Media frames create a market in which fear of Muslims is a sellable commodity.

Evidence

These frames determine the way events are rendered and influence how they are perceived by audiences. Richard Flanagan’s novel The Unknown Terrorist is concerned with the utility of just such news media frames and also how they are open to manipulation and extension. Their ubiquity and dissemination in a globalized media landscape testify to a practical concern for what certain types of story are worth in a market. In the case of Muslims and terror, this becomes, in effect, a market for Islamophobia. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 354

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s hinge project — the ‘market for Islamophobia’ concept gives a critical vocabulary for framing Hamid and Naqvi’s novels within the economy of fear-driven storytelling.
• DEFINE: Introduces Karim’s concept of ‘cognitive scripts’ shaped by recurring journalistic frames on ‘Muslim terrorism.’
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘The market for Islamophobia’ as a lens for reading any post-9/11 novel — tracing which stories the market rewards and which it silences.
• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that fear has a market value, and that fiction participates in it, is a dense reframing of the entire debate about representation of Muslims in Anglophone literature — not a passing observation.