Gender, Diversity, and Mediatized Conflicts of Religion: Lessons from Scandinavian Case Studies

Drawing on empirical data from the Scandinavian project Engaging
with Conflicts in Mediatized Religious Environments (CoMRel), this chapter analyses the findings from case-studies in: classrooms, online communities, public service media (PSM) production rooms, local news outlets, and interreligious dialogue initiatives. Gender and ethno-religious diversity receive particular analytical attention. We discuss the multiple ways in which various social actors in Scandinavia engage with mediatized conflicts about religion, and the ways in which dominant media frames are replicated, contested, and nuanced. A main finding is that mediatized conflicts about religion are symptomatically entangled in a dichotomy between good or bad religion, and that social actors in the diverse settings are often cast in the role of ‘the ideal citizen’ or ‘the religious other’. Despite attempts at going beyond enmeshed discourses of immigration and othering, and a general awareness of the dominant media frame ‘Islam as a bad religion’, the frame proves difficult to overcome.