A new Rutgers study examining how the field of communication has studied anti-Muslim racism has found research on racism towards Arabs and Muslims is lacking in communication journals.

The study, “Communication and Race: the Paucity of Research on Anti-Muslim Racism,” by Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Deepa Kumar, was published in the journal Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.

Among other findings, Kumar’s research revealed that the new journal Communication and Race does not include Arabs or Muslims in its purview and alongside other historically underrepresented groups such as African Americans, Indigenous, Latinx and Asian Americans. “This shocking but not surprising,” Kumar said. “Even though hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been killed in the U.S. since 9/11, they were rendered invisible. We have much to do in the field of communication around the topic of race and racialization.”

Offering recommendations for addressing this lack of scholarship, Kumar said she included in her study “an overview of the work of key scholars of anti-Muslim racism (of the vast majority of whom are outside of the communication field) that should be engaged to expand communication scholarship on race.”

Among other findings, Kumar’s research revealed that the new journal Communication and Race does not include Arabs or Muslims in its purview and alongside other historically underrepresented groups such as African Americans, Indigenous, Latinx and Asian Americans.

Kumar said she undertook the study when she was asked to the contribute to the 20th Anniversary volume of the journal Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. “The invitation was to look at the field of communication and offer insights and perspectives,” Kumar said. “I chose to focus on my field of expertise—the racialization of Muslims. I then set out to understand how the field of communication has studied anti-Muslim racism. As such, my essay is a contribution to a theme that has been raised by other communication scholars of color under the rubric #communicationsowhite.”

Explaining the origin of the rubric, Kumar wrote, “In 2015, amidst the aftermath of the mass uprising following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the hashtag #Oscarsowhite gained prominence. It sought to expose the systematic dominance of whites in Hollywood. Media and Communication scholars soon followed suit, pointing to the marginalization of scholars of color in leading academic journals. After the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement gained significant traction, triggering widespread protests across the United States. Several scholars of color organized sessions at national and international conferences and published articles on the general theme of #Communicationsowhite.”

Kumar studied the Communication and Mass Media Complete database. She said, “I searched the database for articles that mention the term ‘Islamophobia’ in the abstract. The result was 118 journal articles,” Kumar said. “This might seem like an impressive number, but when put into context, it is less so. In the entire history of close to a thousand international journals, there are merely 118 articles or approximately one article per journal. All these articles were published after 9/11, with the first cluster appearing in 2006.”

When Kumar narrowed her search to “Islamophobia” in the title and “rac*” in the abstract (which included the use of multiple words associated with race such as racism, racialization, racial etc.), she found only 23 articles. When she searched using the full term “anti-Muslim racism” in the abstract and title, only 13 articles appeared (with a significant overlap with the 23 other articles).

“What this search reveals,” Kumar said, “is that while there has been some attention to Islamophobia understood as prejudice, negative representation, stereotypes, hate speech, etc. (in most of the 118 articles), there is very limited work on how the process of Muslim racialization operates.”

“As a field, we have much work to do,” Kumar wrote. “A recognition that interdisciplinarity is central to race scholarship is a starting point, but beyond this, we need to seek out scholars outside the field to help support and nurture this scholarship."

A meta-analysis of race scholarship in National Communication Association (NCA) and International Communication Association (ICA) journals between the years 2010-2020, Kumar notes found “six journals have consistently published work on race annually. They are: (1) Critical Studies in Media Communication, (2) Quarterly Journal of Speech, (3) Communication Culture & Critique, (4) Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and (5) Text and Performance Quarterly. The Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, with the absence of one year, has also consistently published race scholarship.”

When she studied all the articles published in these journals on anti-Muslim racism, the results were revealing. She found is that in their entire history, these journals had only published seven articles on Muslim racialization so far. “Even the journals most hospitable to work on race have published little on anti-Muslim racism” she said.

“As a field, we have much work to do,” Kumar wrote. “A recognition that interdisciplinarity is central to race scholarship is a starting point, but beyond this, we need to seek out scholars outside the field to help support and nurture this scholarship. Moreover, those who do race work should not be made to pay what is called a ‘cultural tax,’ where a disproportionate amount of service labor is carried by scholars of color, which often impedes their own institutional success. If race indeed matters, then much more profound structural change is in order.”

Learn more about the Communication and Journalism and Media Studies Departments at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.