With the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric and incidents also comes the rise of the term “Islamophobia” – a new report published by the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University says that the U.S. media has embraced the word more than any other time in recent history. Use of the word in news headlines quadrupled from 2014 to 2015. In 2014, there were just 147 news articles with “Islamophobia” in the headline, but in 2015, there were 542 instances. For comparison, in 2002 there were only 22 headlines with the word “Islamophobia.”
“A few years ago, the term was rarely used,” the Bridge Initiative report states. “It primarily appeared in obscure blogs and foreign outlets, or in right-wing or explicitly anti-Muslim websites that contested the term (and the reality of anti-Muslim prejudice.) When it did appear in mainstream outlets, it was almost always put in quotation marks.”
