Research Methods for Media Activism Final Presentation

Ateqah Khaki // The New School // May 2013

Over the course of this semester, I

have been exploring one central

question: how can digital and

social media be leveraged to

combat Islamophobia in America?

Why this topic?

● Over a decade after 9/11, Muslims in America continue to face more hostility, discrimination and bigotry than almost any other social group in the United States.

● Although prejudice toward minorities has generally declined in recent decades, Muslims are seen through a double lens as both religious and cultural minorities.

● In others words: it is not yet clear that Americans truly accept Muslims as a part of the great American “melting pot.”

Much written about the small but persistent number of interest groups that have launched a strategic offensive against Islam.

These groups loudly propagate a barbaric, inaccurate and dangerous view of Arabs and Muslims, often using current events, the media and university contexts to assert that Islamic “jihadists” have declared war on America, Israel and the West.

The Opposition

Public Opinion Research

● A 2011 public opinion poll found that nearly half of Americans are uncomfortable with a woman wearing a burqa, a mosque being built in their neighborhood or Muslim men praying at an airport.

● Although a majority of respondents agreed that religious diversity is a foundational American value, nearly 50% of those surveyed said that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with American values.

● A 2010 TIME magazine poll found that 62% of Americans say that they do not personally know a Muslim American.

● However, research also indicates that knowing a Muslim has a strong, positive effect on attitudes.

An opportunity for engagement?

● If knowing a Muslim in real life has a strong positive influence on opinions regarding Muslims in America generally, can that interaction and the positive impact that it has be established online?

● In other words, can we create a digital space for non-Muslim Americans to get better acquainted with their fellow citizens who are Muslim?

This semester....

Within the context of my "Research Methods for Media Activism" course, I have been working on discrete research projects related to this idea.

My research has included: a situational analysis, a literature search, textual analysis, archival research, an interview, ethnographic research, a survey, data visualization...

...and a focus group!

The Focus Group

● For my final project of the semester, I organized a focus group with a small group of Muslim youth activists affiliated with the Arab American Association of New York (AAANY).

● The main purpose of this focus group was to present my research and findings to a group representing one of the main target audiences for my project -- Muslim youth -- and to have a conversation about their reactions, questions, thoughts and ideas.

● Click here to see the presentation I used to structure our conversation.

● Click here to read a (very rough!) transcription.

Focus Group: Getting Acquainted

The focus group had six participants in total. In order to get better acquainted, I asked the participants to introduce themselves by answering four questions:

● What is your name?

● What are the places you call home?

● How do you spend your days?

● Why are you involved with AAANY?

Click here to hear their responses on SoundCloud.

Meet the Focus Group!● Sarah, a high school senior who calls Brooklyn and Morocco "home" ● Sarah A., a high school senior who calls Brooklyn and Alexandria, Egypt

"home"● Rama, a high school sophomore who calls Brooklyn, and Damascus, Syria

"home"● Aiysha, a part-time grad student and part-time organizer at AAANY who calls

Lahore, Pakistan and Marine Park, Brooklyn "home"● Yasmina, a junior in high school● Nancy, a high school senior and AAANY intern who calls Queens &

Bangladesh "home"

From left to right Sarah, Sarah A., Yasmina pictured above. (Some people didn't want to be photographed!)

Focus Group: What We Talked About

The image above is the slide I used to outline our conversation. Given the time constraint (an hour and a half) and the flow of conversation, we spent most of our time discussing the top three bullets.

The Focus Group: What I Learned

Due to time constraints and the flow of conversation, we spent most of our time talking about the current state of public opinion with regard to Muslims and what it's like being a Muslim in NYC today. Some of the most interesting conversation occurred around these topics:

● National identity vs. religious identity

● Dealing with stereotypes and ignorance

● Diversity within Muslim communities

● "The American Dream"

● Islam manifest in daily life

● Social Media

National Identity vs. Religious Identity

● In terms of identity, most of the focus group participants placed a greater emphasis/ more openly identify with their family's country of origin rather than religion. ○ Yasmina: "The country I am from is more important....comes up

more than the idea of being Muslim."

○ Sarah: "If you go into a large group of people, you don't say, 'Hi, I'm Muslim!'... It's just not natural. You go, 'Hi, I'm a high school student,' or 'I'm Moroccan'..."

○ Nancy: “I read an article by Audre Lorde about multi-layered identities, and I can relate to that because when I introduce myself I don’t same I’m Muslim right off the bat, unless I'm talking to a largely Muslim audience, or when I'm talking to my Bengali friends... everyone knows, it’s an unspoken thing. I'm Bengali, you're Bengali. So it’s all about the layers of identity."

Dealing With Stereotypes & Ignorance

● With regard to both national identity and religious identity, most participants indicated that they've encountered stereotypes and ignorant comments.○ Sarah A: "I swear, after they know you’re Muslim, they say, 'Are

you allowed to have four wives?' If I say that I'm Egyptian, they say, 'Do you live in the pyramids, did you ride a camel to school?' and if I say I never rode a camel, they say, 'No, you're lying.'"

○ Yasmina: "Back in junior high school, this kid thought I owned a castle, and had all this gold. I think that kind of stems from the fact -- I've noticed in school, you take all this world history, they always teach you these places as 'ancient'… the ancient Indian civilizations, the ancient Egyptians… but they don't really get to the more recent… you know, they've evolved… I grew up in a city… I was born in place that doesn't look all that much different from New York."

Diversity Within Muslim Communities

● All of the participants agreed that there is much diversity within Muslim communities, both "back home" and especially here in America.

● Many participants lamented at having to "explain" Islam, especially the hijab.○ Sarah A.: "Someone asked me just yesterday, 'Why don't you

wear the hijab? Doesn't your mom? Don't your friends?' I don't know what to say. I don't want to answer."

○ Yasmina: "People have this notion of what a Muslim is supposed to look like… I don't wear hijab, and people, they go, 'Oh but you don't wear...' (gestures hand in circular motion around face) – they go like this. I'll be like, 'Yeah my mom wears it, but I don't.' And then they want to know, why? Sometimes I think it comes from not knowing, but sometimes I think they are doing it to just bother you."

"The American Dream"● We had a great discussion around the pursuit of the

American Dream. Many of the participants spoke about their own immigration stories. ○ Sarah: "That is why people come to America. We all come here

to establish a future and to live the American dream."

○ Yasmina: "The campaign you're working on… I think it should be more about Muslims have integrated, they are not so different from everyone else. You know how we have the idea of the American Dream…… [Through AAANY], I work with these kids from Yemen, Egypt, Palestine, their parents come because of this idea of the American Dream. They might come from poverty, or a war zone… but they come because they want to provide a better life for their kids. They bring them here. These kids, they go to school with other American kids, they develop the idea of the American Dream. That is a unifier regardless of your religion or background."

Islam Manifest in Daily Life

● We had a great conversation about the way Islam manifests itself into our daily lives. Many participants would recite a prayer before certain activities, like exams or meals, and also integrated "Islamic terminology" into their daily vocabulary. Charity was another big topic discussed: ○ Yasmina: "Charity. I had a friend once who asked me, 'Why do

you do it?' I had to explain to her that it's kind of part of my religion. She said, 'Oh my parents never taught me that.'"

○ Umema: "My brother will go to the mosque to pray juma without his phone, but never without money to go put in the mosque. It’s just a natural thing. Like wearing clothes. One day, I was at home with my friend, my brother was going to juma, I asked him to take my money too. And I had to explain it to my friend."

Social MediaMost of the youth do use social media (predominantly Facebook) mostly to keep in touch with friends and family (both near and far). However, there was a lot of different feelings about identifying as Muslim online.

Some of the youth were reluctant to "come out" as Muslim, although they'd engage the topic if it came up organically or in the context of other issues (such as the conflict in Syria, Israel/Palestine, etc). On the other hand, one participant identified themselves as "Muslim and proud" on Facebook.

Everyone agreed social media was a fertile ground to sow some of the seeds I have been thinking about with regard to combating Islamophobia.

Major Focus Group Takeaways● Even in a city diverse as New York, high school students will

likely still encounter stereotypes and ignorance. Dealing with this ignorance and "explaining" can be burdensome.

● National identity sometimes trumps Muslim identity.○ Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that

participants -- sophomores, juniors and seniors in high school -- have literally grown up in post-9/11 America. Even though conceptually they understand (even mentioning in some of their comments) that, like other waves of past discrimination (such as Japanese internment) Muslims are one of the groups being unfairly targeted today, there may be an element of internalized Islamophobia at play.

● "American Dream" stories and often unnoticed manifestations of Islam in daily life are topics worth further exploring within the context of my project.

Next Steps● Continue to share my research and preliminary findings and seek

input from friends, allies and others engaged on this issue.

● Extend my work from this course into the summer, when I will be taking "Social Media Design & Management" with Brian McCormick. I intend to use the course as a vehicle to further develop (and possibly even launch) "Muslim Like Me" as a social media campaign.

● Extend my work from this course into the fall when I will be taking documentary and design production courses. I imagine much of my course work will include creating examples of the kind of media I envision for a further-down-the-road transmedia storytelling project.

● Extend my work from this course into the fall semester, when I will begin the thesis process. Currently, I intend to write a thesis about the use digital and social media in combating Islamophobia in the U.S.

ReflectionsI'm really pleased that I pursued the focus group as my final research project for the semester. It was immensely useful to discuss some of these ideas with a group that represents one of the main audiences that I hope to engage through my project as it unfolds. Although the group was small and not the most diverse in terms of geography, gender or age, their insights served as valuable demographic research for me at this stage, and will be especially useful as I begin concretely developing and implementing a campaign. All of the participants (and the organizer) were very eager to keep in touch about this project, as well.

While I initially thought I'd spend more time getting their reaction to existing media campaigns, I think it was quite productive to have a conversation about the public opinion research as well as personal experiences. It was an especially important reminder for me that there are so many different versions of "the way things are."

Conclusions (1/2)As individuals, our identities are personal, nuanced and negotiated. Talking about "who we are" is something that each human being will do differently, whether online or offline.

The focus group also reinforced my instinct that "explaining Islam" is burdensome on Muslims, both because it can force public something private, but also because there exists so much diversity within Muslim communities. There isn't one way of "being Muslim."

However, much like my own undergraduate research and other studies suggest: regardless of their place of birth, Muslim youth who have grown up in the U.S. feel "American."

These youth also have distinct practices and tendencies in their daily life that are a result of being Muslim.

Conclusions (2/2)I believe there is potential for an effort to engage notions of what it means (or looks like) to be both American and Muslim. Such an effort might serve the dual purposes of "demystifying Muslims" (by depicting them as ordinary old people), and making connections between "being American" and "being Muslim" to combat the notion that these two identities are incompatible.

The focus group, my other assignments from the semester, and the current state of events (especially in light of the Boston bombing) reaffirm for me that there is a need, audience and utility for a project like mine.

This course and each assignment I have completed has been extremely useful in moving my ideas from the brainstorm to research/testing phase, as well as dusting off my research approaches and skills.

Thank You!

Thank you all for all of your excellent input, ideas and feedback this semester. It has been invaluable.

I have also learned so much from observing the way that you each have approached your own activism and research interests from week to week.

Wishing you all the best with your future endeavors!

If you'd like to keep in touch, feel free to connect by email, on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.