Media narratives fabricate terrorist identities to serve careers and ratings.

Evidence

With her career as a stripper turned supposed terrorist, the Doll represents the perfect “story”: a blend of sex and violence that sends TV and radio discussion shows into a frenzy. Her decidedly “un-Islamic” lifestyle is projected as the perfect deep cover for a terrorist and feeds paranoia in a society where everyone can fall under suspicion. Orchestrating this reaction is Richard Cody, TV host and ace reporter whose career at the start of the novel is on the slide and who thus sees the Doll as his passport back to prominence. In cahoots with a battery of careerist politicians and rent-a-quote security experts, Cody concocts a version of the Doll’s life and motivations unrecognizable to her as she vainly tries to evade capture by the authorities and the stereotyping snares of his narrative. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 356

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s analysis of Hamid and Naqvi — this is a mechanism (media fabrication) by which fiction shows Islamophobia being constructed rather than merely reflected. — connects to: Fictional TV portrayals of Islam shaped actual US and UK counterterrorism programs.; Media framed a humanitarian’s conviction as a web of terror uncovered.; State actors manufacture folk devils that the media then amplify as secondary definers