MEDIA STIGMATIZATION OF MUSLIMS
MEDIA STIGMATIZATION OF MUSLIMS

Author(s): Ivan Ejub Kostić
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Political behavior
Published by: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji
Summary/Abstract: In his book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, sociologist Erving Goffman defines stigma as something “unusual or bad about the moral status of the signifier”.209 Goffman also points out that society plays a pivotal role when it comes to determining characteristics that are considered usual and natural, and that not all undesirable characteristics are contentious, but just the ones opposing the accepted stereotype about “what a certain type of person ought to be.” Therefore, a person who doesn’t fit in the categories previously mandated by the majority becomes defined as a “less desirable kind – in the extreme, a person who is quite thoroughly bad, or dangerous, or weak”.210 In that way, society creates an ideology to explain the different forms of the inferiority of a person (or a group), whereby it tends to rationalize its hostile attitude based on existing differences, which include the following of different religious teachings.

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