Ayaz Naseem talks about hate speech, freedom of expression, multicultural education, and his “The Online Other” project.
The Online Other
Lesson Plans and Student Guidelines
In this post 9/11 climate, prejudice and racism is directed at Arabs, middle easterners and those who practice Islam. How does it manifest in mainstream media and what is the resulting public discourse? This three-hour lesson plan addresses this question. The lesson plan was developed to teach CEGEP or undergraduate students critical media skills by examining the how the media reported two murder cases.
In June 2009 Mohammad Shafia, an Afghan immigrant to Canada, conspired with his wife and son to kill his first wife and three daughters by drowning them in Rideau Canal near Kingston Ontario. In May 2012 Luka Rocco Magnotta killed and dismembered an international Chinese student in Montreal. These events created an intense civic engagement in both online and offline environments.
In this lesson plan, students will critically examine:
- The public conversation that ensued over the Shafia and Magnotta cases.
- The means in which the media represented both cases. Students will identify examples of hate speech and explain how the Shafia case represents a post-911 discourse shaped by the media.
References
A list of additional references with links to articles on the Magnotta and Shafia cases for teachers are provided.
Current Security Environment References
Articles published by the New York Times in 2015 which serve to shape the current security environment in the United States were collated in a reference list. This list would be useful for case study research, or media research on the role of the New York Times plays in promoting American militarism and the War on Terror. The abundance of articles that appeared in The New York Times in that one year demonstrates the prevalence of the discourse and how that prevalence serves to keep a population fearful of the “other”.
Islamophobia References
These articles were extracted from the academic and practitioner literature and mainstream media. It provides a good overview of the subject matter in that it defines Islamophobia, describes its origins, summarizes current research and provides online examples of hate speech and hate crimes. This reference list would be useful for research purposes; teaching about 911, terror, trauma and to foster critical media awareness skills in the classroom.