I am collecting data about #islamophobia to see how people in America feel about current Islamic issues.
I chose this hashtag because there is a lot going on in the country in relation to what is going on in the Middle East. I have also taken a lot of classes at Trinity about the Middle East which is another reason why this particular topic interests me. People in America have mixed feelings about the Middle East so I want to see how people express their views on Twitter. With Donald Trump as President and his specific views on people of the Islamic religion, I think there will be a lot of data on this topic.
I did not really have very many expectations about my hashtag. I have noticed that there are a lot of people who were retweeting a tweet about how terrorism by muslim only accounts for 0.33% of deaths in America. “@fayatih: Terrorism by Muslims makes up 0.33% of all murders In US. #Islamophobia #factsmatter #Fact #Truth https://t.co/D”. My first impression with the data is that most people are saying good things about Islam, Muslims and the religion as a whole. “@MelaniePark06 Islam is religion of peace. Bad Muslims are the one who made it look violent or fake Muslims i may say. #Islamophobia #Trump #NoBanNoWall”. There were many tweets in support for getting rid of Trumps ban. I also noticed that this is not just an issue in America, many people from other countries are weighing in as well. The majority of the tweets I saw were in support of the Muslim people and actually anti-Islamophobia. I found this interesting because it is often portrayed in the news that people are Islamophobic.
When I went to search new articles for my hashtag in the last week, I was only able to find two articles. One that was posted CBC news and the other which was in Spanish. I found it interesting with what is currently going on that there were so few articles on the issue. The one article from CBC talked about the recent attack on a Quebec mosque and how the people in Waterloo are afraid of an attack on them. The article also discusses how people on Twitter are showing their support for Muslims. This is something I also found when looking at my data for the hash tag. I was unable to read the article in Spanish and I was not able to find a translated version so I did not read the second article that came up with my hashtag. When I looked at the articles related to the topic of Islamophobia without the # there were far more articles. The Guardian wrote an article earlier this week in relation to Trump’s Muslim Ban. The article discusses how this issue of Islamophobia is not a new fear but that it is now coming to its peak. The article discusses how there should be support for Muslim and while it is nice to see the support from people, the support should have started years ago. This Guardian article shows the support for Muslim and how they think Islamophobia is bad. The second article I found came from The Huffington Post. This article is about how Trump has paid little to no attention to the Muslim hate crimes. The fact that the President has chosen not to acknowledge these horrible crimes is showing how little he regards the Muslim Americans. This article talks much about how there should be support for Muslim’s. Trump is only furthering the Islamophobia which his new bans. A lot of the data and article’s found in Google News show how many people are in support of Muslims and disagree with Trump’s Muslim Ban.
When I went to Google News and searched my hashtag from 2006 there was not a single article. I found this really interesting because Islamophobia is not a new thing. People have been afraid of Muslims since the 9/11 attacks and so I would have thought there would have been at least one article. I also find it strange because so much of the news we see today pertains to issues with Muslims. I do not really think that the lack of article’s from 2006 changes my view on my data because for the past year, if not longer, Islamophobia has been everywhere. This is clearly an issue that is current and going on in the news.
“Data Scraping” is so new and interesting to me. The idea that at the click of a button you can have all of this data at your fingertips. Looking into people’s tweet, in my opinion, makes the issue more personal and how people interact on this issue. Collecting data through twitter also adds a liveliness to issue. Twitter always for people to share their feelings in a more personal way and can express their true emotion. I feel like looking at twitter can change the way you look at an issue because it allows for another window. Data scraping is a really cool way to do social research because it gives you a look into the way society relates with the issue. I feel like I am collecting live data but that the live data is connecting to the liveliness of the issue. There are so many tweets that come in a minute and while only a few of them may have to do with my issue there are still a lot of tweets. I think it would be hard to collect twitter data and not assume you are connecting to the liveliness of the issue just because there are so many people commenting on the issue in such a personal way and they can share these feelings at any moment.
Work Cited:
“Al Menos seis muertos y varios heridos en un atentado terrorista contra una mezquita de Canada.” 20 Minutos, January 30, 2017. Accessed February 3, 2017. http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/2946464/0/muertos-mezquita-quebec-canada-trudeau/.
Bueckert, Kate, and Joe Pavia. “Muslims in Waterloo region feel safe, but still have safety concerns.” CBCNEWS, January 30, 2017. Accessed February 3, 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/quebec-mosque-shooting-kitchener-waterloo-stratford-muslim-reaction-1.3958768.
Malik, Nesrine. “Suddenly, Muslims are America’s pariahs.” The Guardian, January 29, 2017. Accessed February 3, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/29/muslims-america-untouchables-donald-trump-ban-islamophobia.
Marres, Noortje, and Esther Weltevrede. 2013. “Scraping the Social?” Journal of Cultural Economy 6 (3): 313–35.
Obeidallah, Dean. “Trump’s Disregard For Islamophobic Hate Crimes Shows He Cares Little About Muslim American Lives.” The Huffington Post, February 2, 2017. Accessed February 2017. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-islamophobia-muslim-americans_us_589347b9e4b0af07cb6bc406.
I think it is great that you have taken a lot of classes on the Middle East at Trinity and would therefore like to broaden your knowledge by examining the issue from a different perspective. The information you have found and will find through data scraping may be more applicable and informative of the present day issues in todays world compared to what you may learn in class. I am intrigued to see that the article in the Guardian predicts that Islamophobia is at its peak today, but was not prevalent in the news in 2006, even though the period of time was post 9/11 attack. You may want to consider searching “anti-islam” during the same 2006 time period to see if you can find more news articles.
I agree that Twitter is a useful source for a topic of interest because of the personality and liveliness each tweet has. In my research, I also noticed a sense of true emotion expressed through the tweets regarding my issue, #WhyIMarch, showing that individual people relate to the topic and want their voices to be heard. By reading your post and learning about the number of tweets who use #islamophobia but are actually anti-islamophobia, I am intrigued to look more closely at my data and analyze how many of the tweets are actually protesting against women’s rights while using #WhyIMarch.
I thought that this was a very interesting post Caroline! There is so much going on in the middle east right now, especially with the election of Donald Trump and his new immigration ban. I think that one of the fascinating things about your topic is that you have already taken a lot of classes on the Middle East during your time at Trinity, so not only do you already have some knowledge about this topic, you can 1) you can gain more insight on this topic through the perspective of people throughout this world. We live in a world today where people misunderstand the religion of Islam, and I’ve seen many awful videos on Facebook and Instagram of muslims getting kicked off planes and treating muslims poorly, simply because people are frightened to sit next them or be around them. I thought it was very interesting that the article from the Huffington Post stated that President Trump hasn’t really acknowledged all the hate crimes towards muslim- Americans and agree that there should be more of a support system for them. I was pretty surprised that you didn’t find anything about islamophobia in 2006, especially because it was post 9/11 and during a brutal war in the middle east that affected many muslims in America. Maybe try searching “Muslims in America” or “Islam in America”. This post made me think about my hashtag, #Obamacare, because many people on twitter are expressing their voice about the topic, and I feel that both our topics are affecting millions of people in America. Your post has made me understand that people are coming to twitter to have their voices heard in hopes of people realizing that islamophobia or repealing Obamacare is wrong. Something I want to do with my hashtag is gain a better understanding of the two different perspectives (repealing Obamacare or keeping Obamacare) that people in this country are tweeting about.