Books and publications

Index / Activities / Books and publications / First Report by the Islamophobia in the Media Observatory 

First Report by the Islamophobia in the Media Observatory 

October 09, 20187:00 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Alcalá, 62). 7:00 p.m. Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
In Spanish.

Casa Árabe has organized the presentation of this report, which provides information on the results of this analysis of the way in which the media and journalism professionals cover information on Islam and Muslim communities.

Taking part in the event are Pedro Rojo, the President of the Al Fanar Foundation for Arab Knowledge and the report’s co-author; Felipe Sahagún, a journalist and professor of International Relations at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Aurora Ali, the spokesperson of the Muslim Association for Human Rights; Lurdes Vidal, director of the Arab World and Mediterranean Area at IEMed and a co-director of the Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media, and Gabriela Sánchez, coordinator of the Human Rights section of eldiario.es. The event will be presented by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s International Politics Coordinator.

The media are known as the “fourth branch of power.” They play a basic role in forming public opinion and in the population’s imaginary. In Spain, according to the reports issued by the Citizen Platform Against Islamophobia, from 2014 to 2017 there was a very significant increase in the number of Islamophobic episodes, which rose from 49 to 546 (nearly 1,200%). These figures gave rise to an initiative which, in 2017, proposed a thorough analysis of how information on Islam and Muslim communities is covered in the Spanish media. This institution is known as the Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media and is directed by the Al Fanar Foundation for Arab Knowledge (Madrid) and the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) (Barcelona) with the support of four public institutions: the Three Cultures of the Mediterranean Foundation (Seville), Casa Árabe (Madrid-Cordoba) and  the Euro-Arab Foundation (Granada), to which we have added in the year of 2018 the Mare Nostrum Campus of Excellence (University of Murcia). 

The event will present the results of their first report, including such information as the fact that opinion articles are more Islamophobic than information articles, and that 60% of the news items analyzed in 2017 were Islamophobic. These and other conclusions will be debated with professionals from the media.

Presentation information sheet
First Report by the Islamophobia in the Media Observatory