The Social Media Response by Muslim American Youth to Post-9/11 Racial/Religious Profiling

• In Event: 262 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. State Control and Religious Resistance

Abstract

There has been considerable scholarly research conducted to understand the effects that 9/11 has had on Arab and Muslim Americans as a whole, but there has been little focus on Arab and Muslim American youth. Nonetheless, this group has adopted social media as a major venue to inform other Americans about their religion and culture and use YouTube and Twitter to conduct social experiments, narrate first-person accounts, promote awareness, and engage in hash-tag activism. To examine this new medium of cross-cultural dialogue we conduct content media analysis of popular YouTube videos and viewer comments to analyze Arab and Muslim American youth’s social media presence. The objective of this study is to explore how Arab and Muslim American youth respond to the inaccurate representations of Arab and Muslim culture in post-9/11 America. We examine five major themes: 1) mainstream media linking fear, crime, and terrorism to Arabs and Muslims, 2) the significance of physical markers associated with Arabs and Muslims, 3) America’s practice of religious tolerance rather than religious acceptance of Islam, 4) notable political action and activism among Muslim young adults, and 5) the changing conceptualization of assimilation as it applies to Muslims in American society. We then discuss the implications of youth social media counter-narratives as challenging mainstream media representations.

Authors

• Pallavi Dasari, Northeastern University

• Mindelyn R. Buford, Northeastern University