Women in general have been marginalized and represented with all sorts
of images in the media. Specifically, when it comes to how muslim women
are pictured especially in the western media, there have been different
portrayals that researchers have come across during their multitudes of
research studies. The present study is another addition to the already
available literature on how muslim women are portrayed in the western
media by content analyzing the portrayals in the New York times and the
Guardian of the United Kingdom. In particular, the study seeks to
examine the ways in which Muslim Women are portrayed in the New York
Times and the Guardian's news coverage as well as determining the frames
that the two news organizations use in portraying Muslim women in
coverage of their news stories regarding their affairs. The study
adopted a qualitative content analysis and uses the framing theory to
guide the discovery of the findings. 49 stories portraying muslim women
in the different ways were discovered after perusing through the two
online news organizations. The findings of the study indicate that
muslim women in the two sampled news media are portrayed as terrorists
specifically because of their dress code where on several occasions the
news organizations refer to them as Al-Qaida's and extremists in the way
they practice their religion. Therefore, the major portrayal of muslim
women lies on the negative aspects that are reported in the
organization's media stories. In addition, among the dominant themes in
the two news media regarding the way the frame their stories while
reporting on muslim women include being financially oppressed,
terrorists, extremists, un educated, house wives and sexual objects for
men. In the end, framing theory is also supported in the study.