Although many people do not take Islamophobia as a serious issue, Islamophobia is becoming one of the leading threats against peace and unity in Europe. Islamophobia is not just something that happened over the night, it is a series of hate crime, discrimination, and vilification that accumulated in past years against Muslims in Europe.
The diploma thesis presents the impact of the media in Austria and Slovenia with the aim of focusing on acceptances of Islam in both countries as so outline the extent to which Islamophobia reaches. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is an examination of media interference in the religious world of Austria and Slovenia.
The paper also presents an explanation of Islam as a religion, for an easier understanding of the concept of Islamophobia, as so the teaching of the Holy Quran in order to clarify misconceptions about Islam.
The thesis addresses the emergence of Islamophobia in both countries and the role and impact of the media on it. We use a descriptive, historical, and comparative method. In the research part, we focus on examing the Parliamentary election 2018 in Slovenia and the Parliamentary election 2017 in Austria in order to present the leading causes of the victory of a particular political party and their connection with Islamophobia. Throughout the research, we found that the media have a huge impact, generally on society, but when it comes to certain topics, such as Islamophobia, data shows that in both countries there are media with a high rate of discrimination and hatred towards Muslims. The media were used in a way to produce fear and rejection of Muslims by society in both countries. In order to show the general influence of the media, especially on the rate of Islamophobia, we presented the role of the media during the elections and came to the results that the media are actually one of the key factors in succeeding of political parties and in increasing Islamophobia in countries. Thus, the Austrian media were the main source of information and coverage of political campaigns, which advocated the fight against so-called political Islam, and thus presented their campaign as an ideal protector of citizens in the fight against Islam. Unfortunately, data on media consumption display the huge public interest which indicates that the media have not only succeeded in attracting viewers but have also succeeded in their ultimate goal, influencing society to vote for parties that support anti-Islamic acts. In the case of Slovenia, we have the same scenario, where right-wing political party owns certain media and use them especially in time of elections to promote their right-wing policy of anti-migrations and anti-Islamic aims. Even though we do not have data
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about media consumption in this case, still media have succeeded to influence society to vote for the party that advocates anti-migration policy.
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