I gave in my final year project today, which was a dissertation. What a relief. I did have the option of creating a 'media product' like a magazine, film or website but i decided to stay 'safe' and play the dissertation card.
It's called "The Islamic Threat? Misrepresentations of Muslims in the Anglo-American News Media." At first i wasn't really keen on this idea mainly because i thought it was a cliche topic which was probably done so many times over. I asked my supervisor who told me, "Your good at researching this subject and its probably best to stay safe with a topic you know and like." I went along with his advice, since he did have a point. What made this dissertation easier was because i had done previous research on the same topic in my first year at university which literally took off half of my work load. I knew which books to get, who to talk to, and i had some contacts whom i could already go an interview.
I eventually found out that not many people had actually done that much work on the topic, expect for a lecturer and academic, named Elizabeth Poole. The thought of this just spurred me on to do as much as i could for my dissertation.
I looked into the recent violence in Luton which had erupted since the Luton anti-war protest and the ripple effect it created in the aftermath. I then started to question the way Muslims were represented in these chain of events and found that the Anglo-American news media were as if constantly waiting for the next event which would spark off violence. Obviously the news media cannot avoid things which create controversy and sensationalism but the amount of coverage they gave these incidents compared to other more newsworthy incidents set the precedent of where i would take the paper.
The results of the paper are set to come out in the beginning of July. I'm hoping for a good grade but this is all down to the will of Allah.
