Anouk van Drunen

Anouk van Drunen has started the 1st of December with the project ‘Framing integration and Islam’. The project will study media frames of Islam and integration in the Netherlands. The effect of different media frames on anti-immigrant attitudes as well as voting preferences for extreme right-wing parties are studied next. Anouk has finished the research master in Communication Science in October 2008. Her thesis was about the effect of media and political attitudes on local political participation, focusing on the similarities/differences of migrants and native Dutch.

Current research
Between November 2010 and April 2011 a four wave panel survey was performed among the Dutch population. Currently newspaper coverage of the topic Muslims from the same time span is being studied. In September 2011 the first results will be presented during the 2011 WAPOR conference in Amsterdam.

Previous research
In 2009 a survey was performed among the Dutch population. The results from this survey are discussed shortly.

A survey-embedded experiment was performed. The perception of different types of threats (cultural, economic, safety) were studied in this experiment. It was tested whether threats were more entwined when a threat was associated with Muslims or immigrants as a cause. When the media often associate certain social groups with threats, this could have an effect on public opinion about those groups. Indeed it was found that Dutch non-Muslims more often experience various threats simultaneously when the threats are associated with Muslims as opposed to when they are not. The same effect was found for immigrants, however the effect for Muslims was significantly stronger.

Furthermore, Dutch people were asked to describe the characteristics of a Muslim (open-ended question). It was analyzed to what extent certain media frames from literature were represented in audience frames. On top of that, audience frames were defined and empirically measured. The results show that the media frames we tested were represented in audience frames only to a limited extent. Based on the information in respondents answered, audience frames were developed. Four audience frames were found: a Problem frame, an Islam frame, a Cultural out-group frame and an Origin out-group frame.

It seems to be the case that Dutch people most often define Muslims base don their religion. At the same time, Muslims are defined in terms of problems regarding integration and religion for which they are often held responsible. Furthermore, Muslims are defined as different, a social group that is not similar to Dutch people (or Europeans or western people) based on either their origin or their culture.

This study has shown that current media framing research is not in line with an audience perspective. Literature regarding media coverage of out-groups does show some common ground with the audience frames that were found. Combining a qualitative method, an inductive and deductive content analysis and a quantitative cluster analysis has not been previously done in this way in framing studies. This study also has implications for the integration of Muslims into the Dutch, or western society, and how Muslims and Dutch people can ‘co-exist’. It might be a problem that Dutch people mainly define Muslims as a separate, possibly problematic, part of the society.

Conference papers

• Drunen, A.S. van (2010). ‘Audience Frames: The Missing Link’. Paper presented at the ‘Etmaal voor de Communicatiewetenschap’ 24 and 25 January 2011.

• Drunen, A.S. van & Boomgaarden, H., Vliegenthart, R. & De Vreese, C.H. (2010). ‘Feeling Threatened by Muslims or Immigrants? How Personal Contacts Moderate the Effect of Religiously Associated Media Threat Frames (RATF) on Threat Perceptions’. Paper presented at the ‘Annual Conference of the World Association of Public Opinion Research’ 11-13 May 2010, Chicago, USA.

• Drunen, A.S. van & Boomgaarden, H., Vliegenthart, R. & De Vreese, C.H. (2010). ‘Feeling Threatened by Muslims or Immigrants? How Personal Contacts Moderate the Effect of Religiously Associated Media Threat Frames (RATF) on Threat Perceptions’. Paper presented at the ‘Etmaal voor de Communicatiewetenschap’ 4 and 5 February 2010.

• Drunen, A.S. van & Vliegenthart, R. (2009). ‘Local political participation of migrants and natives in Amsterdam; the effect of news media and political attitudes’. Paper presented at the ‘Etmaal voor de Communicatiewetenschap’ 12 and 13 February 2009.