Religious Freedom & Minorities: The Consequences of Media Focus
William Noseworthy
Associate Lecturer in the History Department
Mar. 16, 2018
William Noseworthy is a recent Ph.D. and an Associate Lecturer in the Department of History. His research examines the relationships between religious minorities and the modern state in the Gulf of Thailand Zone, which inspired his talk on the representation of Muslims in Vietnamese and English language media. The low degree of freedom of expression in Vietnam has lead to the proliferation of positive stories about religious leaders, festivals, and practitioners. In English-speaking countries Islamophobic sentiments and articles that bring up Islamophobia are more common, accounting for the majority of articles in Noseworthy’s internet searches. The talk was followed by a discussion about what factors journalists and scholars should consider when working together to improve popular coverage of religious minorities.