Media Coverage of Two Violent Events with Muslim Perpetrators in Australia and the Netherlands

This paper compares media coverage to violent events in Australia and the Netherlands: the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in November 2004 and the “Sydney siege”, a hostage-taking crisis in Sydney in December 2014. Both events were associated with Muslim perpetrators. We analyse media coverage by three high-circulation newspapers in each country in the week after the events. Our focus is on the public representation of Muslims in the news media, as well as the broader representation of multiculturalism. We find significant differences between the public reactions in two countries. Media reporting was more nuanced in Australia than in The Netherlands, where more negative reporting on Muslims could be found.