Islamophobia, Ideology, and Discourse Analysis in Ecuadorian Social Media

Abstract

Although it has been repeatedly suggested in western media coverage that the countries of Latin America are currently or could become future covert breeding grounds for Muslim extremism, there is no substantive evidence to support this otherwise imagined threat. On the contrary, Catholicism is so widespread that the estimated Muslim population across the continent is projected for the next forty years to remain the same relative to the whole (0.1%). Despite this realization, however, Islamophobia is on the rise even in Latin America. In this context, the present study extracts and examines the most comment-provoking statuses posted during a two-year period on the Facebook page of the Ahmadiyya community of Quito, Ecuador, in order to identify the ideological-linguistic stances reflected in and discursively created, reproduced, and reified through almost 600 responses by other users. In doing so, this study employs Critical Discourse Analysis to examine (1) the types of multimodal messages presented to the public; (2) the way in which the ‘Other’ is conclusively, collaboratively defined; and (3) the discursive strategies employed both in negative Other-presentation and in solidarity-building measures, ultimately indicating religious, linguistic, and nationalistic group positioning recreated in the ‘online world.’