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Muslim women face unique obstacles in American politics. The politicization of Muslim women has regained momentum after the 2016 election of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Our study examines attributes of Representative Ilhan Omar in legacy and social media. Muslim women are portrayed as submissive, oppressed, and exotic in Western media. Ilhan Omar has challenged this narrative by becoming the first veiled Muslim woman in the U.S. House of Representatives.
We focus on Twitter because it is the platform that former President Trump used to communicate with his conservative base and because right-wing social media accounts continued to use it even after saying they would move to the alternative communication platform Parler.1 Furthermore, during the time frame of this study, May 2019 to January 2020, Parler did not have responses on some of our keyword/hashtag combinations. Also, the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) editorial stance tends to be conservative as well. The current article examines the interaction between the conservative newspaper and Twitter hashtags that both support and oppose Omar. While in office, President Trump had targeted Omar's national origin, religion, and immigration status. To measure the overall internet interest in Omar, Google Trends was used. These three platforms give the ability to see how interest is influenced by WSJ, then echoed by Twitter and Google Trends. Twitter allows for tone and content analysis while Google Trends shows the overall interest in the keyword.
The Trump presidency was unique in many ways because of his strategies, which included lying and name-calling to divert media attention away from his policies.2 Further, he relied on support from a number of right-wing news media outlets, including Fox News, to embrace ultra-nationalist, “anti-immigrant and xenophobic messages.”3 When he made racist and Islamophobic comments about Omar, conservative media outlets amplified his messages.4
This study employs intermedia attribute agenda setting to examine the relationship between online search data, the WSJ, and Twitter. Through this examination, we can further examine how third-level agenda setting works, while also documenting the effects of traditional media on Twitter during the Trump presidency in this particular case.
Attributes of Ilhan Omar
Attribute agenda setting describes the attributes of an object in the media, which can be cognitive or...