Journalism’s Brian J. Bowe Named Finalist for the 2016 JMCQ Outstanding Research Article Award

Brian J. Bowe, assistant professor of Journalism at Western Washington University, was recently named as one of five finalists for the 2016 Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly Outstanding Research Article Award.

His article, titled “Night and Day: An Illustration of Framing and Moral Foundations in the Oklahoma Sharia Amendment Campaign,” focuses on the media framing of Muslims during the Oklahoma Sharia Amendment Campaign. The article was co-authored by Jennifer Hoewe, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama.

Bowe grew up in Michigan around several large Muslim communities. His interest in Islam began in high school when he visited a mosque for a class project. Bowe made many Muslim friends through this and had a hard time understanding how the media often depicts Muslims.

“A big problem in our media discourse is that we tend to talk about Muslims more than we listen to them,” said Bowe. “For a long time, I thought things would improve as the Muslim population in the U.S. grew but I’ve been studying this topic for nearly a decade, and in some ways I think it’s gotten worse in that time.”

Bowe believes his research is important so others can see these issues and offer solutions that will be grounded in knowledge; he will teach an honors seminar on Religion and the Media next quarter.

The article is now available online to read "open access," which means it is free and available online at http://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/10.1177/1077699016628806/full.

For more information on the JMCQ Outstanding Research Award, please contact the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication at aejmc@aejmc.org.