News Framing as Identity Performance: Religion Versus Race in the American-Muslim Press

This study examines how two publications with a common religious affiliation—“Muslim/Islamic”—but different racial affiliations—“indigenous/Black” and “immigrant/Arab”—frame news events. It develops two interrelated ideas. First, identity is not simply an “individual level” but also a higher, “organizational level” of influence on news. Second, news organizations perform their identities in how they frame news. Comparative frame analysis reveals that identity performance, even at the organizational level, is context sensitive. The two publications, Muslim Journal and Islamic Horizons, use similar news frames when their shared religious identity is salient, but framing diverges in contexts where their differing racial identities become active. Racial identities also color how these publications construct and relate to “America.” Conceptualizing news organizations as reflexive actors with fluid identities and news frames as the contextual identity performance of these actors allows us to see how news media simultaneously reflect and reproduce social reality.