Medya ve Din Araştırmaları Dergisi (Jun 2022)
Reproduction of Islamophobia in a Digital Cloak: An Analysis on Digital War Game “Call of Duty”
Abstract
Islamophobia popularized as an anti-Muslim public discourse in the decade following the al-Qaida attack on the Twin-towers and Pentagon in the United States of America. Following the attacks, numerous scholarly studies have confirmed that anti-Muslim prejudice, commonly referred to as Islamophobia, has become a prominent feature of Western societies. The perception of threat at home placed Muslims at the focus as the Christian West’s “Other.” Within this context, this study contributes to the debate on the meaning of ‘Islamophobia’ based on generalizations, assumptions, and stereotypes of Islam and Muslims. Following discourse analysis as its primary methodology, the article deconstructs the representations of Islam and Muslims in the most popular digital war game, Call of Duty. Thus, this article contributes to how digital war games communicate misleading stereotypes and have been involved in stigmatizing Islam and Muslims and perpetuating Islamophobia in the context of the US-led Global War on Terror. Based on its analysis of the game, the article concludes that the stereotyped group is portrayed more often in a violent-terrorism context than in a nonviolent context where a solid associative link between terrorism and Arabs is established.
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