Comparative Perspectives on Muslim Representations on Social Media in Northeast Asia

Social media functions as a site of resistance and negotiation, creating space for voices that challenge hegemony, while simultaneously reinforcing dominant narratives and power relations rooted in offline contexts. This paper provides a comparative analysis of representations of Islam and Muslims on social media in China, South Korea, and Japan from the 2010s to the 2020s. It examines how Muslims engage in self-representation and how non-Muslim majority populations portray Islam and Muslims in each national context. While Muslims in Korea and Japan are often represented as an “Other” due to their relatively small Muslim populations, in China, the state emphasizes the Chineseness of Chinese Muslims through Sinicization of Islam. Despite the prevalence of stereotypical portrayals – particularly those associating Muslimness with extremism and terrorism – Muslim actors across the three contexts use social media to negotiate and respond to dominant representations, with forms and visibility of such engagement varying across sociopolitical contexts.