6.1 Stage 1: Analysis of Written Text Through Keywords

We began the analysis by obtaining the 10 strongest keywords (those with the highest log-likelihood scores) from each newspaper. In WordSmith’s default settings, XML mark-up (i.e. anything which begins with < and ends with >) is ignored, so the frequency lists we created were derived only from the written text in the corpus, not the image tags.

As noted in the previous section, each keyword was examined through consideration of its collocates and concordance lines. (See Baker Reference Baker2023b for details of how this kind of analysis is carried out.) The main questions we tried to bear in mind while conducting these analyses were: (1) what was the function of the keyword (typically) in that newspaper, or what kind of effect did it have in terms, for example, of semantic meaning, evaluation or discourse function? and (2) how did this keyword specifically contribute towards representation of Muslims or Islam? Different keywords called for different kinds of analytical foci. For instance, nouns and proper nouns relating to people or countries could be analysed in terms of social actor representation: what kinds of actions they were shown to be carrying out; what actions were done to them; whether they were evaluated positively or negatively; and, in terms of perspective, how much space was given to them to express their views. Adjective keywords were examined in order to ascertain what they were describing and the extent to which they were used in positive or negative evaluations, while verbs were also linked to social actors. Pronoun keywords were considered in terms of author–reader relationships and gender representation. We also tried to make links between keywords, particularly if they were used in similar ways or collocated with one another. Table 3 shows the top 10 positive and negative keywords for each newspaper, ordered by keyness score. The positive keyness scores range from 576.55 to 42.40 while the negative keyness scores range from −420.37 to −7.51.

We began the analysis with a consideration of the Daily Mail’s top 10 keywords, three of which relate to the Israel–Hamas conflict: Gaza, Israeli and Israel’s. To get a better idea regarding evaluation around the two sides of the conflict, we examined concordance lines of Gaza, identifying 100 cases of quotes or reported speech to obtain a sense of the extent that quotes were made either in support of or against either side. Of the quotes we examined, 78 made statements which showed support towards people in Gaza and 22 were against. Quotes against Gaza included those made by Benjamin Netanyahu. For example:

On the other hand, positive quotes tended to focus on attacks on civilians, as the following statement from a group of Labour councillors indicates:

In order to compare this with the way Israel appeared in quotes in the Daily Mail, we decided to examine 100 concordance lines of Israel in which it was not a keyword, but was the equivalent term to Gaza, as opposed to Israeli and Israel’s (which were keywords). For our concordance analysis of Israel, 49 quotes were supportive, while 51 were against. Quotes against Israel tended to focus on its bombardment of Gaza, for example:

Positive quotes focussed on the terror attack and kidnapping of Israelis by Hamas as well as criticisms of anti-Israel protests by Muslims (referred to as ‘Islamists’ in the second quote below):

The analysis suggests that the Daily Mail appeared more likely to quote people who were supportive of Gaza as opposed those who were supportive of Israel, at least in the period examined, which covers the first few weeks of the conflict.

The Daily Mail keywords city and council tend to occur together, referring to a number of city councils around the UK (including Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Wolverhampton and Westminster). A closer examination of these instances indicates that they are from the same two articles, which both reproduce a letter signed by a large number of Muslim Labour councillors, asking the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. These articles are unusual in that as well as printing the 461-word letter, they also list all of the signatories and their positions, amounting to a further 1,089 words. The publication of the letter thus represents the Labour Party leadership (which was not supported by the Daily Mail) as being in conflict with a large number of Muslim leaders in the UK. We also found during our examination of concordance lines of Gaza and Israel that there were a significant number of references to divisions in the Labour Party involving its stance on the conflict.

Friday stands out as an unusual Daily Mail keyword, as it is the only word in Table 3 which refers to a day of the week. Friday occupies a special place in Islam as it is when a community prayer service is held. The Daily Mail appears to mark cases where protests or other conflicts occur on Fridays:

It is difficult to confidently interpret the significance of the Daily Mail’s use of Friday in such stories, although one possibility is that the intention is to highlight a contrast between the scenes of conflict being described and the fact that they are marked as occurring on a holy day when Muslims carry out one of the most exalted Islamic rituals. The Daily Mail keyword students tends to relate to reports of conflicts at universities involving Muslim students, who are often characterised as taking unreasonable offence, for example:

The Daily Mail’s keywords therefore give a mixed picture, representing Islam through a lens of conflict and grievance, while quoting voices who show support for Muslims in Gaza.

Finally, we note the Daily Mail keyword Koran, which is sometimes used to refer to the Qur’an. The Centre for Media Monitoring recommends using Quran or Qur’an, noting that Koran is seen by Muslims as incorrect.Footnote ⁴ Across the corpus, there is considerable difference in how this word is spelled, as Table 4 indicates. The Daily Mail favours Koran over the other two forms more than any other newspaper (although the Telegraph also shows a weaker preference for Koran). Most of the references to Koran in the Daily Mail relate to protests where it was burnt, kicked or stood on – actions that are seen as blasphemous in Islam. Numerous reports focus on reactions from Muslims at such demonstrations, for example:

Such articles describe rather than denounce the attack on Islam and tend to instead focus on Muslims as angry about it.

The Daily Star has three keywords that are pronouns – I, she and her – indicating perhaps more focus on stories about women, as well as those involving a personal perspective. Closer examination of two proper noun keywords, Knoll and Mia, provides further information about the women who are most saliently represented in the newspaper. Knoll refers to the erotic photography model and former Miss Croatia, Ivana Knoll, who is the topic of 11 Daily Star articles about her presence at the 2022 World Cup, which was hosted in Qatar, a Muslim-majority country which has a dress code for women. Knoll is described as having sunbathed naked in Qatar and is quoted as saying:

Another Daily Star keyword, Mia, refers to Mia Khalifa, a British Pakistani who is an adult film star. Described as being brought up in a ‘strict Muslim household’ and no longer a practising Muslim, she is reported in the articles for having almost been banned from the social media platform Instagram for posting an almost-nude photograph of herself, and how she caused controversy by launching a new jewellery line called Sheytan, which translates to ‘devil’ in Arabic. Both sets of stories deal with young women who are seen as challenging gendered expectations in Islam through sexualised bodily displays. The articles aren’t explicitly critical of Islam, but in terms of perspectivation they foreground the actions and views of Knoll and Khalifa, who are represented as being in conflict with Islam, through detailed descriptions of the two women, along with lengthy quotes from them.

In the Express, the keywords pro and Palestine tend to occur together, referring to pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations that occurred across cities in the UK. Coverage of the marches tends not to be positive, with marchers being referred to as ‘a mob’ or as ‘leftie’, along with reports that people at the marches chanted ‘jihad’ (also an Express keyword) and that they held placards showing British and Israeli leaders with Hitler moustaches. There are also reports that one of the marches would take place on Remembrance Sunday, a day which commemorates members of the armed forces who died in World War I and all wars since, with the newspaper reporting concerns that the event would be disrupted by pro-Palestine demonstrations.

The Express refers to the public broadcaster the BBC and the London Metropolitan Police (both BBC and Met are keywords), quoting people who claim that the two institutions are biased towards Muslims and Palestine:

Finally, the Express carries several articles about Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, which characterise him as coming into conflict with Muslims:

By representing the Labour Party and Muslims as being in conflict with one another, the Express can further create negative associations of two of its targets at the same time, much as the Daily Mail achieved by reporting on Labour’s position on Gaza being different to that of Muslim councillors.

Three of the Guardian’s keywords tend to be linked to stories relating to the government’s policy on extremism: Prevent, rightwing and review. Prevent is the government’s counter-extremism programme, and the Guardian reports on a review of it which came out in 2023. The Guardian evaluates the review as ‘controversial’, ‘ill-starred’ and ‘much-delayed’ and prints quotes from people who are critical of it, for example:

Here, then, the Guardian represents Islam as unfairly singled out as a terrorist threat. Three other Guardian keywords, Charles, coronation and royal, refer to the coronation of King Charles III, which occurred on 6 May 2023. Although the articles in the Guardian question the relevance of the royal family and the expense it incurs to the UK, as well as mentioning anti-monarchy protests which coincided with the coronation, the newspaper also refers to the fact that this was the first coronation where representatives of different faiths were involved:

On 30 April 2024, a Muslim MP, Shabana Mahmood, is reported as saying that she ‘had already sworn allegiance to the king on the Qur’an and would be “joining in at the weekend as well”’. While the Guardian presents a somewhat anti-monarchist stance, it uses its reporting around the coronation to represent Muslims and members of other faiths as integrated and supportive of a key aspect of British society.

The Independent’s keywords appear to be more clearly focused on Islam than some of the other newspapers: Muslim, Muslims, Quran, religious, pilgrims and Hajj. These keywords occur in articles which provide readers with information about aspects of Islam. For example, Hajj and pilgrimage appear in an article entitled ‘“Hajj is not Mecca”: Why prayers at Mount Arafat are the spiritual peak of Islamic pilgrimage’. Questions in these kinds of articles frame readers as interested in knowing about the Hajj, for example:

Additionally, there is an implicature that the information provided in other articles is there because it is unlikely to be known by readers, for instance:

Another Independent keyword, hate, occurs 47% of the time (94 times) as part of the phrase hate crime(s), while 85 out of 100 cases of hate taken at random refer to incidents where Muslims have been targeted, with articles referring particularly to cases of Islamophobia as a result of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. One headline reads:

There are also references to incidents where demonstrators publicly burned copies of the Quran (an Independent keyword which, as seen earlier, is a preferred spelling by Muslim groups). Unlike the Daily Mail, which uses the dispreferred spelling, Koran (see Table 4), the Independent does not foreground anger of Muslims in these articles, instead referring 18 times to the burnings as desecrations (a term the Daily Mail uses just four times). The Independent therefore represents Muslims as engaged in religious observance, as well as being targeted for their religion.

Two of the Mirror’s keywords are forms of the second-person pronoun (you, your). A concordance-line analysis of 100 cases of these words taken at random found that seven cases involved a direct address to the reader (e.g. ‘Do you have a story to share?’) while 19 cases involved someone being quoted while addressing another person (e.g. ‘I’m scared you are going to hurt me’). However, the majority of cases (74) involved you being used as a generic, described by Pearce (Reference Pearce2001: 201) as a way of indicating commonality of experience (e.g. ‘There are times in your life when you will be short of things and you have to accept what is happening’). We found that 52 of the 74 cases of generic you (72%) were used in articles which were written by Muslims and provided information about aspects of the religion. This also helps to explain the presence of other Mirror keywords Ramadan, Eid and calendar, which are similarly used in articles that provide explanations around the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, which involves fasting and is viewed as one of the five pillars of Islam. On the one hand, these articles provide an informative, non-judgemental and non-political perspective on Islam. Many of these articles appear to be written for non-Muslims, using the second-person pronoun to discursively exclude the possibility of a Muslim reader (something which was less common in the Independent’s articles which also provided information about Islam). For example, one article is entitled ‘How to support your Muslim colleagues and friends during Ramadan’, offering advice like ‘give your colleagues time to pray’, ‘don’t worry about eating secretly’ and ‘don’t ask why someone isn’t fasting’. Another notes,

The 2021 national census identified 6.5% of the UK population as being Muslims, so these articles comprise an odd mixture of excluding Muslim readers while representing their culture positively.

Not all of the Mirror articles about Ramadan presuppose a non-Muslim reader. For example, an article entitled ‘Ramadan: How to manage medications and health tests during the holy month’ provides advice from a pharmacist called Ifti Khan, who is described as working at Well Pharmacy. Another article is entitled ‘Best Ramadan chocolate advent calendars 2023 – from Amazon, Asda, and more’. The article goes on to list different kinds of calendars that are available and is written in the style of an advertorial. Therefore, these articles indicate how a positive stance towards Islam is interdiscursively linked to marketing discourse.

The Sun’s keywords tend to relate to war and terrorism, examples being cops, rocket, IDF, hostages, released, Hamas and hospital. Cops tends to be used to refer to suspected terror attacks carried out by Muslims. Hamas and IDF (Israel Defense Forces) relate to the Israel–Hamas conflict, as does rocket, which in 100 out of 100 random cases refers to rockets that were fired by those on the side of Hamas. One of the most commonly mentioned incidents involves a rocket that is described as having hit a hospital in Gaza (explaining why hospital is a keyword). However, this is described as being a ‘failed rocket launch’ by Islamic Jihad, and other Sun articles claim that Palestinians used the attack as propaganda, such as:

The Sun discusses the Israeli hostages who are held by Hamas in Gaza, reporting on cases where they have been released, with particular focus on those who are vulnerable. For instance:

Finally, the keyword mum (as well as the pronoun her) tends to relate to dramatic stories, usually involving crime, about mothers who are Muslims. These stories can involve mothers as victims, as being related to terrorists or as a bad parent, as demonstrated in the following three examples:

The Sun’s keywords generally paint a negative picture of Islam, implying that it is linked to war, terror and crime.

Three of the Telegraph’s keywords relate to Iran (Iran, Iranian and Iran’s), while another keyword, regime, collocates 25 times with these words. Iran is represented very negatively in the Telegraph, being described with adjectives like ‘aggressive’, ‘brutal’, ‘cancerous’, ‘decrepit’, ‘extremist’, ‘fanatical’ and ‘hostile’. In terms of carrying out actions, the Telegraph describes Iran as financing terrorism, suppressing women, carrying out executions and creating propaganda. There are eight references in the Telegraph to ‘the Islamic Republic of Iran’, and one article reports the closure of an ‘Islamic centre in London that praised Iran terror general’. An opinion column accuses Iran of spreading conspiracy stories about Jewish people, asking:

Two other keywords, anti and Semitism, occur together in a fixed phrase, and tend to relate to situations where actions by Muslims have been characterised as anti-Semitic, as in:

Thus, the Telegraph has a tendency to write about Islam in terms of international extremist and terrorist contexts, focusing on highly critical stories about Iran, which has one of the worst human rights records in the world (as opposed to, say, Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia, Bahrain and Oman, which have better human rights records).

Finally, the Times has three keywords which focus on the political situation in Scotland (Scottish, Scotland and Yousaf), relating to the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, Hamza Yousaf. He is described as a ‘Muslim millennial, steeped in the politics of Independence’ and some articles describe his election to the role as ‘momentous’. An opinion column is more openly critical about Yousaf, noting that his election win

The article goes on to criticise the ‘liberal left which persists in seeing this country as “structurally racist” and everybody who is not white as suffering similar persecution by the white hegemony – a ludicrous mindset’. However, Yousaf is also described as having abstained during a vote about gay marriage in 2014, and the Times says he has been accused of hypocrisy. Linked to this, another Times keyword, gay, tends to involve stories about Islam’s views on homosexuality, particularly cases which result in violence towards gay men. Typical stories are about Richard Rogers, a serial killer who targeted gay men and ‘hated himself because he was a gay Muslim man’, or Yousef Palani, a Muslim who murdered two men he had met through the dating app Grindr. Other stories focus on countries with homophobic laws, which are described as linked to Sharia:

Therefore, Times keywords indicate a representation of Islam as a religion which benefits from diversity initiatives in the UK, while at the same time being behind violence towards another minority group.

It is a little harder to explore the negative keywords in the table, as they involve under-use, so we need to consider possible interpretations relating to why some words occur less in some newspapers. For example, the Mirror and Independent (which both had some of the more positive representations of Islam in the corpus) tend to have fewer mentions of words relating to the conflict in Israel and Gaza. We also note how the Times had less use of some words relating to topics which have proved to be controversial in the past (see Baker et al. Reference Baker, Gabrielatos and McEnery2013), like hijab and terrorism. Finally, the Telegraph and the Sun are less likely to refer to the word Muslim than other newspapers, perhaps suggesting decreased focus on the religion at the level of those who practise it. (Both newspapers had quite negative representations of actions carried out in two Muslim-majority places – Iran and Gaza.)

6.2 Stage 2: Analysis of Key Image Tags

Table 5 shows the top 10 key image tags (both positive and negative keyness) associated with each newspaper, again comparing each newspaper against the others. Key image tag lists were derived by creating frequency lists which were only comprised of the image tags in the corpus. In WordSmith this was achieved by changing the tag settings in Advanced Settings to remove <*> where ‘mark-up to ignore’ was specified, then in the Part of the Text section, under Sections to Keep, < xxx and > were placed as the beginning and ends. This ensured that WordSmith disregarded all of the written text of the corpus, except for the image tags.

In essence, then, each image tag was treated as a ‘word’. It should be noted that this process resulted in a much smaller corpus (consisting of 89,133 image tags), compared to the analysis of keywords, which took into account 1.5 million words. With that said, the same settings were still used successfully to derive key tags, although some of the tag frequencies are much smaller than those in the keywords table. While all the newspapers had at least 10 positive image tags, some had fewer than 10 negative tags.

To help us interpret the images, we used the tool which was developed for this project, called Image Tag Explorer (described in Sections 4). We used the tool to focus on a particular section of the corpus (e.g. just the Mirror). We could then specify one of the key image tags (e.g. Cuisine) and examine the corresponding images that had been tagged as Cuisine from that part of the corpus. In this way, it was possible to obtain a sense of the typical images that an image tag (or combination of tags) was assigned to. Additionally, we examined image tag collocates of other image tags, in order to obtain information about the ways that two image tags may often appear within the same image. For example, Table 6 shows the top 10 positive key image tags for the Daily Mail, indicating the frequencies of cases where two tags are assigned to the same image (with darker shades showing more frequent collocations). We refer to this as image tag collocation. It can be seen that there are a very high number of images which were labelled with at least two of the tags City, PublicEvent, Street, Pedestrian and Protest, while Pole and PublicSpace also co-occur in some of these images. Screenshot and Rectangle do not appear with the other key tags very much, although these two tags do co-occur in five images. Image tag collocation tables were created for the top 10 key image tags for all nine newspapers, which aided the analysis in terms of identifying particularly distinctive kinds of images associated with each newspaper.

When carrying out the analysis of the images, the contents of some of them were easy to identify, such as a picture of the then UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, or an image of a demonstration with people holding signs reading ‘Free Palestine’. For other images, we were sometimes unable to identify a person, location, building or event. In such cases we referred to the original news article or used an online reverse image search. For this stage of the analysis we wanted to focus only on the images, as opposed to the ways the images were written about, so we tried to identify only what was in the images, rather than attempting to interpret the ways they were discussed in the news articles. When analysing images from a single newspaper we tried to identify repeated features across numerous images as well as considering a range of other phenomena (see Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). For example, with images of people we considered: how many people were present; who they were; whether anyone was the main focus; whether people made eye contact with one another or looked into the camera or at something else; what gestures they were making; whether people were interacting; what actions they were engaged in or what was being done to them; what their facial expressions were like; and whether the images were flattering or showed them in a bad light. We tried to consider what kinds of emotions or associations the images evoked: for example, could the image be considered sexually arousing, upsetting, nostalgic or comforting? What kind of effects did composition or colour have in terms of how the image was interpreted? Were objects photographed from above or below and was symmetry or repetition used in the images to create particular effects? Analysing images is an interpretive and subjective procedure and we tried to avoid making claims that relied on implicature (e.g. that white clothing represented innocence or that the left part of an image represented ‘the old’ and the right part represented ‘the new’) unless there was supporting evidence for such interpretations.

We found that the Daily Mail was more likely to feature images of crowds in public spaces (indicated by images tagged as Crowd, along with City, PublicEvent, Street, Protest, Pedestrian or PublicSpace). Images assigned these tags often involved sports events (particularly football matches), demonstrations by groups of Muslims, Muslims at worship, particularly large numbers (in some cases, hundreds) of Muslim men in a prostrate position, called sujud (see Figure 6). These photographs were sometimes taken from an aerial position, making the worshippers indistinguishable, which explains the key image tag Rectangle, which was sometimes assigned to images where prayer mats were visible. In some images, Muslims are holding banners, copies of the Qur’an or simply raising their fists in the air. There is a sense of repetition within these images, with the people posed identically, so that visually there is a lack of differentiation between them. These images therefore echo one of the main findings of written news representations of Islam: collectivisation.

Figure 6 Muslims at prayer.

Image from the Daily Mail, 10 April 2024.

The key tag Pole also occurred in 52 Daily Mail images, including ones which featured Muslims holding banners or flags while engaged in demonstrations, protests or marches, and additionally appearing in street scenes, representing lamp-posts or street signs. An exception to these kinds of public group images involves around 50 which depict mourners (mainly middle-aged and older white women) in the funeral procession of the Irish singer–songwriter Sinead O’Connor, who died on 26 July 2023. Born into a catholic family, O’Connor tore up a photograph of the Pope on television in 1992 and converted to Islam in 2018.

Aside from the public gathering images, a second kind of image less frequently found in the Daily Mail (but still involving key tags) depicts screenshots from social media, which explains the tags Screenshot and Rectangle, over half of which relate to screenshots of tweets. These social media images tend to convey opinions relating to Islam, such as the conflict between Israel and Gaza or people’s views on the eviction of a Muslim contestant on the reality TV show Big Brother. An analysis of the content of the tweets found that 29 of them had a broadly negative stance towards Islam, 15 had a positive stance and 13 didn’t appear to reference Islam. The presence of images of tweets indicates how multimodal approaches can, incidentally, lead to an enriched context on the textual level since in some cases text is represented directly in a screenshot format. A monomodal approach would not have been able to account for text in this form.

The Daily Star’s key image tags all refer to body parts or underclothing, and examination of the images containing these tags indicates that the vast majority of them show pictures of young women posing in bikinis or underwear. Many of the women have long hair (hence the LongHair tag; see Figure 7). While Brassiere, Undergarment, Navel, Lingerie, Waist, LongHair and BlackHair almost exclusively relate to images of women, a minority of images assigned the tags Chest and HumanLeg involve pictures of sportsmen, particularly boxers, wrestlers, footballers or rugby players. On the whole, though, the Daily Star appears to contain a higher number of sexualised images of women compared to the rest of the corpus.

Figure 7 Image of Ivana Knoll from the Daily Star (8 December 2022), tagged Smile, Brassiere, Waist, Undergarment, Trunk, Navel, Chest, Underpants, HumanLeg, Lingerie, Cheerleading, CheerleadingUniform, Bikini, Sports, CompetitionEvent, Uniform and PublicEvent.

The key Express tags Tie, Collar and News mostly appear in images of men in suits, particularly depicting political figures like Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, Geert Wilders, Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage, Emmanuel Macron, James Cleverly and Keir Starmer. There is quite a bit of overlap with the tags Employment and Speech, which also occur with pictures of political leaders, although these tags are additionally used with pictures of members of the British royal family, and also tend to include more images of British female politicians (e.g. Liz Truss and Suella Braverman). The tag Chin tends to be used even more generally, appearing in close-up images of the faces of a range of people – political leaders, celebrities, criminals, newsreaders and members of the public. SocialGroup tends to involve images of 2–10 people, usually involved in some sort of interaction.

A different kind of Express tag is Gas, which tends to relate to images showing large plumes of smoke, implying that a building or vehicle has been bombed. These tend to be images of urban destruction as a result of war. The tag Protest tends to show images of people demonstrating outdoors in large numbers. A survey of these images indicated that the highest number of protests relates to the Free Palestine movement, although there are also images of protests relating to trans rights, the pro-Israel movement and Brexit. Finally, a tag which links the previous two tags is NaturalEnvironment, which appears with images of both war and protest. Distinctive Express images therefore tend to involve political figures, protests or war.

The Guardian has a smaller number of images in its articles than the other newspapers (195, or 2.28% of the images in the corpus). Its key tags are less frequent than those for the other newspapers, with its two highest-frequency top 10 key tags occurring 21 times each, offering less evidence of distinctive patterns than with the other newspapers. Nonetheless, the Guardian sub-corpus contains a number of salient images which indicate a focus on close-ups of faces: Ear, Nose, Glasses and Organ (the latter of which also occurs with images of faces). Linked to these are the PublicSpeaking, Speech and Employment tags, which tend to involve images of people, often politicians, at podiums or using microphones, making speeches. Many of these speakers are well-known political figures. A second type of Guardian image involves the tags Brick and Property, which are associated with images of large public buildings. Possibly then, the Guardian’s key image tags indicate coverage relating to discussions about Muslims (by non-Muslims), which is related to politics and civic life.

Several of the Independent’s key tags are used in images involving large groups of Muslims, either at prayer or involved in protests (PublicSpace, HumanSettlement, Protest and Trousers – the last of which usually indicates the portrayal of a large number of men). Many of the images tagged Protest depict demonstrations by Muslims about the conflict between Israel and Hamas, with people holding Free Palestine banners or burning an Israeli flag. Another set of image tags relates to politics (Room, PublicSpeaking, Employment, Cheek and Ear). These tags typically show pictures of politicians, although they can also involve Muslims or images which look like mug shots of criminals.

Most of the Mirror’s top key image tags involve pictures of food (Cuisine, Dish, Cooking, Food, Recipe, Plate and Ingredient), showing either Muslims eating food (often in small groups which look like families) or close-up images of multiple plates of food such as rice, curry and samosas. Two other image tags, Soldier and NonCommissionedOfficer, show images of individuals in the military. Ten of these images are of a member of the British royal family, Prince Harry, who served in the military between 2005 and 2015, while the majority show pictures of other men, including the Iraqi general Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi and Scottish Muslim paramedic Araf Saddiq.

For the Sun images, three key tags are used for depictions of explosions: Gas, Darkness and Heat. These images often show buildings or vehicles which are on fire, giving off smoke and flames. A second type of image was assigned the tags Shoulder, HumanLeg, Dress, Chest, Trunk and FashionModel. This type of image tends to show full-body images of people, usually young women or sports players, often posed in provocative positions and/or wearing swimwear or showing cleavage. The two image types most significantly associated with the Sun therefore involve attacks on objects (relating to armed conflict) and sexualised photographs of women (similar to the Daily Star).

Several of the Telegraph’s key image tags relate to demonstrations (Protest, Community, SocialGroup and NaturalEnvironment), whereas Handwriting typically involves images of banners and placards which have writing on them, sometimes in Arabic. Placards in the Protest images show very negative representations of Israel and various politicians. For example, there are pictures of Rishi Sunak entitled ‘Sunak, you are a murderer’ or ‘Crime Minister’. One poster shows a snake with a Star of David encircling the planet. Another shows Joe Biden wearing devil horns and fangs, labelled ‘The puppet master, the mastermind of all evils’. A further poster states ‘Kill Geert’. The image tag Hood also appears with images where protesters and soldiers are wearing head coverings. The tag Speech tends not to occur with images of demonstrations, but instead involves pictures of politicians around the world. Adaptation, Building and Temple involve images of buildings which sometimes feature Islamic architecture, including arches and domes.

Finally, for the Times there are three types of distinctive images. First, the tags Tie, Shirt, Speech, PublicSpeaking, PublicAddressSystem and Podium are assigned to pictures of politicians or other public figures making public speeches, including the leader of the SNP, Humza Yousaf, the member of the Scottish Labour Party Anas Sarwar, anti-Islam populists Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, the US president Joe Biden, and Hamas member Zaher Birawi. Second, the tags Map and Parallel are used for images of maps, which usually depict information such as terror attacks, zones of armed conflict or routes for protests. Finally, the tag Landmark shows a range of large buildings, including the Blue Mosque, in Turkey, the Giza pyramids and the City of the Dead (a cemetery complex), in Egypt, and Masjid al-Haram (Grand Mosque), in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The analysis of key image tags gave us an indication of some of the kinds of contexts or topics in which Islam and Muslims are written about. It is worth noting that two newspapers (the Daily Star and the Sun) used eroticised pictures of women in these articles, while others (the Independent, Express, Sun and Telegraph) showed images of war and protest. It is also interesting to see how some newspapers (the Express, Guardian, Independent and Times) focused more on politicians, while others showed more cultural aspects of Islam to do with food (the Mirror) or architecture (the Times). One of the most interesting findings to emerge from the analysis of key image tags was the Daily Mail’s use of images showing Muslims engaging in collective worship behaviours. Additionally, it was interesting to see how the Daily Mail used screenshots of social media posts in its articles, whereas the Times made significant use of maps. Looking at the images without text, we get a sense of some of the contexts that Muslims and Islam are represented in (e.g. war, protest, architecture, religious observance, politics and family life), but beyond this it is difficult to fully grasp a more detailed picture at this stage.

6.3 Stage 3: Comparison of the Keyword and Key Image Tag Analyses

Having completed stages 1 and 2, we were able to carry out a mixed-methods analysis by comparing the keywords and key image tags from each newspaper together. This indicated how, at times, a newspaper’s keywords and key image tags could relate to the same kind of topic. For example, the Mirror had a relatively high number of stories about Ramadan, and it also contained more images of food compared to other newspapers. On the other hand, some of the key image tags revealed other aspects of articles which were not revealed by the keywords. The Daily Mail, for instance, made relatively more use of social media posts as images in its articles, whereas the Times contained more pictures of maps. Neither of these kinds of images appears to be connected to the top keywords, and the images indicate different journalistic practices that might have been otherwise missed. In this case, social media posts are used to indicate people’s stances on a news topic and also to show how a news topic is currently seen as important, while maps help readers understand stories about places they may not be familiar with. Also, the images of large numbers of Muslims at prayer in the Daily Mail were not indicated through the keyword analysis, nor were we expecting to see a relatively high number of images of people in the military in the Mirror, based on its keywords. So even when considering the keywords and key image tags separately, it is clear that there is value in looking at the key image tags, as they help to bring to light aspects of the articles which are foregrounded in the visual parts but which were not identified in the analysis of the written text. Similarly, there are aspects of the keywords which were not duplicated in the key image tags. For example, the Guardian keywords implied criticisms of the UK government’s Prevent strategy and conveyed Muslims’ views of the coronation of Charles III, while the key image tags did not indicate the presence of such stories. There is therefore value in comparing both images and text together, as a way of obtaining a fuller sense of the themes and representations associated with a newspaper corpus. However, so far, our analysis hasn’t considered specifically how words and images combine together to make meaning. To do so, we need to carry out a multimodal analysis.

6.4 Stage 4: Multimodal Analysis of the Top Key Image Tags

In this section and in Section 6.5, we carry out multimodal analyses, bringing together the written text and images and considering how they work in concert to create meaning. There are two ways that we can approach this form of analysis. First, we can ask: which words tend to appear with particular kinds of images? Second, we can reverse the question, asking: which kinds of images tend to appear with particular words? In this section we will address the first question.

Table 7 shows the top key image tag for each newspaper and considers the words that are most likely to be associated with it. To do this, we carried out keyness comparisons based on the presence or absence of a particular image tag in a certain newspaper. For example, the top key image tag in the Daily Mail was Crowd (with 621 occurrences). In WordSmith we created a wordlist from a sub-corpus consisting just of Daily Mail articles that contained images that had been tagged as Crowd, and then compared it against a wordlist from a second sub-corpus consisting of Daily Mail articles that didn’t contain any images tagged as Crowd.

Then, the Advanced Settings were changed to specify that files should be selected ‘Only if containing’ the image tag under scrutiny (i.e. <xxxCrowd>). A wordlist was then created using only the files containing the chosen tag. Then in Advanced Settings, the tag was moved to the ‘Must not contain’Footnote ⁵ section of the ‘Only if containing’ window, and a second wordlist was created. The two wordlists were then used to derive keywords. To do this, the default setting of mark-up to ignore <*> in WordSmith was left intact. The first wordlist was obtained by altering the Tag settings in WordSmith by selecting the option ‘Only if containing’ and entering the code <xxxCrowd> in one of the boxes under ‘Must contain’. The second wordlist was obtained by moving <xxxCrowd> to one of the boxes under ‘Must not contain’.Footnote ⁶

As before, we listed the 10 keywords most strongly associated with the tag. We also considered the 10 highest-frequency lexical collocates of the image tag Crowd and its 10 highest image collocates. To find word collocates we first changed the Concordance settings from ‘stop at sentence break’ to ‘no limits’, and we altered both minimum frequency and minimum length to 1. We then carried out a concordance search on the tag (i.e. <xxxCrowd>) and clicked on the collocates tab to see its lexical collocates. To identify tags which collocated with other tags, we changed the default settings, removing <*> from ‘mark-up to ignore’ and changing the collocation span to L20 and R20 as well as specifying that collocates should ‘stop at sentence break’.

As we are only focussing on the top key image tag for each newspaper, our findings can’t be generalised to every image or every article but are instead focussed around the language associated with a particularly distinctive image tag for each newspaper. In looking at nine key tags in total in this way, we should be able to get a sense regarding the extent to which it is worthwhile carrying out this kind of analysis. While carrying out the analysis for each tag we asked: do the results tell us something new beyond what we already found out about this key tag and its associated words when we looked at them separately?

In order to carry out this part of the analysis, we examined concordances of the top 10 keywords associated with each top key image tag in each newspaper. Using the Image Tag Explorer tool we had created, we also examined the images for each newspaper that contained the top key image tag and, where it was useful to do so, we went back to the original news articles online in order to gain a better impression of how images and text interacted. While our analysis brought up a range of different kinds of findings, we have tried to prioritise those which addressed the central question of this analysis: in what ways do the text and images link to representations of Muslims and Islam?

We begin with the top key image tag in the Daily Mail, Crowd, which occurs in 26% of the Daily Mail’s images. One collocate of images tagged as Crowd is Sinead, which, as noted earlier, refers to images of crowds at the procession of Sinead O’Connor’s funeral. Analysis of relevant concordance lines indicates that O’Connor’s religion is described respectfully by the Daily Mail. For example:

Dr Al-Qadri is also given a 66-word quote in this article, referring to O’Connor’s ‘beautiful personality’ and how her funeral reflected both her Irish and her Muslim identities. The article could be seen as a eulogy and is one of the most positive articles involving Islam in the Daily Mail corpus.

More typically though, the Daily Mail images tagged Crowd tend to occur in articles containing words which relate to the conflict between Israel and Hamas (Gaza, Israeli, Hamas, Israel, Palestinian and Palestinians). Such images tend to show scenes of protests or war devastation as a result of bombings and other forms of attack. The protests involve images of people burning Israeli flags, carrying posters which show the American president Joe Biden with a Hitler moustache or raising guns in the air. Other scenes show police restraining protesters. The war scenes are some of the most violently explicit in the corpus, showing people with injuries, being carried away on stretchers through rubble or setting fire to objects. One image is of a man holding an infant who has been badly injured. Text accompanying these kinds of images often describes Hamas in strongly negative terms:

Palestinians (as opposed to Hamas) do not receive the same level of negative representation, although they still tend to be associated with violence:

References to Israel which occur in the context of Crowd images tend to refer to actions by pro-Palestine protesters, which cast them negatively, as in the following excerpt, which describes the actor Susan Sarandon:

Other references to Israel show events from a sympathetic perspective, particularly relating to the Israeli hostages. The following text excerpt accompanies an image tagged as Crowd:

Another keyword which occurs with articles containing Crowd images in the Daily Mail is Friday. Closer analysis of concordance lines indicates that this relates to descriptions of protests, marches and rallies occuring after Friday prayers around the world. In the following example, the water metaphor ‘poured’ represents Muslims as a single, uncontrollable mass:

In the next example, former leader of Hamas Khal is described as calling for a Day of Jihad on Friday:

Analysis of the relationship between images tagged as Crowd and accompanying text in the Daily Mail shows a mixed picture then. There is respectful reporting around the funeral of Sinead O’Connor, who was a Muslim, but there are other representations of Muslims as angry and anti-Semitic when protesting about the Israel–Hamas conflict.

As we have seen, many of the images in the Daily Star are of female models, including the majority of those tagged with the top key image tag Chest, attrributed to 22% of the newpaper’s images. These images tend to occur in articles which show models defying expectations associated with women in Islam by being sexually provocative, hence the keywords her, she, Mia and Knoll. The keyword brand relates to adult film star Mia Khalifa’s jewellery brand Sheytan. Additionally, the first-person pronoun I occurs as a keyword with articles containing images tagged as Chest. We have already seen how the keyword I indicated that Daily Star articles were more likely to give personal perspectives. However, the fact that I also occurs as a keyword more specifically for Daily Star articles containing images tagged as Chest tells us more clearly that such personal perspectives tend to be associated with the women shown in those pictures. In the following example, former Miss Croatia Ivana Knoll (whose image is tagged as Chest 23 times) is quoted as reacting to the dress code in Qatar when she attends the World Cup:

The keyword fans also occurs as part of these stories, with articles describing how Knoll displayed her body at a football match in Qatar. However, other articles with pictures tagged Chest containing fans and BBC relate to a 1999 documentary about football hooligans, including ‘Britain’s most infamous football hooligan’, Jason Marriner, who is described as being involved in violence with rival fans. Marriner is also said to have a freezer with an image of Lee Rigby on it (hence the keyword Lee), a fusilier who was murdered in a terror attack by a Muslim. The Daily Star doesn’t represent Marriner sympathetically, noting that he made Nazi salutes at Auschwitz, and an accompanying image shows Marriner, unsmiling, with tattooed arms folded across his chest. Chiefly though, the Daily Star uses images tagged as Chest to represent Islam as restricting women who want to show off their bodies.

As noted earlier, in the Express, the Tie tag tends to be assigned to images of male political figures. One top-10 keyword associated with Tie, election, refers to recent elections in the Netherlands, Finland, France and the European Parliament. Articles about the Dutch election feature photographs of (tie-wearing) candidate Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, with Wilders being described as having ‘toned down some of his anti-Islam viewpoints’. However, an analysis of the other nine keywords associated with Express articles containing images tagged as Tie found a focus on two men, Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Jeremy Corbyn, respectively the incumbent leader of the Labour Party and his predecessor. The male pronoun keywords he and his typically refer to Keir Starmer. Although Corbyn is mentioned in some articles containing pictures tagged as Tie, he typically is not shown in the accompanying pictures; we only found two pictures of him, and both of these also featured Starmer.

The Express images of Starmer which are tagged as Tie do not particularly represent him in a positive light. Although he is wearing a suit, he is shown with shadows around his eyes, unsmiling or with his mouth open while talking. We examined the images in the Express which contained both the Tie and Smile tags, finding that they mostly involved pictures of members of the British royal family although politicians like Geert Wilders, Humza Yousaf, Vladimir Putin and Rishi Sunak are also pictured wearing ties and smiling. Keir Starmer appeared in three of these Tie + Smile images, although it was another person who was smiling, not Starmer. On the whole the Tie images which occur in articles about Starmer look like images that are taken by a press photographer or screenshots from news broadcasts as opposed to publicity images that would have been posed and carefully chosen to show him in a good light.

A concordance analysis of Starmer in articles containing photos tagged Tie indicates how the Labour Party leader is negatively represented. This is achieved in two ways. First, he is described as not being in control: ‘hit by the biggest rebellion of his leadership’; ‘lost control of the narrative’; ‘a prisoner of his own party’; ‘locked in crisis talks’; ‘caving to pressure’. Second, he is seen as causing division and anger, particularly among Muslims: ‘sparking fury’; ‘accused of gas-lighting Muslims’; ‘criticised by Imam’; ‘rumbled after turning up to mosque uninvited’. The unflattering photographs of Starmer act in collaboration with the negative textual representations of him, suggesting an Express campaign to persuade readers not to support Labour in advance of the coming general election. Within this, articles about Starmer’s relationship with Muslims appear to be a useful means to an end, although they also contribute to a well-established press representation of Muslims as involved in conflict.

The Guardian’s strongest key image tag, Organ, is quite rare, appearing only 13 times (and in just 6% of the Guardian’s images), so we shouldn’t overstate any claims about its generalisability. Organ always occurred in images involving faces (11 out of 13 are in close-ups), which helps explain the presence of other tags like Eye, Ear and Chin in these images. The majority of these images (11 out of 13) are not of Muslims. The tag appears in images alongside articles that have a high number of third-person pronouns (associated keywords being his, her and she). Five of the Organ-tagged images are of young women, and further analysis indicates that they are of Eleanor Williams, a woman who falsely claimed she had been trafficked by a gang of Asian men, and Lucy Letby, a nurse who was convicted of killing seven babies and attempting to kill six others. The Williams case initially inspired a Facebook group called Justice for Ellie (hence the keyword justice appearing in Guardian articles containing Organ pictures), while articles describe her as in court for perverting the course of justice (also explaining course and justice as keywords). Articles also describe how her claims resulted in Muslims being victimised:

The Lucy Letby case involves a quote from a Muslim woman, whose sister was murdered in 2021. Similar to the outcome of Letby’s trial, the murderer refused to come into the court for sentencing, and the Guardian provides quotes from the Muslim woman who is campaigning for the law to be changed.

Three images tagged Organ in the Guardian involve pictures of King Charles III, and as seen earlier, the Guardian wrote about Muslims in relationship to Charles’ coronation (with Charles, coronation and king being keywords for articles containing Organ images). Further investigation of relevant articles indicated that King Charles was represented as having positive views on Islam:

The multimodal analysis of the Organ image tag found that while there were a variety of images associated with the tag, they involved the Guardian taking a positive stance towards Islam – casting Muslims as victims of injustice or focussing on Charles III as respectful towards Islam.

The key image tag Room appears in 17% of Independent images and tends to also occur in articles which have words relating to crime as keywords: murder, stabbed, hate and crime. An analysis of Room images which appear with these keywords indicates that 13 of them are of a young boy wearing a hat with the words ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. (Hat is the strongest tag collocate of Room for the Independent images.) Other images contain a picture of an informally dressed, bearded man who appears to be at a press conference. In some pictures he is being consoled by other people. Analysis of concordance lines shows that these images are from articles about a six-year-old Muslim boy from a town near Chicago who was murdered in an anti-Muslim hate crime while trying to hug his landlord, described as ‘a man radicalised by right-wing radio reports about Israel–Hamas’. The boy’s mother was also stabbed multiple times in the attack. These articles present ordinary Muslims sympathetically and provide numerous quotes from family members of the boy, such as the following:

Two other sets of Independent articles containing images tagged as Room also involve Muslims who are targets of (possible) hate crimes. However, a third set involved a story about a gay teenager who was murdered by a group of men at a gas station in Brooklyn. A witness claimed the men who attacked the teenager ‘allegedly said they were Muslims’. All four attacks took place in the US, and while it is not unusual for broadsheet newspapers to focus on international stories, it seems that the Independent has a particular interest in hate crimes involving American Muslims, usually as innocent victims.

The Mirror’s top key image tag, Cuisine, occurs 29 times (in 3% of Mirror images), and it often appears with other food-related tags like Dish, Recipe, Cooking and Plate. Twenty images involve multiple people (usually Muslim families, including parents and children) sharing numerous dishes of food around a table. These images also occur in articles that contain words relating to Ramadan (also Eid, fast, food, Muslims, meal and month), as described earlier. The text associated with these articles tends to be informational while focussing on the positive aspects of Ramadan:

The Mirror therefore represents Ramadan as a positive aspect of Islam, with Cuisine-tagged images reinforcing aspects of the representation which depict it as a sociable and enjoyable family occasion.

In the Sun, the top key image tag is Gas, which occurs in 6% of Sun images. It tends to appear in articles that contain words relating to the Israel–Hamas conflict, relating to those involved (Hamas, Israeli, Gaza, Israel and IDF), weapons (rocket, missile and air (strikes)), casualties (hospital) and coverage of the conflict (footage). As we have already seen, our analysis of Sun keywords like rocket and hospital revealed that there was often a negative representation of Hamas and Muslims, with rocket and hospital being chiefly used to refer to a rocket launched by Islamic Jihad (an ally of Hamas) which misfired and destroyed a hospital in Gaza. The text accompanying photos tagged Gas can be quite horrific (a content warning is given for the following example):

The accompanying images tagged as Gas chiefly show pictures of buildings on fire or of missiles being fired. Only a small minority of these images contain people, although two show people carrying injured children, amid bombed buildings. A closer examination of some articles indicates that they contain photos of both Israeli and Palestinian children. However, the text in these articles appears to give a more negative representation towards Hamas as opposed to the IDF, with more quotes being critical of Hamas. This is a case where the images do not fully reflect the content of the text. Perhaps this is because such images might have been difficult for journalists to obtain. However, it is also likely that the images would not be printed, even if they had been obtained, because they would be much too distressing for newspaper audiences to see. Instead, the focus on images of explosions gives evidence of the scale of devastation that took place, while the accompanying texts provide a mental image of the effects on the population.

In the Telegraph, the top key image tag, Protest, occurs in images relating to pro-Palestine marches and protests about attacks on it. Concordance analysis of keywords associated with articles containing these images, like protesters, anti, Jews and Hamas, indicates that the Telegraph is concerned about the protests. For example, in one article the Telegraph quotes concerns from numerous people, including the UK’s counter-extremism commissioner, Robin Simcox, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile, and the head of the review of the anti-radicalisation programme Prevent, William Shawcross. In another article the Telegraph reports on the Metropolitan Police’s decision not to arrest protesters who shout ‘jihad’ on marches, quoting Commander Kyle Gordon who,

At the end of this article, there is a report of the numbers of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic offences (408 and 174), arrests (75), police visits to vulnerable premises (4,960), counter-terror investigations (10), counter-terror referrals (1,500) and live terror investigations (10). One interpretation of these statistics is that they are used to raise concern about terror and violence, implicitly criticising the decision not to arrest people who shout ‘jihad’ on pro-Palestine marches.

One of the most complex images in the corpus is one tagged Protest in the Telegraph which appears at the start of an opinion column entitled ‘How Labour is tearing itself apart over Gaza’. The image comprises a red rectangle, where a strip has been roughly ripped across the middle part, revealing a black and white photograph of a pro-Palestine protest with people holding signs. In the foreground, a figure wearing a burka (which shows only eyes) appears to be holding up a clenched fist. The use of red in the image could be interpreted in several ways. Red can mean danger or it can symbolise blood, suggesting violence. Also, red is the colour associated with the Labour Party, so the image could be interpreted as metaphor, showing a Labour Party flag which is being literally torn apart by the protests. The image therefore could be seen as trying to raise concern about both the pro-Palestinian protesters and the Labour Party.

However, the main impression gained from reading articles about the protests is one of concern about Muslims engaging in anger and hate. The pictures work in concert with the text in the Telegraph articles which express concern about the protests as fomenting hate and leading to violence and terror.

As with the Express, the key image tag for the Times is Tie, which tends to show images of men in suits, especially politicians. According to the Cloud Vision Release Notes, in February 2020, a decision was made to remove gendered labels like man and woman, as gender cannot be inferred by appearance and use of such labels would not align with Google’s Artificial Intelligence Principle to avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.Footnote ⁷ However, a key tag like Tie might imply that men are relatively over-represented in a particular corpus, especially as this tag co-occurs with FacialHair, Beard and Moustache. Two sets of keywords co-occur with Tie images in the Times. First, there are keywords relating to the Israel–Hamas conflict (Gaza, Israel, Hamas, Palestinian, Israel and Israel’s), and second, there are keywords relating to British politics (Labour, Yousaf and party). These two sets of words are actually related, though, in that the Times discusses the conflict through the lens of British politics, particularly focussing on the Labour’s party response to it (similarly to the Express).

Analysis of these keywords in context indicates that, compared to the other newspapers, the Times is less likely to write articles about Muslims to attack Labour, or to criticise pro-Palestinian protests. For example, in one article, Labour MPs are described as having given security advice after receiving threats ‘amid the Israel and Gaza tensions’. Starmer is described in relatively positive terms as moving ‘to calm tensions in his party’, and the article quotes a ‘Labour source’, suggesting that the newspaper has connections to Labour Party members. As with the Express, some images tagged Tie are of Keir Starmer, but unlike the Express, these images tend to show him more positively, surrounded by supporters, meeting with Muslim and Jewish communities and smiling while making a speech. An article entitled ‘Four hard lessons Keir Starmer must learn from Labour’s Gaza split’ offers the Labour leader advice and ends by stating that Starmer will be the next prime minister. An image of Starmer shows him in close-up with members of his shadow cabinet in the background. The image also contains red stripes and a red rose, symbols of the Labour Party, with a similar use of red to that of the Telegraph image analyzed in the preceding paragraphs. As noted previously, in the election the following year, the Times did not support any political party, which perhaps explains the more considered representations of Labour and Keir Starmer in these articles.

6.5 Stage 5: Multimodal Analysis of the Top Keyword in Each Newspaper

In the second part of the multimodal analysis, we begin not with a key image tag but with a keyword. Here we ask the questions: what image tags co-occur with a particular keyword in the same article? and how do the images in these articles work in conjunction with the keyword to represent Muslims and Islam? Table 8 shows the top keyword for each newspaper, along with their top lexical collocates, as well as the key image tags (and their collocating image tags) associated with articles which contain those keywords. Although it was not planned or predicted, the nine top keywords (council, her, remembrance, UK, Muslim, Ramadan, cops, Mr and writes) come from diverse part-of-speech categories: one pronoun, one title, one verb, three nouns and three kinds of proper nouns. It is therefore interesting to compare the kinds of image tags they attract and the extent to which the analysis of each newspaper reveals something new about its representation of Muslims and Islam.

We derived the keyword lists as outlined in Sections 6.4 but typed the relevant keyword rather than a key image tag into the ‘Only if containing’ boxes. To obtain the most frequent image tag collocates we used the same procedure as outlined in Section 6.4, although we removed <*> from ‘mark-up to ignore’ and we also changed the collocation horizons to -20 and +20. The mean number of tags per image was 10.42, although some images had 20 tags. Widening the collocation horizons meant that we were able to obtain all the tag collocates of a word.

In the Daily Mail, the top keyword, council, occurs 421 times across 51 articles, although in terms of distribution, two articles (published on the same day) each account for 150 occurrences. As described earlier, these articles both describe how the Labour Party leader Keir Starmer’s stance on Gaza resulted in criticism from some Labour Party councillors, who signed an open letter to him. Both articles contain the letter with all of the signatories listed at the end. These articles show pictures of Starmer and other politicians speaking in parliament, and explain, to an extent, the presence of key image tags like Tie, DressShirt and Employment.

Other uses of council refer to American councils or groups and involve stories which represent Muslims as having influence in various ways. For example, Minneapolis City Council is described as allowing broadcasts of the Muslim call to prayer, and the Daily Mail notes that ‘the decision drew no organised community opposition’. Articles about Hamtramck City Council describe it as having an all-Muslim government which has banned LGBT pride flags on business and residential properties, and also ‘voted to allow religious animal sacrifices in the home’. These articles detail opposition to Hamtramck City Council, quoting people who do not agree with the changes.

Not all articles imply that Muslims in America are being unreasonable. For example, the Daily Mail reports on a story about a Minnesota university professor who was fired after a student complained she had shown students an image of Prophet Mohammad. However, the Muslim Public Affairs Council is quoted as saying that the professor should be reinstated. Another article, about the Council on American Islamic Relations, describes the group as defending a student who was criticised by her university for accusing Israelis of ‘settler colonialism’. Images which appear with articles with the word council contain photographs of Muslims in formal dress making podium speeches at press conferences or council meetings. An article from 15 June 2023 about the banning of pride flags shows pictures of male council members who are Muslims (tagged as Moustache, Tie, DressShirt and Employment) at a meeting where non-Muslims (dressed more informally) protest against the flag ban. An interpretation of such image tags is that they help to signify the power and maleness of the decision-makers in contrast to the other members of the community. Another potential interpretation of these articles is that they function as a warning to British readers about the potential removal of rights if Muslims gain positions of power.

The top Daily Star keyword, her, occurred 637 times in that newspaper across 64 out of 101 articles. As we have seen, the Daily Star has a relatively high number of articles about female models with accompanying photographs. Such women are described as having fans, and there are references to them having an ‘adult career’. In the following excerpt, one model is described as dealing with death threats:

The image tags attributed to images in articles containing the word her tend to relate to glamour models (e.g. Undergarment, Brassiere, Beauty, Waist and LongHair). It is notable that Smile and PortraitPhotography occur as image tag collocates (i.e. in images that occur in the vicinity of the word her), indicating that these images were taken by professional photographers and that they represent the models positively, with a happy appearance. By implication, Islam is framed as a repressive religion, restricting the choices of women who want to model (and anyone who wants to look at them).

All the uses of the top Express keyword, remembrance, refer to Remembrance Day. As we have seen earlier, the Express reported on concerns that protests would be timed to coincide with Remembrance Day events or that there would be boycotts of them. In these articles, the Express quotes people who are supportive of Remembrance Day, such as Colonel Richard Kemp, who says

Additionally, the newspaper reports on calls to sack police chief Mark Rowley, who didn’t ask for emergency powers to stop pro-Palestinian marches during the weekend when Remembrance Day occurred. In foregrounding such views, the Express implicitly appears to side with the view that the protest marches should not go ahead.

The image tags which appear in images in corresponding articles with the word remembrance tend to involve either pictures of people at Remembrance Day events (e.g. Crowd, Black, Tie, Jacket and Collar) or images of people involved in protests relating to the conflict between Israel and Hamas (e.g. Crowd and Protest). We observed a difference between the two kinds of images. For example, one of the Tie images is a sombre picture of the incumbent prime minister together with one future and three past prime ministers (Liz Truss, Theresa May, Kier Starmer, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak) at a memorial event, all smartly dressed in black and wearing poppies (the men also in black ties), standing in front of two wreaths also made of poppies (Figure 8). One of the Crowd images, printed four days later, is of a policeman’s fist against the side of a protester’s face while people wearing face masks look on (Figure 9). The first image conveys a sense of dignity and reverence to the Remembrance Day events, while the protests are represented as a site of chaos and anger.

Figure 8 Image in the Express (3 November 2023) showing past, present and future British prime ministers at a Remembrance Day event in London, tagged with Crowd, Black, Tie and Cap.

Figure 8Long description

In the foreground are the current prime minister, Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak. Standing behind are Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Behind them is a row of policemen. Everyone is formally dressed in dark suits and wearing poppies. They have solemn expressions. Truss and May are wearing black hats. Starmer and Sunak are each holding a large wreath made of poppies.

Figure 9 Image in the Express (7 November 2023) of a pro-Palestine march in London in an article about Remembrance Day, tagged with Crowd, Face, Cap, Human, Jacket and PublicEvent.

Figure 9Long description

In the foreground, a policeman has his outstretched arm across the neck of a young male protester with dark hair. In the background, several police officers and protesters are visible, including two women wearing face masks. A male protester with an open mouth is recording the scene with his mobile phone.

In the Guardian, the top keyword, UK, tends to occur with references to the British government and its relationship to other countries. For example, there are stories which relate to the status of asylum seekers from places like Sudan, stories relating to the government’s stance on Shamina Begum, who left the UK in 2015 when she was 15 to join the Islamic State in Syria and lost her UK citizenship, and stories about the UK’s role in the bombing campaign against Islamic State. These articles foreground voices critical of the government, for example:

The key image tags for UK in the Guardian are somewhat unusual compared to the other sets of key image tags in Table 8, as only two of them relate to human beings (Tie and StepCutting). The most frequent key tag, Tie, tends to appear with images of politicians, whereas StepCutting relates to a multi-layered women’s hairstyle (and occurs with images of Shamina Begum).

The other key image tags refer to abstract concepts, shapes or materials: Wood, Product, Engineering, Line, Rectangle and Pattern. The tags Line, Pattern and Rectangle appear in images of stamps and relate to an article about four new stamps that mark King Charles’ coronation:

Although we have seen how the Guardian was critical of King Charles, noting protests around his coronation, the stamps are written about in a positive way, indicating the more nuanced evaluative reporting style in the Guardian, which represents the UK as a diverse set of communities.

In the Independent, the top keyword, Muslim, is often used to refer to collective numbers of Muslims or locations where there are large number of Muslims (e.g. communities, community, world and countries). To an extent, this reflects the more international focus of broadsheet newspapers more generally. The collocates anti and hate are used in Independent articles which report on negative feeling towards Muslims (with the phrase anti-Muslim hate appearing 21 times). The word first collocates with Muslim and is used in reporting new developments, typically cases where Muslims are taking on roles or being involved in activities for the first time. For example, there are references to the first Muslim woman on Manchester City Council, Scotland’s first Muslim leader and the first Muslim woman to lead an LGBTQ+ pride march (see Figure 10).

Figure 10 Image in the Independent (26 June 2023) of Saima Razzaq, the first Muslim woman to lead a LGBTQ+ pride march in Britain.

Figure 10Long description

The woman is wearing bracelets made of material and showing numerous colours on each wrist. She is smiling and holding her left arm across her chest in a horizontal position, with a clenched fist. She is holding her right arm at an angle slightly her forehead and is making the peace sign. In the far background are two large square buildings. The sky is blue.

Similarly, the references to Muslim women report them as breaking boundaries – forming a running club or making World Cup history, as well as being subject to prejudice by conversative voices or attacked in terror incidents. The following excerpt contains a quote from an attendee of an Islamic convention being held in the UK, which emphasises the diversity of Muslims.

Of the image tags which are key in articles containing the word Muslim, the tags Car, AutomotiveExterior and Road tend to belong to pictures of cars, several of which come from an article which shows CCTV footage relating to a crime where a Muslim man was set on fire as he walked home from a mosque. Another image is from a crime scene where two Muslim women were stabbed to death at a Muslim centre in Portugal. A third is from a story about a disabled Muslim man who was beaten to death in Delhi after eating at a Hindu temple, and a fourth shows CCTV footage of a Muslim woman being attacked with a concrete slab by a stranger. These images are connected to stories of Muslims as victims of hate crimes. The cars are somewhat incidental to the images as they appear in CCTV footage which helps to provide evidence of the crimes being committed, in some cases shocking readers with the impact of seeing the crime as it is being carried out. Independent articles therefore tend to focus on sympathetic and diverse representations of Muslims, particularly showing participation of Muslim women in politics and sport or Muslims as victims of crime.

We have already seen how the keyword Ramadan in the Mirror (258 occurrences) tends to be used in stories which tell readers about Ramadan and the practices associated with it for ordinary Muslims. This explains collocates like fasting, observing, days, month, year, holy and Muslims, as well as the food- and meal-related image tags associated with such articles. One image tag which collocates near the word Ramadan is Smile (occurring 17 times), and further examination of these images indicates that they show pictures of Muslim families, sitting around tables, sharing meals while smiling (see Figure 11 for an example). The text accompanying these Smile-tagged images presents a picture of the positives and negatives of the experience. Examples include: ‘Many of us experience broken sleep in Ramadan’; ‘I used to hide my period during Ramadan’; ‘getting through the day can be a struggle at times’; ‘The month is also a chance for Muslims to increase their prayers and give to charity as well as having many social gatherings for Iftar parties’. While the text sometimes presents Ramadan as challenging, the images enhance the positive representation of Ramadan as a form of worship, celebration and community for Muslims.

Figure 11 A Muslim family smiling during Ramadan in the Mirror (21 February 2023). Image tags: Food, Smile, Tableware, Table, Sharing, Plate, Cuisine, Window, Cooking, Dish, Hat and Room.

In the Sun, the top keyword, cops (86 occurrences), occurs with stories about suspected Islamist terror attacks, describing actions carried out by the police, such as shooting a suspect, launching a probe, interrogating someone or making an arrest. The key image tags associated with articles containing the word cops are from images that show ambulances, fire engines and police cars attending crime scenes (e.g. AutomotiveLighting, ModeofTransport, Wheel, EmergencyService, Security, EmergencyVehicle and Tire). Two related tags – Beard and FacialHair – tend to be used in mug shots of male suspects or men convicted of the crimes in the stories, such as terrorists Abdesalem Lassoued and Usman Khan, would-be terrorist Matthew King and preacher Anjem Choudary (as in the following headline):

Some mug shots or images are of men who have carried out hate crimes towards Muslims, including Darren Osborne, who killed one Muslim and injured nine more people when he drove a van into a mosque, or Jamie Barrow, who killed a Muslim family in an arson attack after an argument about household waste disposal. The images in these articles therefore show the identifiable faces of Muslim men who have been convicted of crimes, as well as men who have carried out crimes against Muslims. While Muslims are not always represented as criminals in these articles (as they are sometimes the victims), the overwhelming picture is a sense of Muslims being connected to violent crime in some way.

The Telegraph’s top keyword, Mr (479 occurrences), indicates a stylistic feature of this newspaper, in that it uses honorifics to refer to people. Of all the top keywords examined in this section, Mr is the only one which also appears in the top 10 keywords of other newspapers, also being in the lists for the Independent and the Express. The Telegraph’s style guide says ‘Generally: at first mention use the person’s name in full. Then use Mr, Mrs, Miss … ’.Footnote ⁸ The rule does not apply to sports players, actors and entertainers, while doctors, professors, the clergy, police officers, nobility and members of the army are given specific titles. Collocates of Mr include surnames (Wilders, Yousaf, Malik, Netanyahu, Shawcross and Hall) as well as verbs of speech like said, told and added. The term of address tends to be especially used when quoting people, and usually occurs later in articles, after the person’s full name has been given. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu occurs 25 times in the Telegraph, and in five cases (20%), he is described as making some sort of statement, through phrases like ‘declaring the country to be at war’, ‘issued his own statement of response’ and ‘has pledged to crush Hamas’. On the other hand, there are 14 instances of Mr Netanyahu, seven (50%) of which involve him speaking. There are several possible interpretations of the Telegraph’s use of Mr. It makes references to people appear formal, respectful and distant, as well as giving an appearance of equality (for those who do not hold titles like Dr or Professor). For example, Vladimir Putin is referred to as Mr Putin as opposed to President Putin, as he is called in other newspapers. Mr is also a convention associated with Anglo culture. As the Telegraph’s style guide notes, ‘We extend the Mr/Mrs rule to all foreigners: Mr Sarkozy, Mrs Merkel, Miss Dati’. The term is somewhat old-fashioned. Baker (Reference Baker and Collins2023: 419), for example, notes that preceding nouns of title like Mr show the greatest decline over time (in general written British English between 1931 and 2021) of any grammatical category.

There are two types of images associated with Mr. First, they are of male professionals. Closer examination of the collocating tags Tie, DressShirt, Employment and Interaction indicates that they are of political leaders from around the world, giving speeches or interacting with other people. However, the collocating tags Protest, Sky Crowd and Community are from images of protests. In such cases, there are quotes from politicians commenting chiefly on the Israel–Hamas conflict, for example:

In terms of how Mr interacts with images to contribute to the representations of Muslims and Islam in the Telegraph, one interpretation could be that it helps to construct parity, where Muslims are nominated in a similar manner to non-Muslims. As the term Mr conveys respect, it makes articles appear to be less negatively biased towards the person who is being written about. However, this interpretation does not chime with our earlier analyses of the Telegraph, which suggested representations associating Islam with conflict, angry protest and anti-Semitism. Perhaps, then, Mr functions as a legitimation strategy, helping the newspaper avoid criticism of less positive representations around certain types of people.

Of the 66 occurrences of the Times’ top keyword, writes, 51 occur in a pattern involving an opening bracket followed by a person’s full name, then the word writes, then a closing bracket (e.g. ‘Martyn Ziegler writes’). These cases refer to journalists and can sometimes involve articles where numerous journalists have worked on different parts of the story. These articles therefore involve somewhat dramatic stories which can take multiple perspectives. For example, an article entitled ‘Biden pledges to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile system – as it happened’ (10 October 2023) reports on the following: a statement from President Joe Biden about Hamas; criticisms by British home secretary, Suella Braverman; comments by the president of the World Bank; a meeting between Joe Biden and Bejamin Netanyahu; a report on bodies of Israelis killed by Hamas; opinion from the IMF on the impact of the conflict; and President Erdogan of Turkey’s offer of intervention in the conflict. Each of these sections has a different author preceded by the word ‘writes’, indicating who contributed towards the various parts.

The most distinctive images associated with writes tend to be either of politicians (Podium and FlagOfTheUnitedStates, the latter which usually appears with pictures of Joe Biden), crime and policing (HighVisibilityClothing and Security) or war and bombings (Atmosphere, Pollution, Car, Night, LandVehicle and Horizon).

These Times articles therefore show a more in-depth and wide-reaching analysis of news stories than articles from other newspapers, linking together a range of different international responses to global events. In terms of how this links specifically to representation of Islam and Muslims, though, the focus tends to be on associating them with war and conflict.

6.6 Stage 6: Comparison of Methods

In this final stage we provide answers to research question 1, regarding the extent to which the image tags provide new insights into the analysis of news discourse.

First, all of the stages of analysis we performed were valuable in shedding light on the distinctive representations of Islam and Muslims across the nine newspapers. In some cases, the analyses of the text and images directed us to focus on different kinds of representations. For instance, the Guardian keywords tended to relate to criticisms of the government’s counter-terrorism program while the Guardian key image tags directed us to articles about King Charles and his views on Islam. In considering just the text we identified the sometimes complex motivations behind some of the articles. Examination of the keywords made it clear which newspapers tended to have more negative representations of Muslims and Islam (the Daily Mail, Daily Star, Express, Sun, Telegraph and Times) and which ones were more positive (the Guardian, Independent and Mirror). However, the keywords also revealed other agendas. The Daily Mail and Express also wanted to represent the Labour Party negatively, so wrote about its leader coming into conflict with Muslims. The Mirror’s positive representations of Ramadan were supplemented with advertorials for chocolate advent calendars, and the Times was able to combine criticism of the SNP with criticism of Islam through negative articles about its leader, Humza Yousaf. A wider finding of our analysis is that there is often a dual agenda occurring in articles about Islam, where the aim is not just to represent Islam but to achieve some other purpose (e.g. criticising a political party or encouraging readers to purchase a product).

In other cases, the different analytical approaches confirmed representations we had already seen or helped to strengthen them. The multimodal analysis showed how images often acted in concert with the text to produce a more emotive effect. For example, the analysis of an Independent keyword, hate, indicated that it was often used in stories about hate crimes directed at Muslims. The fact that these stories also included photographs of a six-year-old boy who had been murdered in a hate crime and of his grieving father at a press conference helped to personalise the stories, giving them a stronger impact. Similarly, stories aimed at painting Keir Starmer in a negative light in the Express were helped by image choices which showed him at less than his best, caught in mid-speech or with poor lighting. Sometimes, then, the images provided a clearer view of a newspaper’s stance on a topic.

At other times, the images helped us to identify a representation which was not found through analysis of the text. The Daily Mail’s use of images that were tagged as Crowd indicated a form of representation that was based on collectivisation of Muslims, showing them all performing the same act (e.g. praying or protesting) in a way which removed individuality. Other Daily Mail images, which showed angry acts of protest or injured children, helped to legitimate the newspaper’s negative stance towards Hamas.

The ways that people were dressed in images were also relevant. For example, pictures tagged as Tie and DressShirt tended to depict (usually male) politicians, helping to emphasise their powerful stance. This was sometimes contrasted with images of ‘ordinary people’, as in the Daily Mail articles which showed Muslim council members in the US who had banned displays of pride flags. Also, consider the stories in the Daily Star which quoted women who challenged Islam’s gender norms. Such stories were often accompanied by sexualised images of these women in swimwear or underwear, suggesting that the articles were not only intended to be seen as being about challenges to Islam. Facial expressions such as smiles were one way that people could be characterised positively, and we also note the high number of images tagged with Smile from Mirror articles about Ramadan, or the Express photos of Keir Starmer, which tended not to show him smiling.

Even the more abstract image tags led to insights. The tags Line, Pattern and Rectangle attributed to Guardian images were related to positive representations of King Charles III through the issue of new stamps which included Islam, while the colour red was used in images in the Times and Telegraph as a way of symbolising the Labour Party. Sometimes the investigation of text surrounding an image tag revealed an aspect of a story that couldn’t have been predicted, allowing us to make links to representations in other parts of the corpus. For example, analysis of the Daily Mail keyword council revealed that it related to stories from the US about Muslims gaining positions of power and making controversial decisions. Meanwhile, analysis of text related to the image tag Room in the Independent revealed stories which showed American Muslims as victims of hate crimes. Both newspapers use the US as a source of stories, reporting on the cases which contribute towards the desired representation. Due to the shared language and cultural influences of the US and UK, stories from the US take on a somewhat prophetic resonance, with the implication that ‘it could happen here’ (the UK), although the two newspapers focus on very different aspects of US life as it relates to Islam.

Our analysis was limited in that in stages 1 and 2 (Sections 6.1 and 6.2) we only considered the top 10 keywords and top 10 key image tags for each newspaper, while stages 4 and 5 (Sections 6.4 and 6.5) involved a more in-depth analysis of a single key image tag or a single keyword for each newspaper. Focussing on just the top keywords or key image tags enables us to avoid accusations that we cherry-picked items that would perhaps have produced the most interesting findings. And while there was enough variation among these top items to allow us to cover numerous aspects of the corpus, it also meant that some items produced fewer insights than others. In particular, the keywords Mr and writes in the Telegraph and Times, respectively, were more indicative of stylistic aspects of these two newspapers. This indicates that in a future study where we might not be as concerned with evaluating methods, we would probably want to be more selective about which features of the corpus we devoted time to.

Yet overall, including the images in the analysis gave us a more accurate sense of what the articles were aiming to achieve and how they went about it. Although some articles used images for informational purposes (particularly those which showed maps or graphs), which aided clarity, other images appeared to aim for an emotional (or, in the case of the Star and Sun, a sexual) response from readers. Reading about a six-year-old boy who has been stabbed in a hate crime is likely to provoke a strong reaction, but seeing a picture of the boy at his birthday party makes the story unforgettable. We end this final stage, then, by arguing that there was definitely value in including the images in the analysis.