Muslim audiences in Ireland: Perspectives from below on racialized media representation and their impact

Based on fieldwork undertaken with Muslim communities in Dublin, Ireland, this article adds new insights on media reportage as received by Muslim audiences. Utilising agenda setting theory, we evidence how dominant representations of otherness are constructed and received. Participants reveal their perspectives on the perceived dominant discourses of racialised media representations of Muslimness and Islam, and their impacts on both Muslim and non-Muslim communities. While focussing on the ‘media' writ large, this article concludes with original insights on online hate and harassment and how Muslim audiences in Ireland, like elsewhere, receive and are subjected to online anti-Muslim hostility that is replete with, and legitimised, by dominant racialised representations of ‘Muslim as Other', underscoring the relationship between ‘old' and ‘new’ media.