Social Construction of Reality Television: An Analysis of Print Journalism Coverage of All-American Muslim

Understandably, the perception of Muslims in America was negative after September 11, 2001. Immediately after the terrorist attacks, scholars sought to understand the impact of the media coverage on perceptions of Muslim Americans. Nisbet and Shanahan (2004) found that less than a third of Americans felt that Islamic values were similar to Christian values. This study analyzes 271 articles from American newspapers and news wires covering the television show All-American Muslim, which was canceled after one season on The Learning Channel (TLC) (Goldberg, 2012).