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arious media platforms are continuing to silence minorities through the stereotyping of religious, ethnic and sexual minorities, a panel heard Tuesday. The stereotypes generally preserve stigmas against these minorities, speakers at the Global Media Dialogue said.

The media center manager for the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research, Atidel Mejbri, who recently studied and analyzed how Arab women were represented on traditional media sites, said these women felt discouraged from participating in debates on issues that actually concerned them.

“When graphic images are shown on some sites, women rarely participate actively to discuss these images. These women are satisfied with the little support they get as they refuse to comment on discourse involving violence and soon withdraw from the debate, due to the excessive amount of profanity and obscene words used in the discussion.”

She was among speakers on the panel of media and marginalization at the event held from Monday to Wednesday at the University of Indonesia (UI).

The center’s study analyzed 130 posts from two of the most popular and most liked pan-Arab Facebook pages for traditional media, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and also one national site respectively from Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Tunisia, Syria, Morocco and Lebanon.

“Some of the results [of the study] are the digital gender divide of internet use and access. Another […] is that some media pages appear like spaces where a specific group of users, mainly men, are involved in chauvinistic violent ways, especially when talking about women issues,” Mejbri said.

Scholar Mohamed O. Almoghayer at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University said most Hollywood movies portrayed Arabs “as brutal, heartless, uncivilized religious fanatics”.

“They should know that 15 million Arabs are Christian [...] They are peaceful and should not be seen as suicide bombers. Also, the representation of Arab women as belly dancers in inappropriate clothing is very condescending for them,” he said.

A professor from the University of Dhaka, Gitiara Nasreen, said as the government and media were powerful, they should show that Islam should not be feared.

“The people should find ways to speak out so that false news about the religion does not spread form one source to another. The only way to fight wrong information is to gain right information,” she added.

She added alternative streams of information through social media should be continually used. “[…] we should always try to establish a culture where the information is flowing freely so that people can verify information,” she said.

Research center head of the Jakarta-based London School of Public Relations, Lestari Nurhajati, said sensitivities and the threat of criminalization of the press were among obstacles of mainstream media to report positively on sexual minorities.

However, the media should be aware of the dangers of reporting from one side, “which are usually those who are against LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people]”, Lestari said.

Meanwhile speakers on the panel of freedom of expression said one major problem was hate speech.

Rym Benarous, a Tunisian journalist, said the nation’s 2011 revolution was the starting point of freedom of expression.

“We were living in fear and silence […]; following the revolution, freedom of expression has been a precious gain for us and it is threatened by hate speech,” Benarous said. Many do not understand the difference between hate speech and free speech, she said. “People are divided because of hate speech,” she added.

Nadire Mater from the IPS Communication Foundation said in countering hate speech, journalism could establish an independent council or body of journalists to filter hate speech.

Andre Somme, a Norwegian journalist who has reported from war zones, said hate speech could be avoided by balancing reports.

“As a journalist it is very easy to report from one side, but it is very difficult to meet another side; for example, it is very easy to meet the Afghanistan forces, but not the Taliban,” Andre said.

He noted the widespread online propaganda such as that spread by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Ming Kuok Lim, an adviser on communication at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), cited the body’s media information literacy program starting from the primary level of education.
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— The writers are interns at The Jakarta Post