11 World Trade Center attack in 2002 to the more recent attacks such as the Orlando nightclub shooting. However, terrorism is a broad term that encompasses a lot and has several explanations and definitions, which is why it can be sometimes difficult to identify it precisely. One definition of terrorism comes from the US Department of Defense and says:

“Terrorism – The unlawful use of violence or threat of violence often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs, to install fear and coerce governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are usually political.” (DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 2017)

Significant and notable terms within this definition, are the terms violence and fear. Another definition of terrorism comes from The US Department of State, which states that the term terrorism means “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non- combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents” (U.S. Department of State, 2017). This explanation defines terrorism as an act of politically driven violence/terror perpetrated by subnational groups, i.e. “organizations that do not represent a recognized nation” (Encyclopedia.com, 2017), or undercover agents that target civilians during the attacks. These are just two examples of terrorism definitions out of many. Even though there has not been a universal agreement on the definition, many of them tend to agree on the fact that the perpetrators’ attacks go beyond the victims. The mission of the terrorists is usually not to kill specific people, but to focus societies’ and governments’ attentions on their act of violence and create widespread fear – either to get a political or a religious message across.

2.2. What is radicalization? Terrorism is also closely linked to the term radicalization. Although, the terms seem to be intertwined, and sometimes even interchangeable, there is a significant difference between their meaning. Terrorism cannot happen without radicalisation, but it is possible for one to be radical

9 without becoming entangled in terrorism, if one is a non-violent radical. Non-violent radicalisation is when one is rooted in one’s own principles, without being against society’s democratic values and norms. Non-violent radicalisation can also play a successful and positive role in communities and in political contexts by opposing “firmly established ways of thinking and doing things” from a radical standpoint, which might lead to positive progression in societies (info-radical.org, 2017). However, radicalisation rather often leads to violence and terror. Again, there is not universal definition of the violent radicalisation, but the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalisation Leading to Violence (CPRLV) defines violent radicalisation as: “a process whereby people adopt extremist belief systems – including the willingness to use, encourage or facilitate violence – with the aim of promoting an ideology, political project or cause as a means of social transformation.” (Ibid.). According to the CPRLV, radicalisation leading to violence happens when people become violent because of their extreme beliefs, so that they can promote radicalised political and ideological positions to convert current political and societal values. The CPRLV later sums up the definition of violent radicalisation:

• “The adoption of an ideology that becomes a way of life and a framework for meaningful action for the individual; • belief in the use of violent means to promote a cause; • the merging of ideology and violent action.” (Ibid.).

Having radical viewpoints as a person is not necessarily wrong or viewed as criminal, since it can have a positive impact on society and democracy. However, once one encourages and implements violence to impose one’s ideological, political and religious beliefs on societies and communities, it is considered violent radicalisation and an immense threat for not just the victims of radicalised violence, but for everyone in the society. Commonly, when topics such as terrorism and radicalisation are discussed, it is with reference to Jihadists and Islamic terrorists, not to be confused with the religion Islam itself and the actual meaning of Jihadism as mentioned in the Quran. Currently, jihadist has come to mean a person that has thoughts and beliefs rooted in political Islam, whose aim is to create an Islamic state that will be ruling Muslims as an entire community. For jihadists, this is justifiable by any means necessary (ThoughtCo, 2017). Jihadists are also described as: “(…) a narrow group made up of adherents who interpret Islam, and the concept of jihad, to mean that war must be waged against states and groups who in their eyes have corrupted the ideals of Islamic governance” (Ibid.). The topic of jihadists has especially dominated the headlines ever since the biggest terror attack on

US land that has left and continues to leave immeasurable scars on not just citizens of the United States, but on the entire world: the 9/11 attack.

According to the research conducted by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, the causes for radicalisation can be split into three different levels: the micro-, meso- and macro- level. The micro-level deals with radicalisation on the individual level and covers the individual’s struggle with identity, integration, discrimination, marginalisation, etc., and is often in combination with ‘moral outrage and feelings of (vicarious) revenge’. The meso-level covers the extended radical environment, and looks at the radicalised individuals as a group that is ‘aggrieved and suffering injustice’. This can lead to radicalisation in younger accomplices and to the development of terrorist organisations. The macro-level includes the role of government and the society and argues that the root of radicalisation can be identified as issues within the relationship between the majorities and the minorities, while also socio-economic differences within the society can result in the radicalisation of the societal “under-dogs” (Schmid, 2013).

2.3. The Rise of Islamophobia in the United States As mentioned earlier, the attacks on the World Trade Center, also known as the 9/11 attacks, happened in 2001. The attacks were perpetrated by 19 jihadists from the terror group al-Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden. The nineteen jihadists crashed into the twin towers in Manhattan, the Pentagon in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania with four stolen US commercial airplanes, killing 2,753 people in total (Library, 2017). As a result of these attacks, prejudices against Muslims have grown immensely, not just in the United States, but worldwide. Moreover, a lot of the reinforcements of prejudices and bigotry have developed into hate crimes toward Muslim Americans. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting, there have been 481 anti-Islamic hate crimes in the US in the year of 2001 after 9/11, (FBI, 2017). This is a high number of hate crimes toward Muslims in comparison to attacks prior to 9/11, where the number of anti-Islamic attacks were 28 in the year of 2000. Although the amount of hate crimes toward Muslims in the US has not been as high as it was in 2001 and decreased to 155 hate crimes in 2002 (Ibid.), the anti-Islamic attacks “have consistently hovered in the 100-150 range, roughly five times higher than the pre-9/11 rate.” (Washington Post, 2017). The chart below indicates the colossal alteration in the number of assaults against Muslims.

Figure 1. Hate crimes incidents against Muslims in the United States (Washington Post, 2017)

It is evident that this immense number of hate crimes has raised as an outcome of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but also that it has created growing prejudicial stereotypes against Islam and Muslims and sparked a big fear towards the worshippers of Islam. On June 2016, an online poll done by Reuters/Ipsos with, more than 7,000 American participants show that 37 percent American adults have a “somewhat unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” view of Islam (U.S., 2017). In March 2002, half a year after the 9/11 attacks, Pew Research Center did a survey asking about the connection between Islam and violence, where 25 percent of Americans said that Islam encourages more violence than other faiths. However, 12 years later, in 2014 the percent of Americans with this thought doubled to 50 percent, but then dropped with 9 percent from 2014-2016, with 41 percent of Americans linking Islam to violence (Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, 2017). Even though there’s a big connection between the 9/11 attacks and the intensification of negative perceptions and assaults towards American Muslims, there are also more recent and current occurrences that have refueled some Americans’ prejudices. This has led to the highest number of hate crime incidents toward Muslims in the US since 9/11. The increase of stereotypical and biased perceptions of Muslims is most likely also related to more recent terrorist attacks executed by radical Islamic terrorism groups, and also because of the controversial statements and proposals issued and requested by current POTUS President Donald J. Trump, which will be discussed in the following section.

2.4. Presidential Election 2016 As mentioned in the segment above, the current President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump has had some considerably controversial statements after he announced that he was going to run for office. These statements drew a lot of attention to him at that time, and although they seemed provocative and hostile for some, for others they were patriotic and courageous. On June 16, 2015, President Trump held a speech at Trump Tower in NYC and announced his presidential campaign as a Republican Party presidential primary for the Presidential Election 2016 (NPR.org, 2017). During his speech, Trump talked about some topics, in which some of them caused a lot of stir among people, such as building a wall on the border to Mexico, and about Islamic terrorism and the extremist terrorist group ISIS (Time, 2017). Trump gained as much popularity as he gained backlash, and became the Republican Party nominee for presidency in the US on July 19, 2016 (USA TODAY, 2017). After months of heated debates with new controversial statements and news about the actions of Donald Trump almost every day, the long-awaited day came on November 8, 2016, where the new president was declared. Trump was up against the Democratic Party nominee for presidency, Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 US Election with 232 electoral votes, which meant that Donald Trump became the President of the United States with 306 electoral votes (Election Hub, 2017).

As mentioned earlier, Trump had requested some provocative proposals, which had received many mixed reactions, as well as furious reactions from people – one of them being the Muslim ban proposal. On the 2nd of December 2015, 14 people were killed in a shooting in San Bernardino, California, and 21 people were injured (Steve Almasy, 2017). On December 7, 2015, in response to the San Bernardino attack, Trump called for a Muslim ban that would prevent Muslims from all around the world to enter the US. Later that day, in a rally in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Trump talked about the proposal that he had released and read the statement out loud for the crowd, which stated: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” (Washington Post, 2017). By adding “what the hell” to the read-out statement, he stressed the point of it. (Ibid.). This statement caused a lot of stir, not just among Muslims and American Muslims, but among a big number of people. However, there were also many people that approved of Trump’s statement – even saw it as an encouragement to express their hostility toward Muslims.

The following five days after the statement of the Muslim ban, there were 15 occurrences of hate crimes toward Muslims (Newsweek, 2017). Even though the number of hate crimes toward American Muslims has not peaked as much as it did in 2001, 2015 was the year where the amount of assaults boosted to 257 hate crimes. The number of anti-Islamic incidents hadn’t been this high since 2001, until 2016 where there were up to 307 attacks (FBI, 2017). Many people agree with Trump’s idea - that the majority of jihadists attacking the US are foreigners from Muslim countries. However, according to the New American Foundation, this is far from the truth. In fact, 85 percent of the jihadist terrorists in the US are citizens and permanent residents of the United States (New America, 2017). This did not stop Trump from sticking with the Muslim ban, and on January 27, 2017, Trump released an order consisting of a list of seven majority Muslim countries, banning them from entering the US for the sake of the security of the nation. The list got changed later on, but the first issued list consisted of the following countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Syria. The eye-catching element of the list is that none of the lethal attacks in the US since 9/11 were perpetrated by citizens of any of these seven countries. And when it comes to the non-lethal attacks, there were only 3 people that came from two of the seven countries, and two of them came to the US as children (Ibid.). Another striking element of the list is the fact that it does not include the countries that the 19 jihadist terrorist from 9/11 came from, which were: Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and UAE (BBC News, 2017), which also caught a lot of people’s attention.

The election of Trump’s presidency came to many people’s surprise, and the numerous statements and proposals of his have caused an outburst of reactions during his campaign. However, this did not stop him from bringing home the victory and becoming the President of the United States. Nonetheless, Trump’s election and the several jihadist attacks in the recent years have resulted in an increase of stereotypical prejudices and hate crimes toward American Muslims, which reached its highest number of 307 attacks in 2016 since the number of incident post-9/11, where the number was 481.

2.5. Fox News Launched in October of 1996, Fox News is currently one of America’s largest and most powerful news outlets in the industry. It is owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, which is a branch of 21st Century Fox. It was co-founded by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian-American media mogul, who is also the current chairman and CEO of Fox News (Crowley, 2011), and Roger Ailes, a former political strategist and NBC executive (Mifflin, 1996). Presenting its viewers with up to 15 hours of live footage every day, Fox News primary mean of distribution

14 is television. To a smaller extent, they also produce radio content and written news articles online.

Fox News is supposedly also one of President Donald Trump’s preferred news outlets, and particularly their programme, Fox and Friends, is allegedly a commonly watched programme by Trump (Weiss, 2017). Fox and Friends is a talk-show formatted news broadcast, that features breaking news, live commentary and discussions between the Fox News co-hosts and their “friends”, who are seemingly independent sources, brought in to elaborate on the topic at hand.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, Fox News serves as the main source of government and political news to 47 percent of the participants, who all identified as either mostly conservative and consistently conservative. In extension to this, 88 percent of the mostly or consistently conservative viewers expressed their trust towards the content of Fox News (Mitchell, Gottfried, Kiley & Matsa, 2014).

2.5.1. Fox News’ political standpoint Although representatives from Fox News have argued against these claims, several factors appear to speak in favour of Fox News being biased towards right-wing politics. For one, the media has shown tendencies to favour the Republican views and figures over those of the Democrats. During the 2012 presidential election, Fox News broadcast 46% negative content about former US president Barack Obama, while his opponent, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney, received 12% negative content from the news channel (Journalism.org, 2012). Furthermore, by showing possible right-wing bias tendencies, Fox News caters to a seemingly compatible audience. According to the Pew Research Center, 40% of the viewers agree with Republican politics, compared to the 22%, who favour Democratic politics, whilst the majority of the viewers, namely 60%, are conservative (People-press.org, 2012).

Furthermore, some of the higher-ranking people behind Fox News appear to be Republicans or at least supporters hereof. The current CEO Rupert Murdoch, despite his liberal view on immigration politics, is a supporter of the Republican Party. Despite being critical of Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election, he still expressed his wish for Romney to win the election (Little, 2012), and despite not initially approving of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate, he has been supportive of the current president since his election (Folkenflik, 2017).

Similarly, the late Roger Ailes, who was the chair of Fox News until July 2016, was a supporter of the Republican party. Before Ailes joined Fox, he worked as a political consultant for Republican president candidates. He was in on the re-election campaign for Ronald Reagan, and later aided George H. W. Bush in his presidential campaigning. After leaving Fox News, he then went on to consult the current US President Donald Trump in his run for president (Carlson, 2017).

Before President Donald Trump became the President of the United States of America, Fox News, and in particular their morning news-broadcast, has, as mentioned before, been among Trump’s television favourites. There have been speculations and allegations that Trump has been basing a number of his statements on the discussions of the Fox and Friends co-hosts, and that the role has also been reversed between the two parties, with claims that the show has shown clear favouritism towards the current president, in the way of choosing and depicting topics in favour of his beliefs (Gabbatt, 2017).

3. Methodology This chapter reflects on the methodological choices of this project. These include positions this research takes within the context of social science philosophy, research design, choice of empirical material, followed by describing the construction of the object of research and analytical strategy according to Fairclough’s theory of critical discourse analysis. Finally, the chapter describes the limitations of the project.

3.1. Philosophy of Science Norman Fairclough, in his book Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, mentions that the critical discourse analysis (abbreviated to CDA) is a moderate form of social constructivism, which effects are a central concern of the theory. He argues that the social world “depends upon human action for its existence and is socially constructed” (Fairclough, 2010), and recognizes effects of a discourse as having impact on the process of social construction. However, it is important to point out that Fairclough uses the term ‘social constructivism’ within the context of social science while rejecting the philosophical approach, which suggests that all knowledge is socially constructed. Since the theoretical and methodological frameworks of this research are mainly based on Fairclough’s assumptions, the project employs a realist standpoint. More specifically, the analysis adopts critical realism as an epistemological approach, which brings a normative element into the project. Social constructivism and Fairclough’s critical theory have similar elements, and both foreground the relevance of critical discourse analysis. The idea behind the two concepts is that some groups of a society are oppressed by hidden ideologies and structures, and that power and hierarchy are largely influenced by semiosis by creating the discursive practices in a social construction (Ibid.).

The ‘critical’ aspect of the analysis is value-driven and focuses on a better understanding of how different social forms enhance or place limits on human prospering and flourishing. Fairclough distinguishes three forms of critical social research – rhetorical critique that identifies persuasion and manipulation, ideological critique that focuses on effects of semiosis on social relations of power, and strategic critique which can be seen as an analysis of semiosis elements pursued by social groups to lead a society in a particular direction (Ibid.) According to Fairclough, the last form is crucial for critical discourse analysis, since it determines the construed strategies for achieving political goals. Another view of critique, associated with critical realism, is the 4-stage concept of ‘explanatory critique’ that (1) identifies a problem, (2)

17 identifies the network of social practices that cause the problem, (3) determines whether the problem works ideologically, (4) and reflects on real possibilities for solving the problem. (p.554) In other words, negative critique (stage 1, 2 and 3) focuses on analysing how societies, institutions or organizations produce and maintain social wrongs, whereas positive critique seeks to determine solutions which can mitigate or remedy the wrongs. (Ibid.)

The objective of this project is to expose what strategies and discourses are employed by Fox News that may shape perception of Muslims in the US society. By investigating how the news channel’s coverage of terrorism changes depending on the perceived ethnicity and/or religious background of a perpetrator, the aim is to uncover the discursive patterns that construct Muslims in a social context, and to gain an insight of possible interpretations of Fox News’ discourses. The critical approach creates awareness around the misrepresentations of particular minorities in order to liberate those groups from injustice and reform power relations, which are the objectives of both critical realist and social constructionist standpoints.

3.2. Research Design In addition to the general methodological approach outlined above, the following chapter describes in detail the project’s research design, the applied methods in collecting and analysing relevant empirical data, and the chosen theories that serve as the basis for interpreting and explaining the findings.

This project employs mainly a qualitative research method, nevertheless, qualitative material has been utilized for the purpose of introduction. A departure point has been taken in researching broadcasts of Fox News Channel’s daily morning talk and news programme Fox & Friends, hosted by Ainsley Earhardt, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, as an empirical material. The chosen fragments of the broadcasts represent varied views on the two recent terror attacks committed in the United States in 2017, with perpetrators of different ethnicities and religious background.

Furthermore, the project employs Norman Fairclough’s approach to the critical discourse analysis both as a theory and method, since it consists of an epistemological approach and theoretical framework, as well as methodological guidelines and methods of linguistic analysis (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). CDA is a transdisciplinary form of analysis that relies heavily on many disciplines, inter alia, sociology, politics and linguistics. Fairclough stresses the importance of its interdisciplinary character, consequently arguing that CDA should be a “theory-driven process of constructing objects of research”, and not just an application of

18 methods of textual analysis (Fairclough, 2010). The aim of CDA is to identify the linguistic- discursive dimension of social phenomena by engaging in linguistic analysis of language use in the context of social practice (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Consequently, Fairclough argues that the analysis needs to involve a discursive practice analysed in a wider context by identifying cultural and social relations and structures. In order to construct an object of research, the problem area needs to be theorized in terms of not only theory of discourse but also by integrating other adequate theories that describe the non-discursive social phenomenon (Fairclough, 2010). Therefore, the project also applies Stanley Cohen’s moral panic theory to gain a better insight of how “a person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” as a consequence of mass media’s reaction to terrorism (Cohen, 2002). However, there are certain differences in understanding the term ‘moral panics’ as defined by British versus American sociologists. Although most scholars base on Cohen's original theory, some argue that his set of moral panic development phases are not particularly relevant to American context, where the media is less centralized than the British press and highly dependent on discursive practices of interested parties (Wright Monod, 2017). Thus, the project relies on the work of Eric Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda who focus on the relation between mass media and moral panics, and their construction in the United States (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).

The analysis of the empirical material is based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, “an analytical framework for empirical research on communication and society” (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). This approach unites different text-oriented concepts that also promote the idea that texts need to be analysed in relation to the wider social context. The three-dimensional model looks at a language use as a communicative event that consist of text (semiotic modes), discursive practice (production and consumption of texts), and social practice (Ibid.)

It is important to mention that Fairclough’s meanings of concepts and the methodological frameworks vary across his different works. The project employs Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis as a theory, drawing on his book Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. In comparison to his previous work, the book puts more emphasis on the critique and its relevance to the relationship between language and ideology. This is crucial for the project since its objective is to determine the role of Fox News’ discursive practice in the construction of moral panic. However, the applied method (three-dimensional model) for analysing the empirical material derives from Fairclough’s books published between 1992 and

1995. Jorgensen and Phillips, who wrote about Fairclough’s approach in their book Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method, argue that the use of tools and concepts may differ in various research projects, and the selection and application also depend on its scope (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002).

3.3. Empirical Material The New York City truck attack committed by Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov serves as a case of a terrorist act, where the perpetrator has a real or perceived Muslim background (Justice.gov, 2017). The Sutherland Springs church shooting committed by Devin Patrick Kelley serves as a terrorism case with the suspect of a white ethnic (U.S. Department of Defense, 2017). The fragments of broadcasts gathered from Fox & Friends programme represent the hosts’ views on the two cases, as well as the views and opinions of the regular contributors - so called experts. Since the project seeks to determine how Fox News coverage of terrorism changes depending on the ethnicity and/or religious background of a perpetrator, the viewpoints on the cases are analysed in a complementary and comparative manner. Although the choice of two contrasting case studies enables to identify differences in the portrayals of perpetrators, the project is not aimed at generalizing on the identified issues.

The programme fragments used as an inspiration for the project come from a pre-edited video found on YouTube (YouTube, 2017). Since, the fragments of Fox & Friends broadcasts are arranged in a way that illustrates the differences in covering the two terror attacks, there is a possibility that the author of the video (deliberately or not) constructed a narration that underpins his/her own beliefs. Therefore, the original broadcasts have been found in order to avoid employing empirical material that came into existence as a misguided interpretation. It is also important to mention that when talk is used as an empirical material, at least part of it needs to be transcribed. However, Fairclough points out that the process of transcription inescapably encompasses interpretation of a spoken language (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). The transcription of the chosen broadcasts fragments is attached in the appendix.

3.4. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) - as a theory and method Ideally speaking, the role of media is to provide accurate and unbiased information, and to expose social wrongdoings. However, it is not always the case. The emergence of mass media studies revealed media’s tremendous role and influence in the constitution of cultural conditions that may affect particular social groups negatively. In the Western societies, mass media are the prevalent social area in the creation of the public knowledge, attitudes, values and beliefs which

20 are essential for forming and preserving social and political systems (Fairclough, 2010). Although a society is not influenced by one predominant discourse, some discourses have a more significant impact than others (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis focuses on analysing „how discursive practices in the media take part in the shaping of new forms of politics”, but also points out that those discursive practices are shaped by non-discursive social forces (Ibid.). In other words, CDA looks at the construction of representations and meaning by the discursive practices, and their role in favouring interests of particular groups over others. The objective of CDA is to:

• develop frameworks for analysing language use that address its impact on societies • explore the linguistic-discursive dimension of cultural and social practices • examine “the role of discursive practices in the maintenance of the social order and in social change” • identify the causes of social injustice • produce knowledge that might mitigate the social wrongs (Ibid.)

The aspect of critique is crucial when analysing discursive practices. A critical social research approach is not politically-neutral, but “is politically committed to social change” by taking the side of oppressed communities (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Critique is intended to focus on a better understanding of what is wrong with a society or an institution. Fairclough differentiates negative critique, which is an analysis of the role of discursive practices in creating and perpetuating social wrong, and positive critique, which focuses on the ways of mitigating inequality and injustice. However, people have very different views of what is right or wrong, so it is also necessary to focus on the meaning of value-related concepts (e.g. justice) (Fairclough, 2010). Thus, critique of some aspects of social practice must also be grounded in the critique of interpretations of discourse. Discourses are always open to different interpretations, what often causes a discrepancy between reality and the views that a society has of this reality. Mass media that functions ideologically contributes to the construction of misrepresentations (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Therefore, another important aspect of CDA is its explanatory power, which implies that a critical researcher can provide more adequate explanations of reality than the social groups he/she is studying, by relying on qualitative and quantitative research (Fairclough, 2010).

Fairclough provides a framework for uncovering the discursive practices that produce social wrongs and unequal power relations, which consists of several concepts that interconnect in the three-dimensional model.

3.4.1. Key concepts 1) Discourse When speaking about discourse, it is important to note that the term has several meanings, all relevant for the critical discourse analysis. Discourse understood as a form of social practice not only shapes the social world but also reflects it. It is a complex dialectic relationship between social structures and discursive practices, where social structure refers to relations in a society that consist of discursive and non-discursive elements. This understanding of the term is central to Fairclough’s theory. In another sense, discourse is the type of language used within a particular field, e.g. scientific discourse. And finally, discourse refers to a way of speaking, such as consumer discourse. In all these cases, discourse also refers to different semiotic modes, such as language and visual images, and consist of discourses and genres (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002).

Fairclough stresses the importance of two dimensions of discourse. First, the communicative events, that refer to instances of language use (e.g. a political speech, an article, a video, etc.), operate as forms of social practice, and most importantly, “communicative events not only reproduce orders of discourse, but can also change them through creative language use” (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Second, Foucault’s concept of the order of discourse understood as the configuration of all genres and discourses which are used within a specific social field (e.g. the order of discourse of mass media). Moreover, an order of discourse is a structure and a practice, since it constructs and is constructed by specific discursive practices (Ibid.).

2) Ideology and Hegemony Discourse “contributes to the construction of social identities, social relations, and systems of knowledge and meaning” (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Consequently, discursive practices contribute to the constructions of meaning that contribute to the production and reproduction of unequal power relations and misrepresentations – ideological effects (Ibid.). Fairclough understands ideology as the “meaning in the

service of power” (Fairclough, 2010). More precisely, ideological processes occur between people and are based on social structures (e.g. social class). However, ideology is also a property of communicative events, and may reside in text where language use is its material form (Ibid.). An ideology fights for dominance and consensus regarding meaning that favours its interests, and through that hegemonic struggle, which is a part of discursive practice, reproduces the unequal relations of power (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002).

3) Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality A communicative event can be seen as a fragment of an intertextual chain, which refers to the influence of history on “series of texts in which each text incorporates elements from another text or other texts”. Interdiscursivity, which is a form of intertextuality, occurs when a communicative event consists of different genres and discourses (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Fairclough argues that the possibilities for discursive change, “drawing on existing discourses in new ways”, are limited by hegemonic relations despite the creative character of interdiscursivity (Fairclough, 2010).

3.4.2. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model

The purpose of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is “to provide an analytical framework for discourse analysis” that takes into consideration the social context (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). It is impossible to simply read off ideology from a text (Fairclough, 2010). Every instance of language use needs to be analysed in a wider context and in relations to other communicative events. However, all events consist of three dimensions that are analytically separated:

Figure 2. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model for critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989: 25) 23

1) Text The first dimension is a textual analysis that focuses on how texts construct the perceived realities and social relations. The tools proposed by Fairclough are: interactional control, ethos, metaphors, wording, and grammar. The two grammatical elements that relate to the critical discourse analysis are modality and transitivity (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). According to Fairclough, this kind of textual analysis has a dual nature. It functions as an interdiscursive analysis which focuses on different genres and discourses articulated together in a text, as well as a linguistic analysis of the different semiotic structures. Therefore, this kind of a micro-analysis of a communicative event helps to link a text to the analysis of social practices (Fairclough, 2010).

2) Discursive Practice The second dimension is an analysis of a discursive practice that is “an important form of social practice which contributes to the constitution of the social world including social identities and social relations” (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). It describes how the communicative event is produced and consumed (interpreted), what discourses occur in the text, and how it intertextually incorporates elements of other events (Ibid.).

3) Social Practice This dimension consists of two aspects. Firstly, the analysis of social practice explores “the relationship between the discursive practice and its order of discourse” (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Secondly, the analysis requires a social matrix of discourse – a wider contextualization through the identification of the non-discursive relations and structures that construct the discursive practice. However, as mentioned before, the critical discourse analysis is a theory-driven process that always involves integration of other theories that explain the non-discursive social phenomena (Ibid.). The challenge in constructing the transdisciplinary objects of research is the ‘translation’ between the frameworks of CDA and of other theories.

3.5. Delimitations

As noted before, the objective of this project is to determine whether the Fox and Friends coverage of terror acts changes depending on the ethnicity or/and religious background of the perpetrators. Although the Sutherland Springs church shooting is not considered as an act of

24 terrorism by the US officials, the project takes a different standpoint, and analyses the two cases in the same way – as they both are examples of terrorism. However, the purpose of the project is not to define whether the attack in Texas is an act of terror, but rather examine the effects of differences in reporting and commenting on these the two attacks. Moreover, a comparative approach serves as an illustration of the occurred differences to help with identifying the marginalized group. Yet, the focus of the project is merely the construction of fear towards Muslim communities.

Moreover, the aim of the critical discourse analysis is not to determine whether the information presented by the programme are true or false. Instead, the objective is to identify discursive patterns that construct the representation of Muslim cultural identity. When analysing the discursive and social practices that contribute to unequal power relations and misrepresentations, Fairclough argues that the critical researcher takes the side of the misrepresented group. Therefore, the objectivity of the project has been one of the main concerns since it mainly relies on the interpretation of the qualitative material. The potential limitations of this project lie in the fact that the bias might have occurred. To avoid this error, the project follows the Fairclough’s approach with the focus on the explanatory power of a discourse. In other words, it is crucial “to provide justified explanations of as many features of the area of social life as possible” (Fairclough, 2010).

Furthermore, the scope of the project delimitates one of the objectives of the critical discourse analysis, which is the proposal of solutions to mitigate the identified social wrongs.

4. Theoretical framework Besides of applying the critical discourse analysis as a theory, the project also incorporates Stanley Cohen’s moral panic theory as foundation to determining the effects of Fox and Friends’ coverage of terrorism.

4.1. Moral Panic Theory The theory of moral panic was developed by Stanley Cohen in 1964. Cohen’s famous example is that of the Clacton incident which he wrote about in his book Folk Devils and Moral panics (2002). Two groups of people, the Mods and the Rockers, caused a disturbance in the town of Clacton in Southern England, which caused a couple hundred pounds of damage to public property. The police ended up arresting approximately a 100 people for different reasons, and the media used titles such as ‘Youngsters Beat up Town’ and ‘Day of Terror by Scooter Groups’ to describe the incident. One newspaper reported that “all the windows of all the dance halls were broken”, however the town only had one dance hall, and only some of its windows were broken. The groups got generalized in the media; suddenly, they were all part of gangs, and all came from wealthy families, despite the opposite being true (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). So, the media exaggerated the amount of damage done and the amount and types of people involved, which in turn made both locals and people from around the country, call for more security and stricter laws regarding the length of sentences for the various crimes. These are all signs of a moral panic according to Cohen, who writes that a moral panic happens when “condition, episode, person or group of people emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (Cohen, 2002).

Firstly, it is important to note that the ‘panic’ part of the term is not meant literally. Usually in a panic, people will try to get away from the physical threat, but in a moral panic where the threat is rarely directly physical, people tend to be fascinated by it and gravitate towards it. “The term ‘panic’ is such a strong metaphor that it conjures up the image of flight and terror, which attracts attention to the concept. In other words, it is as much a literary as a scholarly success.” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda (2009), there are five elements that define a moral panic:

• concern • hostility • consensus • disproportion

• volatility (Ibid.).

For something to be a moral panic, the level of concern over the consequences of the folk devil’s behaviour must rise. The concern should be able to be measured, for example through a public opinion poll or the number of arrests of certain people. Concern does not necessarily equal fear, in some cases it manifests as hate-crimes. Secondly, the level of hostility against the deviants must increase. The deviants should be seen as enemies of society, creating the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’. It is good respectable people vs evil, bad, disreputable people. As we saw in Cohen’s example it was the Mods and Rockers vs. the locals. The locals in this case are the audience of the panic. They are the ones who have decided that something is wrong and that there is a problem. That is the ‘subjectively problematic’ definition of a moral panic. This definition says that something is not a deviance until an audience has said that it is. An audience can be teachers, employers, police, your family and even yourself. The opposite approach is the ‘objectively given’ which argues that there needs not to be an audience for something to be wrong. Certain things and behaviours are just inherently wrong, independent of human judgement (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). This project looks at the right-wing media as an audience and who they appoint as folk-devils.

To fulfil the consensus criteria there needs to be a substantial agreement that the threat is real, serious and that it is caused by the specific group and their behaviour. Though, it has to be a substantial agreement, it does not need to be a majority. Additionally, it does not have to be nationwide, a moral panic can also exist solely in a certain community or region. The disproportion criterion is fulfilled when many members of a society are of the belief that more people are involved in the immoral behaviour than there are. The public concern is excessive compared to the harm caused by the folk devils. However, finding out if something is disproportionate can be in many cases be difficult, and often you cannot be entirely sure. Lastly, it must be volatile. Moral panics will always break out suddenly, though they may be latent for a long time and can also come back from time to time. Some panics have a permanent effect in the form of new laws, social movement organizations etc., while others will just disappear almost without a trace. Often the panic is not sustainable over a long time and it can therefore flare up and die down multiple times in different places. Like the disproportion criterion, volatility is a matter of degree (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).

Goode and Ben-Yehuda (2009) present three main theories of the moral panic:

• the elite theory

• the interest groups theory • the grassroot theory.

These theories deal with where moral panics come from and what might have caused them. The elite theory states that it is the higher-ups in societies that create the moral panics. It is people like CEOs, politicians, heads of religions, the media etc. that orchestrate these panics, usually to move attention from one problem in society to another. Often these new problems pose little threat to them, while also giving them something of value by diverting the attention away from something that could cause them trouble. It is important that for this theory to work, the elite needs to be the most powerful in society (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).

The grassroot theory argues that moral panics start at the ‘bottom’ of society and then it might rise up through the ranks. It is the ordinary people on the street whose power lie in voting, spending money on certain things, participating in political campaigns and the like. It is widespread, but it does not have to be a majority. In this theory, it is believed that a panic cannot be generated by the media or the elites if it did not already exist in the general public first. Goode and Ben-Yehuda argue that “politicians and the media may influence the general public’s concerns, but if a latency doesn’t exist to begin with, the grassroots position argues – if a nerve isn’t touched – the public will not respond” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). However, not all moral panics are acknowledged by the political elites or mainstream media, sometimes it does not go further than the grassroots.

The interest-group theory states that some groups start moral panics in order to create certain rules and making sure they are enforced. Examples of these groups could be educational organizations, police departments and religious groups. The national alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s was for instance created by a Christian group. Unlike the elites, interest-groups genuinely believe that the folk devil is a threat to their interests and to the interests of society as a whole. Some interest-groups are “established lobbies” which means that they have access to policy-makers and politicians. By having their paid representatives call, meet and explain their mission to e.g. a senator, they can possibly have an influence on the political process. (Ibid.) An example of an established lobby is the National Rifle Association. Interest-groups are most often the reason that government subcommittee meetings and hearings are held, products are boycotted, laws are created, speeches are made etc. in relation to the moral panic (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).

As stated by Goode and Ben-Yehuda, all moral panics cannot be explained by one theory alone. Different theories fit better with different moral panics. However, it is almost certain that there needs to exist some fear in the general public for a panic to occur, so there are often elements from the grass-root theory present. An elite or an interest group will not be able to craft a non- existent threat out of nothing. Nonetheless, even if there is a pre-existing threat in society, it won’t cause a panic by itself. There needs to be an outlet and that is where the media and interest groups come in. If an organisation continuously writes to a newspaper with consistent themes in large amounts, it might be able to convince the editor that they should publish something about the given issue. So generally, the causes of moral panics are the results of a combination of the grassroot theory and the interest-group theory, the question is, which comes first (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).

4.1.1. Moral Panic and the Media The mass media is perhaps one of the most important vehicles in a modern moral panic. It can both create a moral media and spread an existing one. “In short, the concern expressed by the media, by themselves, can both constitute as well as inflame and even generate public concern.” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). The mass media has a need for moral panics because panics generate news, and appeal to the concerns of the readers. The media is also important because it can influence the elites, such as politicians, legislators, law enforcement etc. No media is completely neutral or objective in their news, and their way of portraying the folk devils tell the public and the higher-ups how to feel about them - they set the agenda (Ibid.). Cohen describes in his book how a moral panic is expressed in the media. There needs to be an exaggeration. It can be of the behaviour or how many people take part in a phenomenon. The exaggeration can also be seen in the headlines or in the vocabulary of the articles. In addition to this, other ways that the media exaggerates, according to Cohen are:

• making untrue claims • devoting a lot more attention to a less serious phenomenon than a more serious one • devoting more attention to a phenomenon at a point in time when it is less serious than when it is more serious • devoting more attention to a phenomenon among certain groups in which it is less common than those in which it is more common.

This project discusses how the chosen media might show some of these signs. However, it is important to note that it is believed by many that media exaggeration cannot be avoided because

29 they focus on what is newsworthy, and those things are unusual and atypical. If the media always write about the unusual, the public will believe that it is more common than it actually is, and consequently, a moral panic can come into existence (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).

Furthermore, it is believed by Angela McRobbie that we live in a multi-mediated society, which means that there is a big variety of media that we are all exposed to (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). People don’t readily accept or believe everything they hear or read, which was what most people used to believe. They are sceptical and in addition to that, people usually gravitate to specific media outlets that fits with their orientation. So, the media sometimes just reinforces attitudes and beliefs more than it causes them. Because of the array of medias that people pick and choose from, it has become harder to create a society-wide moral panic (Ibid.).

A moral panic has an appointed enemy that on the surface might seem simple, but by looking deeper into the context of the panic, one can find a more elaborate and underlying reason. Cohen suggests that in every moral panic we should try to understand, symbolically and culturally, what the panic represents to the participants involved. In the earlier mentioned Clacton case we see an example of this. At first glance the problem seemed to be vandalism and violence, but the actual cause was, according to Cohen, a clash between the older post-war generation and the younger perpetrators. The young people were coddled and rebellious with too much time on their hands and no self-control. (Ibid.) Having a concrete enemy with concrete harmful actions makes it easier for everybody to understand, but it can make the moral panic theory more complicated.

5. Analysis This chapter consists of the analysis of the chosen broadcasts fragments of the news/talk programme Fox and Friends that represent the two cases of terror acts committed by the Muslim and white terrorists. The analysis focuses systematically and respectively on the fragments of the news anchors and expert statements, using Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as a structural system that allows to identify the discursive and social practices that occur in the texts. Moreover, the analysis incorporates Cohen’s theory of moral panics in order to determine whether Fox and Friends programme spreads the unjustified fear towards Muslims and Islam as a religion. In other words, the analysis looks to examine the construction of the terrorists’ identities depending on their ethnic and/or religious background by the news programme.

5.1. Analytical Strategy The analysis is divided into three parts according to Fairclough’s methodological framework, more specifically, the three-dimensional model:

1. Text dimension 2. Discursive practice dimension 3. Social practice dimension

Firstly, each chosen fragment of the Fox and Friends broadcasts is analysed through the first (text) and second (discursive practice) dimension individually. Moreover, the analysis is divided into the two cases, the Sutherland Springs church shooting (Sutherland Spring, 2017) and the New York City truck attack (New York, 2017), in order to clearly illustrate the differences in the portrayals of the perpetrators. Later, the fragments are analysed together through the third dimension (social practice) in order to incorporate a wider context under which the discourses occur. The broadcast fragments are attached in the appendix.

5.2. Case 1 - The New York City Truck Attack The chosen Muslim terrorist case discussed on the broadcast from Fox and Friends, is the New York City truck case. On October 31, 2017, a 29-year-old man named Sayfullo Habibullevic Saipov drove down the bike lane of the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, New York City (ABC7 Chicago, 2017). Saipov rented a pickup truck and drove onto a bike lane, killing eight people, while eleven people had non-lethal injuries from the attack. Saipov is from Uzbekistan, but moved to the US in 2010 and has been living in several states such as Ohio,

New Jersey and Florida. Although he had been working as an Uber driver for six months before the attack, Saipov has had several interactions with law enforcement in different states for traffic citations, and had been arrested for not showing up in court for a misdemeanour offense (Shimon Prokupecz, 2017). The reason why he had been able to move the US is because of the Diversity Visa programme (ABC7 Chicago, 2017).

5.2.1. Analysis of the broadcast 1 (Appendix 1) In this Fox and Friends broadcast, the hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt talk about the New York City truck attack and discuss the background of the terrorist and try to decode his past behaviours. They continue the conversation by stating that the first priority is the security of the American citizens, which is why everyone shouldn’t be able to move to the US.

• Text analysis It is Kilmeade who sets the conversational agenda when he starts talking about the terrorist and when he might have gotten radicalized. Earhardt then comments on the radicalization aspects by bringing in facts from the perpetrator’s life before she gets into morality in the sentence: “they work on all of the patients, no matter their background, but imagine having to save that guys life” (Appendix 1). This is about how the doctor should act in a situation like this, and it implies that it must be hard to operate on a terrorist without being emotionally engaged. Kilmeade does not follow on up that thought, but instead he starts discussing terror attacks that have been committed with trucks. There is no cooperation between the two of them, they do not retain the cooperation principle. It seems more like two monologues rather than a conversation.

Kilmeade creates pathos by saying: “they’re all, that’s all of our family, and that has to stop. It is not everybody’s right to come here. […] American citizen’s security first, and there’s nothing wrong with that!” By saying that they are all a family, he creates a sense of unity by putting the safety of America and its citizens first, and underlining that not everyone should have the right to come there and change the orders. Moreover, he is also using a metaphor by referring to victims of the terror attack as family, i.e. he indicates that the nation is one big family and that a family needs to stick together to protect each other.

They are not experts on the subject and they have not brought in any guests that are either, so their only appeal to ethos is created through their authority as news

commentators. Viewers may think that not only are the facts that Kilmeade and Earhardt present true, but they might also be reinforcing some of the viewers own personal beliefs and opinions by stating things as if they are universal truths. Examples of these are: “It is not everybody’s right to come here.” and “American citizen’s security first, and there’s nothing wrong with that!” (Appendix 1). These are objective modalities. When Kilmeade says that it is not everybody’s right, he does not state that it is his own belief. It is the same case for the second example. Another type of modality that is present in the broadcast, is the permission modality. It can be seen in this utterance made by Kilmeade: “he went to a mosque around the block, okay, that’s fine” (Ibid.). By commenting with “okay, that’s fine” on the fact that the terrorist went to the mosque, it gives the expression that Kilmeade approves of people (Muslims) going to mosques and that it is not necessarily relevant to the actions of the terrorist (Ibid.). Lastly, we see a hedge when Kilmeade says “maybe he was radicalised” (Ibid.). Here the use of ‘maybe’ shows his low degree of affinity to his statement. However, they primarily use objective modalities, which is very common in the mass media.

At one point, Kilmeade describes the perpetrator and says that “he was always belligerent” in relation to his behaviour before the attack (Ibid.). Choosing the word ‘belligerent’ can seem very extreme, since it is typically used in the context of war. Another notable term he uses is ‘radical jihadist’, which he uses when he refers to the attacker of the truck attack. Jihadist comes from the word jihadism which has a different meaning in the Quran, but has come to mean something else in the media, as mentioned earlier in the literary review. Lastly, Kilmeade also makes use of irony by saying: “in case you’re at home saying ‘don’t overreact, it’s no big deal, what are the chances of you getting hit by a terrorist’” (Ibid.). This is evident because of his tone of voice, as he expresses the irony and modality by intonation.

• Discursive practice dimension The discourses identified in this fragment are terrorism and immigration policy discourse, while radicalisation is also a present topic, albeit to a lesser extent. Combined, this interdiscursivity can leave a notion of implying that most Muslim immigrants are terrorists, or at least that most Muslim immigrants have a greater tendency to be or become radicalised. Intertextuality is present, because of the term ‘radical jihadist’, which is not a term Fox News has created, but a term that is broadly and frequently used

in the media as a term to describe terrorists perceived as Muslims, and is therefore drawn from previous terror attacks and news. Intertextuality is also found in the fact that they refer to the previous terror attacks in Europe, that were of the same nature. They also make a reference to the New York Post, which is another example of intertextuality.

5.2.2. Analysis of the Fragment 2 (Appendix 2) In the wake of the truck attack in New York City, President Trump criticized the current immigrant policy - the Diversity Visa Lottery programme - in a tweet, and explained that they are working to change it to a merit based immigration policy. The diversity visa programme enables citizens and residents of the US and green card holders to sponsor their family members, so that they also can move to the States. In contrast to this, the merit based immigration system chooses immigrants “based on high-paying job offers, past achievements, English-language ability and education.” (VOA, 2017).

• Text dimension Brian Kilmeade starts of the conversational agenda by reading a tweet from President Donald Trump that deals with immigration. In the tweet, Trump criticizes the current immigration laws of the US. By mentioning Trump’s tweet and using it as a groundwork for their discussions, Kilmeade creates ethos, because of Trump’s authority as the POTUS. In the tweet, when describing the Diversity Visa Lottery programme, he refers to it as a “democrat lottery system”, which can make the current immigration policy sound incompetent, and make it seem like he is blaming the democrats for the outcomes of the policy, in this case the truck attack (Appendix 2). When starting the discussion, Kilmeade tries to steer away from the actual agenda of the tweet by trying to draw the attention away from the ‘republicans vs. democrats’, and make the agenda relevant for everyone despite their political standpoints: “And I just don’t think this has to be a Republican-Democratic thing.” (Ibid.). By saying this, Kilmeade uses subjective modality, because he states his own opinion by noting ‘I think’. Then when they carry on the discussion by saying that “right, it doesn’t” and that the city is democratic and “as liberal as it gets”, they use objective modality, by making their interpretations sound like facts, which reinforces their authority as news commentators (Ibid.). Kilmeade continues the conversation by stating that people are gone and were taken away from their families, while they were doing everyday activities. In this way, Kilmeade creates pathos by using trigger-words such as ‘planet’, ‘citizens’, ‘families’

and emphasizes them, once again underlining that it is a nationwide problem, which affects everyone, whether they are Democrats or Republicans. Furthermore, Earhardt adds to Kilmeade’s agenda by mentioning that while her friends were afraid to travel to the European countries where previous terror attacks have taken place, the threat has now come ‘here; to the US and is more real than ever. Just as Kilmeade did, she emphasizes on the fact that people are getting run over, while using the bike path. Therefore, there is a clear coherence between Kilmeade’s and Earhardt’s utterances this time. Because although they don’t necessarily talk to each other in form of a dialogue, they support each other’s dialogues, thus cooperating and creating a conversation. However, when explaining that people are getting run over, she does it in a rather intense way: “This is happening where vehicles are rolling over people that are riding their bicycles along the highway on the bike path.” (Ibid.). When Earhardt describes the attack this way, it can and may give the impression that such attacks happen on a day to the day basis, and that there’s a big possibility that people will get run over when they are riding their bikes on the bike paths. She explains the event in a very descriptive manner, and over-dramatizes it in a sense that makes it sound like it is a frequently occurring incident. Also, when describing the incident this way, it is a case of transitivity, because she is not mentioning the agent of responsibility and thus accentuates the effect of that attack. In this case, the lacking agent is the terrorist, which is replaced by ‘vehicles’ as an object instead, and by doing this, Earhardt presents the incident as a natural phenomenon, and thus creates a bigger fear among the public.

• Discursive practice dimension Intertextually is created by Earhardt, because she draws on earlier events by mentioning that some European countries do not vet people, which in her opinion has led to some of the attacks in the European countries. Manifest intertextuality is also created by citing another text – in this case they cite Trump’s tweet and continue the discussion from there. The main discourse in this fragment of the video is different in comparison to the previous fragment, because Kilmeade and Earhardt starts of the discussion with a tweet from Trump, disapproving the current immigration policy. The main discourse is therefore immigration policy discourse, because they are backing up Trump’s criticism by indicating that the current immigration policy is the reason why these truck attacks and other terrorist attacks happen, because it is easier for immigrants to get into the country and attack the nation. They do this by their use of words and by explaining the

outcomes of the attacks, and by implying that they are “no better than some of the European countries that don’t vet individuals” (Appendix 2), if they don’t change the policy to merit based immigration. Although that the main discourse is immigrant policy discourse, it articulates together with terrorism discourse and creates interdiscursivity, since it is implied that the terrorist attacks happen because of the lack of security due to the immigrant policy, as mentioned earlier.

5.2.3. Analysis of the Fragment 3 (Appendix 3) Fred Fleitz, Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at the Center for Security Policy, was invited to the programme as an expert on the raised topics. The conversation revolves around the Diversity Visa Lottery and the causes of perpetrator’s radicalization.

• Text dimension In terms of the interactional control, Fox and Friends’ anchors set the conversation agenda. They ask for Fred Fleitz’s opinions on the topics related to the terror attack - the necessity of the Diversity Visa Lottery programme and the causes of the terror attack. The speakers cooperate with each other, thus, there is a coherence in the conversation and the maxim of relevance is retained. The hosts don’t interrupt the guest and don’t try to cut in to the conversation. It is an example of ‘ideal’ dialogue, where speaker’s take their turns with no repetition or hesitations (Baker and Hengeveld, 2012). However, the hosts tend to express their attitudes through their intonation when asking the questions.

There are no disagreements between the conversation’s participant, therefore, it can be concluded that the anchors and the guest share negative attitudes towards the current immigration policy and the ‘lone wolf’ term. The phrase “to put their name in the hat”, in the context of discussing the Diversity Visa Lottery programme, implies that it is somewhat easy to receive that kind of visa and that the process does not require additional vetting of the applicants (Appendix 3). Fleitz describes it as a “a ridiculous program”, which again signals his attitude towards the policy (Ibid.). He also assumes that the current administration may prevent the immigration of many ‘un-vetted refugees’. It is important to note that the choice of word ‘refugees’ in the context of the discussion about the Diversity Visa Lottery implicates that the speaker does not differentiate the terms ‘immigrant’ and ‘refugee’. People, who flee their countries to escape from a war or a natural disaster, enter the United States under the U.S. refugee

resettlement programme (State.gov, 2017). When Fleitz says that “we really dodged a bullet with the election of President Trump”, he emphasizes that the choice of the current president was right (Appendix 3). The idiom symbolizes an avoidance of something disastrous, which in this case would be an election of Hillary Clinton. Fleitz implies that as bad the current situation is, “it could be worse” if Clinton would be elected to the office (Ibid.).

The ethos is created through Fred Fleitz’s high authority as a person who used to hold high positions, inter alia, at the CIA, DIA, and currently at the Center for Security Policy. His answers to the questions consist only of his personal opinions and beliefs without upholding them with facts or sources. Moreover, one of the anchors refers to the conversations with some of the police officers from the New York City police department, who assumed that the perpetrator might have been a ‘lone wolf’. However, the relevance of this assumption is immediately rejected by the expert with the effect of establishing his dominance in the conversation.

The speakers use mostly subjective modalities, such as ‘I think’ and ‘I would say’, to express their opinions on the topics. Fleitz also articulates his negative attitudes by the use of strong words - “I hate that lone wolf term” (Ibid.). It is also worth noting that the term ‘lone wolf’, which is often used to describe a perpetrator that committed an act of terror alone, outside of any groups or command structures, is rejected by Fleitz on the grounds of its affiliation with ‘the Obama administration’. However, the term was popularized already in the 1990s by white supremacists, and has been used ever since to describe perpetrators of this nature (Hamm and Spaaj, 2015). It is also often used by media outlets that support right-wing parties when describing white perpetrators instead of pinning down the ‘terrorist’ label. Moreover, when the expert mentions the potential causes of perpetrator’s radicalization, he also lists “radicals in a mosque”, and in that way, establishes a relation between a religious institution and terrorism (Appendix 3).

• Discursive practice dimension The broadcast fragment contains a high degree of interdiscursivity. The discourses about immigration policy and the current state of the US politics are articulated together to create politicization of the topic. With the respect to intertextuality, the conversation draws on the popular term ‘lone wolf’, often used in the context of terrorism by

politicians and media. However, it draws on the existing discourse by rejecting its relevance to the case.

5.2.4. Analysis of the Fragment 4 (Appendix 4)

Dan Bongino, a former United States Secret Service agent, was invited to the programme as an expert on the safety in relation to the immigration laws. The conversation revolves again around the Diversity Visa Lottery and the immigration of Muslims to the United States.

• Text dimension The anchor Steve Doocy sets the conversation topic by asking the expert about his opinion on the righteousness of Trump’s suggestion that the immigration policies in the US require more ‘super vetting’. The Trump administration proposed an ‘extreme vetting’ plan that would automate the process of vetting the applicants by the use of a special software, which would screen out the potential terrorist. However, many voices of IT experts and right groups have risen in the protest of the proposal on the grounds that “the proposed system would be inaccurate and biased” (Nordic.businessinsider.com, 2017).

The expert invited to the news programme shares a different opinion. Dan Bongino supports the president’s administration proposal and states that “our immigration policy is suicidal and that is not hyperbolic” (Appendix 4). He uses a lot of objective truth modalities and strong words to express his opinions. He presents his interpretations of the current situation in a factual manner, what both reinforces and reflects his authority (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002).

The ethos is not only created through Dan Bongino’s high authority. The credibility of his statements is supported by the presentation of statistics on the number of people from predominantly Muslim countries admitted to the US on the Diversity Visa Lottery programme. He argues that the consequences of the current immigration policy cause threat to the US society, and describes it metaphorically as “a political talking point and not reality” (Appendix 4). The pathos of his statement is supported by the use of words that might evoke viewer’s strong emotional reaction. After mentioning the number of Muslims admitted to the US, Bongino stresses the importance of American citizens’ safety as a top priority, and suggests that the Diversity Visa programme should be

changed for a “United States first-immigration programme” (Ibid.). The focal point of his monologue is the description of the people that cause a threat to the country, and states that “they are at war with us and they’re not interested in politics, they’re only interested in death” (Ibid.).

It terms of transitivity, it is important to notice that when Bongino refers to the Democratic Party, he dismisses the responsible agent in the sentences (“it’s time to wake up to what’s going on”) (Ibid.). This kind of a sentence structure emphasizes the effects of the Democratic Party actions rather than the processes that caused the current situation, and suggests speaker’s low affinity to ascribing the responsibility to a subject (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Bongino’s ironic intonation, when repeating the question “A diversity visa programme?” twice, implies again his negative attitude towards the policy (Appendix 4).

• Discursive practice dimension The interdiscursive mix in this fragment consists of the discourses that revolve around the topic of immigration policies and the proposals of mitigating the threat that comes from potential ‘un-vetted’ terrorist. When describing the dangers that come from the current policies, the speaker refers to the people coming from the predominantly Muslim countries. The words used in the Bongino’s statement, such as ‘suicidal’, ‘death’, ‘war’, signal the semantic field of terrorism. The mix of these two discourses draws on the already established discourses about Islam as a threatening religion. The applied personifications, the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, creates a gap between Americans and Muslims.

5.3. Case 2 – The Sutherland Springs Church Shooting

The second case covered by Fox and Friends, is the terror attack committed by the perpetrator with a white ethnic - the Sutherland Springs church shooting. On November 5, 2017, 26 people were killed, and 20 others were wounded by a gunman at a Texas church. The shooter was identified as Devin Patrick Kelley and was 26-year-old, who first fired a rifle from outside of the church, but then entered the church and continued the attack. It was found that Kelley had been interested in mass shootings on his social media, and had become consumed of an unknown family conflict, and had thus sent threats to his mother-in-law by text in the morning of the attack (Jason Hanna and Holly Yan, 2017). Kelley was a former member of the US Air

Force, but was charged in military court in 2012, because it was thought that he was assaulting his wife and child. For that reason, he “received a bad conduct discharge, confinement for 12 months, and was demoted to E-1, or airman basic” (Ibid.). However, it was recognized by The US Air Force that the court martial conviction of Kelley was not entered into the federal law enforcement database which could have prevented him from purchasing guns (Ibid.).

5.3.1. Analysis of the Fragment 5 (Appendix 5)

As seen in appendix 5, one of the central discussion topics in relation to the case of the Texas church shooting is gun control and Fox News’ negative attitude towards it. Throughout the programme, the hosts spend a large quantity of time discussing firearm regulations, or perhaps the lack thereof. One example of this is the debate between the hosts, and in particular Ainsley Earhardt, and their external guest, Dan Bongino, where each side presents arguments pro guns.

• Text dimension In this particular fragment, Earhardt seems to be setting the conversational agenda by asking the question of how Americans are supposed to defend themselves and their families if their gun-rights are altered. However, although they are addressing the same topic, namely gun control, there is arguably no coherence present in the conversation. In order to build up a conversation, there needs to be a cooperation between the participating sources. Earhardt’s question is followed by a monologue by Bongino, explaining gun-supply and stating that Americans should only be concerned with how they should defend themselves. He is not providing an actual answer to her question, and therefore one could argue that the utterances between them does not fulfil the principles of cooperation.

Regarding the ethos, Dan Bongino, who is brought in by Fox and Friends as their expert, is a former agent with the US Secret Service, a subsidiary branch of the Department of Homeland Security. His background would argue that he does have extended insight on topics like security and weaponry, which could then add to the credibility of his character in the viewer's perception.

When identifying metaphors in the fragment, the fragment offers a limited quantity of such. One example, however, is ‘cherry-pick’, which traditionally stems from the idea of picking the best cherries among others for oneself. In this case, it is used by Bongino

40 indicate that it is a general tendency for people to pick and choose arguments that best support their statements. In relation to gun rights, he is using the term to insinuate that both advocates and opponents of firearms are being subjective in backing their claims.

As for wording, Bongino makes use of the word ‘failed’ to describe previous attempts to regulate gun supplies. It is a rather negatively loaded word, which emphasizes his statement that nothing can be done to stop the supply of firearms. Another noticeable word is ‘deadly’, which is quite a strong adjective used to refer to the future perpetrators’ crimes of violent nature. Within his expressions, Bongino repeatedly uses phrases such as ‘the only question’ and ‘defend yourself’. This could be due to his wish to reinforce his message to the viewer by persuading them, as it is an example of a common component in persuasive speeches. While Dan Bongino generally makes use of rather negative words, Ainsley Earhardt chooses lesser words of a negative nature. As an example, she uses the word ‘innocent’ to describe the average American, whose task is to keep themselves and their families safe. The word itself is generally something people associate with something of a good nature and characteristic most people would sympathise with. By initiating the conversation with ‘innocent’, she could be making an appeal to the viewers emotions.

“You will do nothing to keep firearms out of the hands of people who are going to use them for deadly reasons” is an example of the presence of high affinity in Bongino’s expressions (Appendix 5). His statement presents the characteristics of objective modalities, as his choice of the words ‘will do’ and ‘nothing’ leave no room for interpretation and could thereby seem truthful in the eyes of the viewers. Furthermore, the statement constructs social relations in the sense that it is a modality of permission. With his choice of ‘will’, Bongino is placing himself in a position where he has the means to give the recipient of the message permission to act according to his statement, which then furthers his position of authority. “How you [are] gonna defend yourself is the only question!” is another example of high affinity in Bongino’s statements (Ibid.). ‘Is’, as opposed to ‘could be’, presents his interpretation as being factual, which, once again, speaks in favour of his authority and insightfulness on the matter and hand. The word ‘only’ also performs as a very steadfast and final manner, which then reinforces the statements’ seemingly factual nature. Yet another example of high affinity is found when Bongino says: “…supply-side measures for guns have failed” (Ibid.). By using

the word ‘failed’ as opposed to ‘unsuccessful’, he could almost be ridiculing previous politicians, who have tried to make changes regarding gun-regulations. With the previous quote, it is also relevant to look at transitivity. As Bongino is stating the failure of supply-side measure, he is dismissing the responsible agent in the sentence, who may, in this case, be the Democrats, who are generally advocates for stricter gun-control, and who also, during Barack Obama’s presidency, made attempts to rewrite gun-laws (Bradner and Krieg, 2016). This could also be an indicator of his disdain towards the Democrat’s politics.

• Discursive practice dimension The overall discourse in this fragment of the broadcast is a gun control discourse, which covers both rights and regulations concerning firearms. The dominating discourse is the defence of the American people’s right to be in possession of guns in order to protect themselves and their relatives. In extension to this, there is a discourse of fear. The wording and the figures of speech used in the fragment is emphasizing the fear of attacks using guns, while claiming that you need the same means of weaponry as the attackers to combat this fear. In this fragment, intertextuality is present to some extent. The aspect of describing the current state of gun control, or lack thereof, has been a broadly covered topic in the United States.

5.3.2. Analysis of the Fragment 6 (Appendix 6)

In summary, the three hosts (Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade) of Fox and Friends are talking about the Texas Church Shooting. They start of by mentioning the perpetrator’s dishonourable discharge for domestic abuse, before they quote President of the United States Donald Trump on the attacker. They move onto discussing the perpetrator’s background. Afterwards they bring up what his former high school classmates said of him, and how he preached about atheism online. They then briefly talk about POTUS Donald Trump and how he was criticized for making a political statement about immigration not long after the New York Truck Attack before moving on to criticize people for not condemning former president Barack Obama for bringing up gun-control, hours after the shooting. Lastly, they return to the subject of his mental state before moving onto gun-control.

• Text dimension

In terms of the interactional control, it is Kilmeade that starts off the conversational agenda with talking about the perpetrator and his background. He quotes the POTUS on the case and then Earhardt cuts him off to finish his sentence. Kilmeade then repeats Earhardt before Doocy starts talking about a different topic. Here Earhardt again jumps in to add a comment, which is then ignored by Doocy. Steve Doocy continues talking about the perpetrator’s background in more detail before moving on to the next subject. It is less like a conversation and more like two monologues interrupted by comments that do not get acknowledged. There is then a new conversational agenda set by Doocy. He starts off by defending Trump’s political tweet about the New York Truck Attack, before moving on to what former president Barack Obama had to say about the theme of the feature. From there Earhardt takes it back to what Trump has said about the case, and changes the subject to that of gun-control and the mental state of the perpetrator. Steve Doocy cuts in with a comment that supports her statement. In this part we see a conversation retaining the cooperation principles, unlike in the previous part. However, when Earhardt states her stance on the subject of mental health and guns, it is ignored by her co-hosts that continue to talk about the perpetrator and how he got his guns. In the end Earhardt completely turns away from any of the previous subjects and starts to talk about prayers and God instead, and then in the last line she wishes a person outside of the conversation a happy birthday, which does not retain of the principles of conversation, which is to make your statements relevant to the previous said thing.

Moving on to the ethos and modalities present in the fragment. Besides their authority as news commentators we can see ethos in their multiple references to POTUS Trump. The anchors use him as a sort of expert on the topic, despite him not actually being one. This can be seen in the beginning of the fragment when Kilmeade states “this is a behavioural issue, as the president said” (Appendix 6). They also quote Trump on the mental state of the perpetrator saying he is deranged. They continually use this word after the quote, which shows their respect to him as an authority. Earhardt later brings up another tweet from President Trump, stating that it is not about gun-control, it is about mental health. If Trump has said it then it must be true, because he has a high degree of authority. They use these statements from Trump to make objective modalities, which we see multiple times throughout their conversation. One example is when Earhardt says “obviously this guy is not right in the head” (Ibid.). Another example of a truth modality is when she says “Right. It’s a mental health issue” (Ibid.).

The anchors use objective modalities in order to state that the problem is not about guns, but about mental health. However, there is an example of a subjective modality in relation to these topics in this utterance by Earhardt: “I do believe though if you do have mental health issues, we do need to look at that, you shouldn’t have guns (…) you shouldn’t be able to buy them” (Ibid.).

A noticeable feature in the language of the hosts, is the variation of words they use to describe the mental state of the perpetrator. Instead of the words ‘mentally ill’, they use ‘deranged’, which as stated in the previous section might be because of the president. Deranged is perhaps a more dramatic, and less commonly used word than its synonym ‘insane’. Furtherly, they call him ‘not right in the head’ and say that he has mental health issues. These terms all differ in how specific they are. A mental health issue can refer to many different problems that are not necessarily as severe as being deranged/insane. Their interchangeable use of these terms can make it seem like they all mean the same. Another interesting wording choice, is their decision to refer to the attack as a ‘behavioural issue’. The use of ‘deranged individual’ also conveys the message that he acted alone. This choice of phrasing makes the incident seem less serious than it is. It is a nonchalant way of describing an event that resulted in the death of 26 people. Going back again to words that are used to describe the perpetrator: “he is said to be an outcast” (Appendix 6). Outcast is often used by the media in relation to the term ‘lone wolf’, which means a person that works alone, or in this case acted alone.

At one point, Earhardt cuts off Doocy to mention that the perpetrator worked with kids. This is an example of the appeal form pathos. Children in almost all cases are a more sensitive subject, and bringing them up in a tragic case like this is almost guaranteed to create an emotional response in people that is bigger than if you had not mentioned them. We can also see an example of something that reduces pathos. When Ainsley in the end brings up her daughter, and how she was the result of prayers, and then connects that to the birthday of a weather forecaster outside of the show, she reduces the seriousness of the case. She very quickly goes from talking about the actions of a deranged man that did horrible things, to something completely unrelated, which makes it less emotional and therefore reduces the pathos.

• Discursive practice dimension There is a relatively high degree of interdiscursivity as there are many different types of discourses in this fragment of their programme. In addition to that they put it into a variety of different contexts that gives a high amount of intertextuality. Primarily there is the major gun-control discourse and the focus on the mental health of the perpetrator in the case, but there is also a connection of the two when the question “Should people with mental health problems have access to guns?”, which is an often asked question in those discourses (Appendix 6). They put it into a political context by referring to both present president Trump and former president Obama and their stances on the case. Going back to the topic of gun-control, they bring up former mass-massacre committer, the Aurora-killer - an American man who shot and killed 12 people in a cinema in 2012. It is brought up in relation to how the Texas shooter might have gotten his gun when he supposedly shouldn’t be able to get one, which is a common topic in the gun-control discourse. They also bring up some info obtained by another news media like The Daily Mail. These interviews dealt with other people’s perception of the attacker, which grants another viewpoint on his mental state, while also fitting into the common procedure in attacks like these, where you try to find a reason for it in their past. These discourses are not however connected in new or non-common way. Often when talking about gun- control, the theme of mental health is also brought up, and it is a very debated issue in the political world. However, a seemingly completely irrelevant connection is also made between the case and the birthday of one of their previously unmentioned colleagues.

5.3.3. Analysis of the Fragment 7 (Appendix 7)

In the broadcast, one of the themes discussed is the aftermaths of the church shooting, and how it affected the relatives of the victims, and what an incident of such character should mean for Americans. A fragment of a conversation between Ainsley Earhardt and Governor Greg Abbott, cover their combined belief that the shooting should not upset their ability to practice their faith in God, but that it should provide the grounds for coming together.

• Text dimension In this fragment, the conversational agenda is set by the host Ainsley Earhardt. She structures the conversation by firstly describing her personal thoughts on how the shooting has affected her faith, which is then lead to a question about Abbott’s personal

45 experience with the repercussions of the incident, who then describes his emotional encounters with the families of the victims. The way she leads up to the question feeds the setting of the conversation with an emotional element, and they are primarily covering subjective thoughts on the events.

Ainsley Earhardt’s job as a TV host does not by definition necessarily qualify her as a person of authority. Nonetheless, her credibility is reinforced by her role as a host of one of America’s most well-known news programmes. The fact that she is in conversation with a US Governor, further emphasizes her credibility. Governor Greg Abbott’s credibility is accentuated by his position as a public official in the United States, who has the role of acting in the nation’s best interest.

When identifying metaphors within their exchange, an example of such is Earhardt’s utterance “…those people are with the Lord now”, where she is metaphorically referring to the victims of the attack, claiming that they are in a better place (Appendix 7). While Earhardt makes use of the previous metaphorical statement, Governor Abbott uses personification in saying: “…language that would touch their hearts” (Ibid.). By giving ‘language’ the traits of a human, he is appealing to the emotional aspect of the covering of the story.

As wording is a rather important aspect to look at within the textual dimension, the following words are relevant to look at. ‘Unwavering’ is a rather strong adjective in relation to the faith of the victims’ families. Had Abbott used ‘strong’ to describe their faith, it would not have the same effect, as this word could be interpreted in several ways, whereas ‘unwavering’ performs as a more resolute adjective, meaning there is near no room for interpretations. He refers to the measures that, in his opinion, need to be taken in order to get rid of ‘evil’ when using the word ‘purge’. Both ‘evil’ and ‘purge’ perform in a way that emphasizes the severity of the situation and his clear disdain towards it, as they, in the context of the sentence, are relatively subjective.

Both the thoughts of Earhardt and Abbott appear to have a tendency to be quite subjective, as the central points of the exchange is their personal experiences with their faith following the church shooting. However, the majority of the verbs in their statements are objective modalities, rather than subjective, which, for example, is

demonstrated in Earhardt’s statement: “I know that those people are with the Lord now experiencing eternity…”, where she uses the verb ‘are’ as opposed to auxiliary verbs such as ‘could be’ or ‘might be’ (Appendix 7). The use of objective modalities presents their utterances as true while also reinforcing their authority. Furthermore, this amplifies their degree of affinity to their words, providing no signs of doubt within their views and that they are fully committed to those, thereby demonstrating how their statements also qualify as fulfilling of the requirements of truth modalities.

• Discursive practice Not much can be said for intertextuality in this fragment, however, one of the discourses identified in this fragment is faith, which can be split into the practice of faith and the necessity of faith to unite, especially after an event of violent nature. They also draw in the discourse of private life, as they are basing their statements on their own experiences and beliefs. In relation to the case of the shooting, this interdiscursivity depicts the image that the faith of the American people is what will bring them through trying times.

5.4. Social Practice After analysing the broadcasts fragments as text and discursive practice, the focus of the third dimension turns to the contextualization of which the first and second dimension are part. First of all, the social practice analysis examines the relationship between the discursive practice of Fox and Friends and its order of discourse, which can further help to determine the complex dialectical relations between the discursive practices and social structures.

The interdiscursive blend of discourses that has been identified in Fox and Friends can be taken as a product of blending boundaries between several orders of discourse used within specific social fields – the orders of discourse of media, of the political system, and of ordinary private life. However, the discourses are distributed and regulated differently across the broadcasts in the two cases. Moreover, the programme articulates together the shifting configurations of these discourses, as well as a range of particular genres. It incorporates a less formal and casual style of everyday conversation into the serious political conversation, e.g.:

“(…) so many of my friends were saying ‘I’m not gonna go, I don’t feel safe’” (Appendix 2)

“(…) I do believe in the power of prayer, because two years ago, my little girl was born and that was after a lot of prayers and a great gift from God. I know you were born [looks over to host, Jillian Mele], today is your birthday, Happy Birthday! (…)” (Appendix 5)

“(…) there is no other place we would want to go other than church, because I’m there asking for forgiveness, I feel very close to Christ when I’m there (…)” (Appendix 7)

The anchors embody a conversational genre, and draw upon their own personal beliefs and experiences using a familiar and affective communication style. According to Fairclough, in this way, they “address mass audiences who are listening or watching in mainly domestic environments” (Fetzer and Lauerbach, 2007). The conversationalization of media discourse is an Anglo-American phenomenon, which is commonly interpreted as an appropriate discourse style for political talk shows (Ibid.). In the Fox and Friends programme, the conversational genre mixes with the common narrative and commentary genre of media. In both cases (the Sutherland Springs church shooting and the New York City truck attack), Fox and Friends reproduces the orders of discourse of media oriented to the viewing recipients. The conversational genre mixes with the common narrative and commentary genre of media.

The anchors report on the two events, and present stories related to the cases. The news programme also includes interviews, expert opinions, and editorial content. The communication events are mostly produced in the Fox News Channel studios in New York. Although the focus of the fragments is oriented on hard news, the content also includes references to ‘feel-good’ content presented above. In respect to the participant structure, three “anchors are conversationally interacting as a team” (Ibid.). Besides, the anchors often present their opinions by using categorical modalities. When presenting their interpretations by objective modalities, some viewers may understand them as facts. Jorgensen and Phillips state that the treatment is characteristic for mass media (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002).

In terms of the orders of discourse of political system, in addition to reporting on the two terror acts, the anchors politicize the attacks. In relation to the New York City truck attack with the Muslim perpetrator, the topic of immigration policies in the United States, and more specifically the Diversity Visa Lottery programme, is set as the conversation in each fragment. This specific policy is condemned by the presenters, experts - “our immigration policy is suicidal” (Appendix 4), as well as the president, whose tweet is brought up during the show:

“[reading a tweet by Donald Trump] We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get much tougher and smarter.” (Appendix 2).

The negative attitudes are also expressed towards the Democratic Party and its representatives, who are supposedly responsible for the lack of sufficient security in the country due to the Diversity Visa Lottery system – “This has become a political talking point and not reality, it’s

48 time to wake up to what’s going on” (Appendix 4). The speakers argue that the conversation about safety in the United States does not have to be “a Republican-Democratic thing” (Appendix 2), but at the same time, they conjecture that the election of Hillary Clinton (the Democratic nominee in the US presidential election in 2016) would have disastrous consequences implying that the terrorism in the US would get much worse:

“(…) If Hillary Clinton was in office, there would be tens of thousands of more un-vetted refugees coming to this country. So, as bad as this is, I think it could be worse.” (Appendix 3)

A politicization of the topic occurs also in the second case, where the perpetrator is an American with the white ethnic. The anchors remind that the POTUS took a lot of criticism for commenting on the New York City truck attack in a political manner, and defend Donald Trump on the grounds that the “former President Barack Obama actually weighed in and was political, just a number of hours after what happened he tweeted; [reads tweet] “May God also grant all of us the wisdom to ask what concrete steps we can take to reduce the violence and weaponry in our midst. (…)” (Appendix 5). They interpret Obama’s words as an encouragement to the debate over US gun policy. The gun-control laws are a repeating discourse in the second case, however, the speakers reject its relevance to the discussion by linking the extreme behaviour.

This leads to another important discourse that occurs in the Fox and Friends programme – the causes of radicalization of the perpetrators. Although the pre-attack behaviour of the perpetrators and their personalities are talked through in the two cases, the causes of radicalization are linked to different factors. In the case of Devin Patrick Kelley (the Sutherland Springs church shooting), the event is not narrated with the use of a lexical set related to terrorism. The causes of the perpetrator’s extreme behaviour are discussed only on the micro- level, i.e. individual level:

“This is a behavioural issue.” (Appendix 5)

“Right. It’s a mental health issue!” (Ibid.)

Once again, the anchors form their opinions basing on the POTUS’s comments related to the case – “The President (…) said it’s not about gun-control, this is about a deranged individual (…)” (Appendix 5). This interpretation corresponds to the term ‘lone-wolf’, often used by the media and politicians. In this case, the link between the perpetrator’s mental health issues and the causes of his radical behaviour are easily identified:

“(…) obviously this guy is not right in the head, in order to be able to do something like this and walk into a church and take the lives of 26 people, you have to be deranged.” (Ibid.).

In the case of Sayfullo Saipov (the NYC truck attack), the roots of his radicalization are also discussed on the micro-level:

“(…) he was always belligerent, (…) he would go in and argue about prices with the cashier and demands his own price (…)” (Appendix 1).

However, the anchors do not name this behavior as a mental health issue, but discuss the causes of his radicalization on the meso-level, generalizing the act on the grounds of his ethnicity and/or religious background:

“They’re being inspired by ISIS. They’re usually directed by a terrorist cell. They’re being inspired by radicals in a mosque. They’re not just lone wolves who decide on their own to commit an act of terror.” (Appendix 3)

Furthermore, the ‘us vs them’ discourse has been detected in the broadcast fragments, where ‘us’ is understood as the “American citizens” (Appendix 2), “our family” (Appendix 1), and the employees of Fox News Channel, who “share the same beliefs” and “feel very close to Christ” (Appendix 7). When it comes to ‘them’, the speakers use the pronoun ‘they’ in reference to the Muslims, immigrants and refugees, as well as terrorists interchangeably. In the NYC truck attack, the statement “They are at war with us and they’re not interested in politics, they’re only interested in death.” can be interpreted in multiple ways (Appendix 4). Although the discourse revolves around terrorism, the speaker referred to Muslim before. Therefore, it can be deduced that the pronoun ‘they’ pertains to the followers of Islam.

Secondly, the social practice also focuses on how the broadcasts are structured and related non- discursively, socially and culturally. Historically, Fox News has always had close ties to the Republican Party. As mentioned earlier on, most of the key individuals within the Fox News corporation have been supporting the Republicans and sharing many, if not all, of their political ideologies. On the other hand, the Republican Party, and particularly President Donald Trump, have been able to use Fox News as a platform for their politics. With this project, it is particularly relevant to look at Fox News’ general attitudes towards immigration and gun ownership, and as a news outlet that shares their ideologies with a right-wing party, it would make sense to assume that they are for a restrictive immigration policy and remain opposed to gun control legislation.

When linking the theory of moral panic to the third dimension of a critical discourse analysis, it can be relevant to look at the concept of hegemony. This concept covers the power relations between the dominant group and the receiving end, which, in this project, equals Fox News and their viewers. The general idea of hegemony is that the dominant group has the ability to influence their subordinates to acknowledge their views and beliefs. In other words, that would indicate that Fox News is using their position of superiority to translate their views and beliefs to their subordinates, ergo their viewers.

To apply the theory of moral panic to the analysis, it is, as previously stated, important to look at the five different elements that define moral panic. These elements are: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportion and volatility.

5.4.1. Case 1

When it comes to the matter of concern in relation to the coverage of the NYC truck attack, the criteria seem to be present. The hosts Kilmeade and Earhardt express their concern about the fact that the terrorist had been able to rent a truck and run over civilians. Not only that, they also stress that this was the eighth truck attack since July 2016, including seven other attacks across Europe. By saying that attacks like this needs to stop, and that it is not everybody’s right to move to the States, Kilmeade expresses his concern of future attacks happening, if more Muslim immigrants take residence in the US. The fragment ends with him saying: “American citizens’ security first, and there’s nothing wrong with that!” (Appendix 1). Here, he concludes that the matter at hand is the security of the nation and that that should be the main concern for everyone. He also implies that if there won’t be any changes in the immigrant policy in the nearest future, the safety and protection of citizens will be at stake, more than it has ever been. By accentuating this, he is part of creating a great deal of concern. It is important to note that it is not him alone that creates the concern, but it is his role as a representative of a right-wing media that is favoured by the president of the country.

In the broadcast, the Fox hosts and their friends are, as previously mentioned, create an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ situation when referring to the Muslim immigrants in the United States, and thusly demonstrating hostility towards this demographic. In addition to creating this ‘us’ versus ‘them’ situation, they are making further claims of Muslims being the enemy of the Americans, by stating that the Muslims’ only interest is to commit these acts of terrorism, and to be at war with the American societies and values. When they are claiming that the Muslims are at war with ‘us’, thusly the Americans, they are making ‘them’ out to be the antagonists, making the

‘us’ and ‘them’ a matter of respectable people versus disreputable people. Furthermore, they present the American people as a united entity, stating that the victims of the attack are “all of our family” (Appendix 1). In these words, they are implicitly stating that the perpetrator, and perhaps Muslims in general, pose a threat to their family, which would then emphasize that the Muslims are disreputable. The mentions of the US immigration policy also segue into verbal demonstrations of hostile attitudes towards immigrants, and in particular those with a Muslim background. Their negative approach to describing Muslim immigrants is evident in the way they state that America is not for everyone.

As for the criteria of consensus, the Fox and Friends broadcast, in relation to the New York truck attack, comprises a suitable example of the Fox News standpoint when it comes to immigration policy. They have a way of describing the Muslim terrorist as a ‘they’ or ‘them’, which then could translate into the idea, that all Muslims are terrorists. Furthermore, their way of depicting the actual event makes it seems like something that is happening currently, as opposed to it being a prior occurrence. They are making claims that “this is happening” (Appendix 1), and as their folk devils are Muslim terrorists, they present this particular group of people as a substantial threat to Americans. Subsequently, the anchors claim that the current US immigration policy is an existent threat to the United States. Although the actual number of immigrant Muslims is merely one percent of the total US population, they argue that the immigration laws pose a threat as it is too lenient, and that it allows for too many of these ‘folk devils’ to enter the country.

The way the speakers talk about the attack and terrorism in general can make it seem like more people are involved in the acts of terrorism than there actually are, this is where the disproportion criterion comes in. One example of it is when Kilmeade mentions the amount of truck attacks there have been the latest year, and then especially when he mocks people that might think it is an overreaction. Only one out of the eight attacks were committed in the U.S, but he still implies that the people who think that the chances of getting hit by a terrorist are low, are wrong. He is essentially saying that the chances are high and that can raise the level of concern, and make it excessive compared to how big the threat actually is. In that way he might be creating disproportion. Another example is this utterance from Earhardt: “This is happening where vehicles rolling over that are riding their bicycles along the highway on the bike path.” (Appendix 1). As mentioned in the text analysis, omitting the agent of the action makes it appear like it is a natural thing, which can make it sound like it happens more often than it actually does. Lastly, the example mentioned earlier in relation to hostility can also be looked at in

52 relation to disproportion. Bongino mentions that 200 million people have come to the U.S in the past years from predominantly Muslim countries, before going on to say that they are at war with us. He does not make a clear distinction between Muslims, refugees and immigrants, and in that way, he essentially implies that all of the 200 million people are to be feared. He is, together with the other hosts, reproducing the ideology that is present in statements made by U.S president Donald Trump, and also the republican political party in general. As is explained in the theory section, the degree of disproportion can be difficult to determine, but their statements are possibly helping create a sense that more people are involved in the amoral behaviour than there are.

Moving on the next aspect of moral panics, as mentioned earlier, one of the main theories of moral panic is the elite theory. In this case we have the media, more specifically Fox News (Fox and Friends), together with the republican political party making up the elite group. It can also be argued that there are elements from the interest-group theory at works, as the media can also be a part of those. Seeing as Fox News is a right-wing leaning media, they can be using their platform to push their own agenda, which in this case can be to strengthen the immigration laws. By connecting all immigrants to Muslims, and by making Muslims equal terrorism, they could be making it less appealing for people to welcome immigrants. It can also be a way for them to attract more voters to the republican party, as people might be less likely to vote for democratic politicians that have a less strict immigration policy. This can also be discussed in relation to Cohen’s idea that moral panics have a deeper underlying reason than at first glance.

5.4.2. Case 2

In the case of the white terrorist, the same procedure has been executed concerning the elements of a moral panic regarding terrorism. There seems to be little signs of a moral panic in this case, but other interesting findings have been made, which will be discussed in the next chapter of the project as it seems more fitting for the discussion.

In the fragments concerning the second case, the anchors focus on Devin Patrick Kelley’s background and his past. They discuss where he worked, and what other people from high school have said about him, even though he was 26 at the time of the attack, and therefore had been out of high school for some time. When the Fox and Friends speakers aren’t talking about him, the discourse turns into the discussion about gun policies, and express negative attitudes towards the gun-control. The anchors bring the perpetrator’s atheism into the conversation, and his condemning views on Christians. However, the correlation between these radical views and

53 the causes of his extreme behavior have not been mentioned. Although the speakers do not seem to be as outspoken about their hostility in this case, the Fox and Friends representatives do, to some extent, present an element of hostility in the broadcast. However, on the aspect of hostility, their showcasing does not appear to be directed towards the terrorist. On the contrary, they are presenting their viewers with hostility towards criminal gun owners in general. They stress that the problem is not the guns themselves, but the people who use them for deadly means. Therefore, they do not appear to be condemning the terrorist per se, but blaming his actions on his mental health. When it comes to concern and consensus, the Fox News representatives once again present the mental health and guns as their main focus point. There does not seem to be elements of concern when it comes to the terrorist as an individual, as they make it seem as though it is a rare occurrence that a ‘mentally deranged’ person commits such acts of violence. The concern they rise, however, is the fact that a mentally unstable man was able to acquire firearms, and by doing this, they are drawing the attention away from this single case, and thus, a new problem arises – the individual and the guns are not the problem, but the state of one’s mental health is. The portrayal of the Sutherland Springs shooting does not fulfil the criteria of disproportion. Unlike in the case of the New York truck attack, the message they convey to their viewers is that attacks by white American individuals are not a common occurrence. Their terminology, words such as ‘outcast’ and ‘deranged individual’, make it seem like a unique case, which is de facto quite far from the truth. Regarding the volatility, in the NYC truck attack case, it can be challenging to see, whether the coverage case is volatile. The reason for this is that it is not quite feasible to measure the effects of the attack from the one broadcast, or to measure for how big of an effect it can have for a certain amount time.

6. Discussion From the introduction till the analysis, this paper has delved into essential definitions and findings that are necessary for the aim of this project - that is to answer the problem formulation and the sub-questions. In order to analyse the two Fox and Friends broadcasts of the NYC truck attack and the Sutherland Springs church shooting, it has been crucial to define the terms ‘terrorism’ and radicalisation’ in order to prevent misconceptions of the meanings and relations. As stated in the literary review, the two terms are closely linked together, which is why they sometimes appear to be used interchangeably, although they are two distinctive happenings and endeavours. To recall the descriptions in the literary review – radicalisation does not inevitably lead to terrorism, but terrorism cannot occur without radicalisation. Nonetheless, radicalisation does often lead to terror. This is in case of violent radicalisation, which is when it is used for promotion of radicalised ideological and political positions to adapt current political and societal values because of individual’s extreme beliefs (info-radical.org, 2017).

Neither radicalisation nor terrorism have a universal definition, which has led to numerous explanations that are somewhat similar. One definition comes from the Department of Defense that describes terrorism as: “terrorism – the unlawful use of violence or threat of violence often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs, to install fear and coerce governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are usually political” (Dtic.mil, 2017). Thus, according to the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, terror attacks are understood as violence that are committed to create fear and pressure societies or governments for ideological, political or religious reasons. It should once again be noted that, although there is not a specific definition, the different definitions agree on the fact that attacks go beyond their victims, as terrorists are trying to create extensive fear to pursue their political/religious driven goals.

From this definition of terrorism and others alike, it is clear that the NYC truck attack was a case of terrorism. The reason for this is that Saipov had “left a suicide note pledging allegiance to ISIS, and investigators say he turned to radical ideology over the course of several years.” (Nordic.businessinsider.com, 2017). This means that Saipov was motivated by ideological, political and religious beliefs to create fear within the American society by attacking civilians. Consequently, he had achieved his goal by drawing the society’s attention onto himself and onto ISIS and their purpose. By doing this, terrorists such as Saipov manage to pressure the government. When it comes to the Sutherland Springs church shooting, the answer of whether it is a terror attack or not becomes a bit trickier, compared to the previous case. When the

55 shooting was investigated, officials said that it wasn’t being treated as a terrorist attack, and the leader of the San Antonio division of the FBI, Christopher Combs, said: “At this time we don’t have a terrorism investigation open” (Ibid.). This got a lot of criticism and when compared to the NYC truck attack, the question of why there is a difference between the two on whether they are a terrorist attack or not arose. Therefore, since the suspect’s political, religious and/or ideological motive determines whether an act can be considered as terrorism, the Sutherland Springs church shooting does not conform as a terrorist attack, as no signs of this were present (Ibid.). However, as mentioned earlier in the analysis, Kelley had expressed on social media that he had been interested in mass shootings (Jason Hanna and Holly Yan, 2017), and during the shooting he was seen wearing black, tactical gear (Mail Online, 2017). Moreover, former classmates of Kelley have also said that he talked “about how people who believe in God were stupid” (Ibid.). Therefore, it seems that Kelley had a negative attitude towards Christianity and its followers.

Even though the shooting is not necessarily seen as an act of terrorism, these findings and statements make it seem like Kelley had been radicalised. The reasoning for this is that Kelley’s ideologies and his dislike of religion seems to have taken over, which ended up resulting in the attack. Furthermore, in contradiction to the statements of officials and news media, this project approaches the church shooting as a terrorist attack. Since it meets the conditions of the mentioned description of violent radicalisation, it also meets the conditions of the cited description of terrorism, because once one commits a violent radicalised action, it counts as an act of terror.

The findings in the analytical section of this project could indicate that Fox News does in fact differentiate between terrorists based on both their ethnicity and their religious background. One of the most obvious differences in Fox News’ coverage of the two cases of terrorism, is the fact that only one of the cases, the New York City truck attack, is labelled as an act of terrorism. Although the Sutherland Springs church shooting is, by the definition worked by in this project, an act of terrorism, the Fox News representatives never mention that word in relation to Devin Kelley. Moreover, when describing the Muslim terrorist, the speakers initially ground his radicalisation on the micro-level, where the radicalisation is rooted in the individual himself. In the fragment 1, the Fox and Friends hosts are unfolding his ‘belligerent’ behaviour and claiming that he would often lose his temper, while following that up with the statement that perhaps something happened to him. This would imply that his level of radicalisation could have come down to identity issues, failed integration, etc. However, once they start listing what

56 caused Saipov to commit the act of terrorism, they describe his violent radicalisation on the meso-level, concluding that he was not acting on his own initiative, but that he was inspired by ISIS and prior terrorist attacks of the same nature.

On the contrary, when describing the white terrorist, Fox News is not explicitly stating that he was radicalised, nor do they state that he was a terrorist. However, from what can be gathered from the analysis and the terror-related definitions, his radicalisation is rooted exclusively in the micro-level. By declaring that he was an ‘outcast’, among other things, there is a reason to believe that Fox News boils the act of violence down to identity issues and alienation, along with moral outrage, which conforms to the idea of the micro-level of radicalization.

Furthermore, Fox News does not consider mass shootings by white terrorists a threat, but instead convey to their viewers that the Sutherland Springs shooting was a one-time occurrence. With the Muslim terrorist, their message is quite the contrary. They list a number of other attacks, carried out by individuals with a real or perceived Muslim background, and compare the New York City truck attack to those, thus creating the idea that this has happened before, and is likely to happen again. Statistics will prove, however, that the reality of the situation is quite the opposite. In fact, according to researchers from the Investigative Fund, from January of 2008 until the end of 2016, they were able to detect 115 cases of domestic terrorism, of which right-wing Americans were behind. Subsequently, they were able to detect 63 cases of Islamist domestic terrorism. Furthermore, their research showed that almost a third of the right-wing cases caused fatalities, whereas 13 percent of the Muslim cases included fatalities (Neiwert, 2017). These numbers can also be discussed in relation to the specific choices of wording used when the Fox News representatives are referring to the terrorists. During their broadcast on the NYC attack, they were predominantly using the terms ‘they’ and ‘them’, when referring to both Muslim immigrants and the Muslim terrorist. Whether or not this was done intentionally is irresolute, however, by seemingly merging the two together, they are blurring the line between immigrants and terrorists, thus possibly giving their audience the impression that all, or at least most, Muslims are subject to terrorism. Simultaneously, the broadcast of the white terrorist only showcases the use of ‘he’ when referring to the perpetrator. Their way of depicting him leaves no indication that his act was related to or inspired by any other individual or group. While we are not able to comment on whether his act of terrorism is related to an incident of the same nature, it can be argued that the Texas church shooting was inspired by a prior occurrence. As the statistics say, white terrorists were behind almost twice as many acts of terrorism than Muslims were (Neiwert, 2017).

With both of the cases, there is a sizeable element of politicizing involved, as they bring in immigration policies in the NYC case and gun control policies in the Texas case, and all of the political issues they present are attributed to the Democrats and the Obama administration. In the case of the church shooting, the political issue they are presenting is gun control, however, they are not blaming the lenient gun ownership regulations. The issue that arises in the Fox and Friends discourse, is the fact that a ‘mentally deranged’ individual was in possession of them, but they still make it seem as though there is no actual need for gun control. This could indicate that their belief is not that the guns are an issue, however, researchers have been able to determine that, out of a total of 1,301 fatalities due to terrorism, about 55 percent were attributed to firearms (Rapaport, 2017). With the NYC case, the anchors are politicising the conversation by bringing in immigration policies, stating several times that they are, in their current state, way too tolerant and admitting too many Muslim immigrants. The viewers of Fox News may then be of the impression that Muslim immigrants have a higher tendency to be or to become violently radicalised. However, the reality is that only one percent of perpetrators of domestic terrorism in the United States have come from the countries President Donald Trump listed on his March 6, 2016, travel ban for being sources of terrorists; Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen (Neiwert, 2017).

Once the strategies and discourses employed by Fox News have been exposed, it is possible to uncover the discursive patterns that construct the representations and perceptions of Muslims in a social context. Fairclough’s critical approach helps to create awareness of the potential interpretation of Fox and Friends’ narratives, and consequently, to gain an insight of the causes of misrepresentation of Muslims in the news/talk programme. By adopting the critical realist and social constructionist standpoints, the project recognises the effects of Fox News’ discourses as having an impact on the group of a society, in this case Muslims, who are oppressed by the hidden right-wing ideologies. The ‘critical’ aspect of the analysis reveals the semiotic elements that are pursued by Fox News to lead a society in a particular direction. In other words, the analysis shows how the fear towards Muslims is produced and maintained by reproduction of the orders of discourse that show them in a negative light.

Fox and Friends programme, as a communicative event, is a part of an intertextual chain as it is influenced by the historical events and the existing discourses in the media and politics. However, its discourse does not contribute to the historical change and development since the programme mainly reproduces already existing orders of discourse, instead of drawing on the discursive elements in new ways. As mentioned in the introduction, the idea that Muslims cause

58 a threat to the Western societies has been promulgated since the early 1980’s. Since the 9/11 attack, the concern regarding citizens’ safety has been on the rise. The proliferation of fear was driven by both the political rhetoric and media’s inculpating coverage on terrorism. Politicizing tragedies like the ones that happened in Sutherland Springs and New York City create a platform for both the politicians and the media to point out the limitations and imperfections of the law that could have enabled the terrorists to commit the attacks. However, while politicisation in the media is a way to address problems in a society, it can also contribute to the dissemination of particular ideologies. The objective of this report is to show how the two perpetrators have been represented by Fox News, how these representations contribute to the production and reproduction of ideological effects, and what social consequences these representations may cause. As mentioned before, when analysing the broadcasts fragments, it became clear that there are differences in the perpetrators’ portrayals. When commenting on the Sutherland Springs case, Fox and Friends’ anchors focused only on the micro-level of the potential causes of the perpetrator’s radicalism, and rejected the relevance of brining the topic of gun-control in the conversation. In the second case, the anchors connect the terrorist to the broader political and social representation, focusing on the micro- and meso-levels of perpetrator’s radicalisation roots, and pointing to the larger political issues like immigration policy. Besides, the presenters use the terrorist’s identity to create the distinction between ‘us’ as the Americans and Christians, and ‘them’ as foreigners and Muslims. Moreover, they blur the lines between the meanings of the terms ‘refugees’, ‘Muslims’, ‘immigrants’ by using them interchangeably, and most importantly, use these terms in the context of terrorism. Because of these differences in their rhetoric, Fox and Friends’ anchors contribute to the production and reproduction of misrepresentation of Muslims. Since the discourse can contribute to the construction of social identities and social relations, Fox and Friends contributes to the negative perception of Muslims as a threat to the US society and inflame the public concern.

The effects of this misrepresentation are examined by the use of Cohen’s theory. Both theories, critical discourse analysis and moral panic theory, agree that discourse is both constitutive and constituted. The concern of Muslims expressed by Fox News does not only contribute to producing and reproducing their cultural identity, but also reflects the already existing social structures and political rhetoric.

As shown in the analysis, the broadcast fragments from Fox and Friends contain elements that when put together, create a moral panic. It can however be discussed who or what the folk devil is in this case. As stated earlier, there are multiple examples of the generalisations that the hosts

59 make, based on the statements from President Trump that mix together immigrants, refugees and terrorists and say that they are Muslims. So instead of people only being afraid of terrorist attacks, members of terrorist organisations or radicalized groups, they are afraid of Muslims because the ideology that gets reproduced by the news channel Fox News, contributes to the construction of perception of Muslim communities “as a threat to societal values and interests” (Cohen, 2002). The fact that these different groups of people are mixed together can make it hard to point out any underlying reason behind the moral panic, which could be the topic of another project.

This stereotyping and generalisation that is present in the fragments and in the general ideology, fits into Cohen’s idea that states that in a moral panic, the media will group the folk devils together. In Cohen’s original study about Clacton, the folk devils were a small number of people, but in the case of this project the folk devils are Muslims. The speakers group Muslims together and say that they are all dangerous people, who all get radicalised when going to the mosque, and are therefore terrorists to be feared. They are creating and upholding Islamophobia by appointing Muslims as the folk devils in the case terrorism. The fact that the president and Fox News continues to uphold the ideology, may be the reason for the many attacks on Muslims that is present in the graph in the literary review of this project. As stated in the moral panic theory, one of the ways that concern about a specific group of people or a phenomenon can be seen, are hate-crimes. People might have taken it upon themselves to protect their country against ‘them’ that is created by Fox and Friends and the rhetoric of the Republicans. This is also seen in the speakers’ support of the idea that President Trump proposes. He says that the U.S should instate super-vetting to make it more difficult for immigrants to get into the country. This mirrors what happened in the Clacton incident. Calling for more security and stricter laws are, when connected with the other factors, clear signs of a moral panic, and by reproducing the discourse that says that most Muslim immigrants are dangerous and shouldn’t be let into the country, they are playing a role in constructing a panic.

Going back to the volatility aspect mentioned in the 3rd dimension of the analysis, as said it can not be determined based on the fragments in this project, as they are only from one point in time. However, the earlier mentioned hate-crime graph can help give an idea of how long Muslims have been seen as threats in society. Before 9/11, the amount of hate-crimes was low, but after the attack they sky-rocketed, which is a good example of volatility. Also, the fact that the hate-crimes have continued to rise and fall, is an example of the belief that a panic is usually

60 not sustainable over a long time, and that it will therefore flare up and quiet down multiple times.

It can also be discussed that Fox News might help construct a moral panic just by reporting on it. This project only looks at one news segment about the NYC truck attack from Fox and Friends, but as stated in the literary review, it is known that Muslim terrorist attacks get 4.5 times more news coverage than non-Muslim terrorists (Betus, Kearns and Lemieux, 2017). This can be pieced together with Cohen’s description of how a moral panic is expressed in the media. One of the ways is by “devoting more attention to a phenomenon among certain groups in which it is less common than those in which is more common.” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).

For the case of the white terrorist, it can be said that Fox News is not constructing a moral panic concerning either terrorism or mass-shootings in general. As stated in the analysis, there are few signs of moral panic present in the fragments. They are actually doing the opposite by making the case seem like a one-time occurrence, or something that does not happen often, despite the opposite thing being true. Fox News, as a right-wing leaning news media, is reproducing the ideology that is present in the gun-control discourse on their side of the political spectrum - that mass-shootings are not about the guns, but about the people who have guns, and the mental state of those individuals. If there were more evidence of a moral panic, then mentally ill people would perhaps be the folk devils. But the right-wing, represented by Fox and Friends and Donald Trump, has decided as an audience that there is nothing wrong with having guns in general. There is no moral panic because there is no folk-devil.

7. Conclusion Although it is difficult to examine the extents to which the media contributes in construction of the perception of particular minorities, the rise of Islamophobia in the United States is partially a product of the misrepresentations of Muslims by the mass media. The fear of terrorism and concern about safety of the American citizens has been growing ever since the 9/11 events, however, the idea that all Muslims cause a threat to the Western societies has been promoted by many politicians and journalist even before those attacks. It is important to note that this escalating rhetoric resonates mostly across the Republican field. Therefore, the project focuses on the media outlet that is the most popular among mostly and consistently conservative part of the American society.

One of the main objectives of this project is to determine how Fox News’ coverage of terrorism changes depending on the ethnicity and/or religious background of a perpetrator. The findings from the analysis show that Fox and Friends’ discursive practices differ when it comes to reporting and commenting on the two cases of terrorism – the New York City truck attack and the Sutherland Springs church shooting. The changes in discourse occur when the speakers:

• speak about the potential causes of perpetrators’ radicalization • politicize the events.

Moreover, by the use of pronouns, the speakers create the distinction between ‘us’ (Americans and Christians) and ‘them’, whereas the pronoun ‘them’ is used interchangeably with the terms ‘immigrants’, ‘refugees’, ‘Muslims’, and ‘terrorists’. The outcome of the lack of distinction between these terms consequences in the creation of distrust and misrepresentations of the Muslim people in the Fox and Friends programme. The project identifies Fox and Friends as a news/talk programme which plays a role in sustaining the social injustice, i.e. the harmful representation of Muslims in the media that contributes to the construction of fear towards Islam and its followers. More specifically, the project analyses the programme’s language use and addresses its impact on the society.

There is a dialectical relationship between the discursive practice of Fox and Friends and the social structures that mainly consists of the Republican representatives’ rhetoric and its followers. The ‘threat of Muslims’ discourse is both constitutive, since Fox and Friends produces and reproduces already existing orders of discourse and ideologies, as well as it is constituted, since it reflects the political landscape and what is widely discussed by the US society. The consequences of this relationship result not only in the negative attitudes towards

Muslim communities, but also in the encouragement of support for policies that can be harmful for these groups (e.g. US travel ban). The reproduction of the Republicans’ and president’s rhetoric maintain the unequal power relations, but most importantly, contribute to the widespread fear - the moral panic. Although in Cohen’s original theory, the moral panic was a result of media’s exaggeration, in the case of Islamophobia, the moral panic is a result of misrepresentation and confusion. The folk devils are the product of media’s, including Fox News, biased interpretation of the events and its representation of the Muslim perpetrators. The consequence of the Fox and Friends drawing on these existing orders of discourse is that the change in representation of Muslims is limited by the ongoing power relations. Therefore, the investigation of the relationship between perception of Muslims and the media is still extremely relevant today.

8. Bibliography

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