Media and Environmental Resilience of Muslim Communities: A Community Development Perspective on Islam Channel’s YouTube Content

Community development concerns the ways in which people mobilise shared resources and build the capacity to improve social and environmental wellbeing. Environmental communication contributes to this process by making risks, responsibilities, and possible responses visible in public life. Media reporting shapes how these issues are understood and discussed (B​o​y​k​o​f​f​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​B​o​y​k​o​f​f​,​ ​2​0​0​7), providing a resource for environmental knowledge and collective engagement. The availability and framing of environmental information therefore offer a useful starting point for examining the contribution of digital media to community development.

Faith-based media can connect environmental messages with the moral and ethical traditions of religious communities (Jenkins, 2010). This potential is relevant to Muslim communities in climate-vulnerable regions, including parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlight heat stress, water insecurity, sea-level rise, and agricultural disruption as risks affecting everyday community life (IPCC, 2023a; IPCC, 2023b). Examining how Islamic media address these issues can clarify the resources their content offers for public discussion and environmental understanding.

The UK-based Islam Channel provides a case for exploring these questions through its YouTube content. Environmental communication research highlights relationships among media, public understanding, and engagement with climate issues (Moser, 2010; Pearce et al., 2019). Faith-based broadcasting also offers relevant examples: D​e​H​a​n​a​s​ ​(​2​0​0​9​) examined an environmental radio campaign involving Muslim women in London. The present study extends this discussion by examining the place of environmental themes alongside social and economic concerns in a selected Islam Channel video corpus.

Islamic theological traditions contain several resources for this discussion. Khalifah fil ardh (stewardship on Earth) provides a normative basis for ecological responsibility at individual and community levels (Izzi Dien, 2000). Fasad, understood as corruption or destruction, offers an ethical basis for opposing environmental damage, while hima (protected areas) informs community-based natural resource management (Faruqui et al., 2001). These ideas connect with broader discussions of religious actors and sustainable development (Palmer & Finlay, 2003). Their relevance to environmental communication lies in the possibility of relating ecological knowledge to values and practices familiar to Muslim communities.

The study has three objectives: to compare environmental, social and economic related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) themes in the selected videos; to examine the narrative contexts of environmental content; and to develop recommendations for community-oriented environmental communication on faith-based digital media.

The analytical framework developed for this study adopts a community development perspective focused on environmental knowledge conveyed through media, its cultural and normative framing, and opportunities for discussion and action around shared responsibilities. Sustainability governance provides a broader institutional context (B​i​e​r​m​a​n​n​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​1​2). The literature review and bibliometric map situate the video analysis within faith-based media, environmental communication and the SDGs.

The study combines qualitative content analysis with a systematic literature review and exploratory bibliometric mapping. The literature components establish the research context and inform interpretation, while the video analysis provides the primary empirical material for examining SDG themes and their implications for community-oriented environmental communication. The SDG framework guided video coding.

Combining bibliometric mapping with qualitative literature synthesis has methodological parallels in digital-platform research (S​c​h​ü​l​e​r​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​P​e​t​r​i​k​,​ ​2​0​2​1). Research on climate journalism also informs the study’s attention to thematic coverage and narrative context (Schäfer & Painter, 2021).

The qualitative approach supports close attention to meaning and context in media content (C​r​e​s​w​e​l​l​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​S​i​n​l​e​y​,​ ​2​0​1​7). The analysis examines the frequency of coded themes and the ways in which selected examples relate environmental concerns to community life, drawing on environmental communication research (Mahl & Guenther, 2023).

Islam Channel’s YouTube channel was purposively selected as a case of faith-based digital broadcasting. Its coverage of social, economic, and environmental issues offers a basis for comparing SDG-related themes within a defined sample of media content.

The sample comprised 18 videos uploaded in 2023–2024 and selected through a review of the channel’s upload history in February 2025. Videos were eligible when their title or on-screen description indicated substantive attention to at least one social, economic, or environmental SDG theme and a transcript or reliable subtitle track was available. Purely devotional, liturgical, or entertainment videos without a discernible SDG-related theme were excluded. Full source details, upload dates, durations, and transcript languages are provided in Table A1 in the Appendix.

Screening began with video titles using terms organised around the three dimensions: environmental terms such as climate, water, environment, and sustainability; economic terms such as economy, poverty, development, and livelihood; and social terms such as education, health, justice, and community. The dialogue or transcript of potentially relevant videos was then checked for substantive SDG content. Only the 18 included videos were retained in the selection record. Selection was based on thematic relevance rather than running time. Transcripts were imported into NVivo 14 for coding.

The unit of coding was a discrete transcript segment, typically one to several sentences, addressing a social, economic, or environmental theme. A segment could receive more than one dimension code when its content spanned multiple themes. The environmental assignments were subsequently reviewed against the operational definition, yielding a final total of 11 environmental, 35 economic, and 53 social references. Percentages use the resulting 99 coding assignments as the denominator.

Segment boundaries followed topic continuity. A continuous discussion of one topic was retained as a single reference even when it extended across several sentences; a new reference began when the topic or SDG dimension shifted. Greetings, transitional remarks, and material unrelated to the three dimensions were left uncoded.

Environmental coding included conflict-related damage and resource conditions discussed in the Gaza videos, such as white-phosphorus munitions, damaged infrastructure, and restricted access to food and water. This approach recognises environmental harm within humanitarian and political narratives, drawing on the relationship between natural resources and armed conflict (L​e​ ​B​i​l​l​o​n​,​ ​2​0​0​1). It encompasses both environmental content embedded in conflict reporting and content devoted more directly to environmental issues.

Scopus and Web of Science were searched in February 2025. The Scopus export contained 591 English-language records from 2021–2025; filtering by publication year and title/abstract relevance retained 251. These were combined with 50 Web of Science records to form the 301-record bibliometric dataset. Before literature screening, 14 duplicates identified in EndNote 21 were manually confirmed and removed (Figure 1).

Both databases used the following Boolean query, applied to TITLE-ABS-KEY in Scopus and TS in Web of Science: (“climate change” OR “environmental communication” OR “water resource”) AND (“Islamic media” OR “faith-based media” OR “Islam”) AND (“sustainable development goal*” OR “SDG” OR “sustainable development” OR “community development”).

Table A2 and Table A3 in the Appendix summarise the six studies included in the narrative synthesis and six background references. The background references are not counted among the studies included in Figure 1. Eligibility required an Islamic/faith-based media focus (criterion 1) or an environmental-communication focus (criterion 2), together with SDG relevance.

The SDG connection could be explicit in the original study or identified through thematic mapping by the present authors. E​l​m​a​r​a​i​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​1​3​), A​l​ ​S​h​o​g​r​a​n​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​4​), and Khan et al. (2021) use the latter basis, as identified in Table A3 in the Appendix. Each meets the faith-based-media criterion, while the six background records remain outside the scope of the formal synthesis.

Figure 2 presents the VOSviewer 1.6.20 term co-occurrence map based on the titles and abstracts of 301 records, using full counting and a minimum occurrence of three. No additional thesaurus or exclusion list was applied. Node size represents term frequency, link thickness co-occurrence strength, and colour cluster membership. The green cluster covers environmental and economic sustainability, the blue cluster social indicators and SDG targets, and the red cluster education and institutional sustainability.

The six eligible studies contribute complementary perspectives (see Table A2 and A3 in the Appendix). Four address Islamic or faith-based media in relation to education (E​l​m​a​r​a​i​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​1​3), philanthropy (M​a​k​h​r​u​s​,​ ​2​0​1​8), freedom of expression (Khan et al., 2021), and digital addiction (A​l​ ​S​h​o​g​r​a​n​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​2​4). Two add environmental perspectives through the ecological dimension of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) digital platforms (Isensee et al., 2025) and media strategies for environmental awareness (Mialkovska et al., 2024). The six background records concern broader relationships among digitalisation, media, education, and the SDGs (A​b​b​a​s​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​Z​a​m​a​n​,​ ​2​0​2​4; A​l​m​a​w​l​a​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​2​5; D​e​ ​L​u​c​a​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​2​2; R​u​k​i​y​a​t​i​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​2​5; S​h​a​o​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​Y​i​n​,​ ​2​0​2​5; Xu, 2022). Across the 12 assessed records, none examines Islamic media content through all three SDG dimensions simultaneously. This synthesis motivates a closer examination of environmental themes alongside social and economic concerns in the selected video corpus.

Qualitative analysis followed the iterative approach of Miles & Huberman (1994), with NVivo 14 used to organise transcripts and coding. Three parent dimensions social, economic, and environmental aspects were defined from the SDG framework, with thematic interpretation refined as the transcripts were read.

Coding was conducted by one researcher, with consistency checked through time-delayed re-coding and discussion with co-authors. Thematic frequencies are reported as counts of coding assignments. Individual SDG numbers are used as interpretive mappings in the discussion rather than separate NVivo child-node counts. Table A4 in the Appendix provides the full codebook.

Environmental aspects concern tangible environmental damage or resource conditions, including chemical contamination, water and sanitation infrastructure, ecosystems, and resource scarcity. Economic aspects concern livelihoods, income, costs, and material hardship or capacity. Social aspects concern community wellbeing, education, displacement, identity, rights, and civic or political participation. These dimensions are mapped respectively to the environmental SDGs 6, 7, 13, 14, and 15; SDG 1 for the economic content identified; and SDGs 16, 10, 1, and 11 for the social content.

The relative frequency of environmental coding was compared descriptively with social and economic coding. Selected passages and cases were then interpreted in terms of the environmental knowledge, cultural connections, and practical concerns they brought into community-oriented reporting.

Public engagement data for the 18 videos were collected through the YouTube Data API v3 on 8 September 2026. The videos.list endpoint (part = statistics) supplied view counts, likes, and total comments; commentThreads.list supplied top-level comments ordered by relevance, up to a maximum of 100 per video. This yielded 801 comments, with a mean of 44.5 per video and a range of 2–100. Two videos yielded fewer than five sampled comments, and none had commenting disabled. Public dislike counts were unavailable, so likes, comments, and sentiment were reported separately.

Comment sentiment was analysed using VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner), a lexicon- and rule-based tool for short social-media text (H​u​t​t​o​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​G​i​l​b​e​r​t​,​ ​2​0​1​4). Compound scores range from −1 to +1. Scores of at least 0.05 were classified as positive, scores of −0.05 or less as negative, and intermediate scores as neutral. For each video, the mean compound score and the percentages of positive and negative comments were calculated. Approximately 7% of sampled comments were in languages other than English, primarily Arabic and Albanian. For these comments, the automated assessment relied on emojis and punctuation recognised by VADER.

NVivo 14 was used to examine the distribution of social, economic, and environmental themes in the 18-video sample. Figure 3 summarizes the coding assignments accoss the treee dimension.

Social welfare, education, and Gaza-related political and humanitarian issues feature prominently in the sample. Environmental issues receive less attention and are often discussed within these wider concerns, pointing to opportunities to develop more sustained coverage of climate, water security, and ecological systems.

Environmental themes account for 11 of the 99 coding assignments (11%), compared with 35 economic assignments (35%) and 53 social assignments (54%; Figure 3). This distribution makes environmental communication the least represented dimension in the sample and provides a starting point for considering how faith-based media could give environmental knowledge a more prominent place in community-oriented programming. Environmental communication research emphasizes the importance of media coverage in making climate and sustainability issues visible and meaningful to the public (Schäfer & Painter, 2021; Pearce et al., 2019; Moser, 2010). Faith-based media can contribute to this process by connecting environmental information with religious values and everyday community concerns (Jenkins, 2010). Such communication also needs to remain attentive to differences within faith-based audiences, since religiosity does not have a uniformly positive relationship with media trust (G​o​l​a​n​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​D​a​y​,​ ​2​0​1​0).

Environmental justice adds a further dimension to this discussion. Communities in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa face serious climate-related risks, including heat stress, water insecurity, sea-level rise, and disruption to agriculture (IPCC, 2023a). Coverage that connects these risks with local livelihoods and practical responses would strengthen the relevance of environmental reporting to Muslim communities in climate-vulnerable settings.

Three videos listed in Table 1 illustrate different connections between the SDGs and community concerns. The ICJ-submission video (Video 9) links to SDGs 16, 10, 3, 6, and 17, with Palestinian access to water and sanitation providing a clear environmental connection within a humanitarian and legal account. The Deir el-Balah video (Video 6) describes repeated displacement and the loss of stable settlement and community infrastructure, connecting with SDGs 1, 10, 11, and 16. The Victoria Derbyshire debate (Video 12) concerns political representation among British Muslims and links to SDGs 16 and 10. Together, these examples show how social, political, and environmental concerns can enter community-oriented reporting through different narrative contexts.

All 7 videos containing environmental references also contain social references, and 6 of the 7 contain economic references (Table 1). The exception is the video on white-phosphorus munitions (Video 4), which contains environmental and social references. This shared-video pattern places environmental themes alongside the social and economic concerns already prominent in the sample. The relationship between environmental vulnerability and political conflict provides a useful context for interpreting these examples (K​e​l​l​e​y​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​1​7). Conflict reporting can make environmental damage visible through its consequences for livelihoods, infrastructure, and daily life. It also offers an entry point for explaining longer-term issues such as resource protection, climate adaptation, and community recovery.

Water resource management illustrates this connection. M​e​k​o​n​n​e​n​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​H​o​e​k​s​t​r​a​ ​(​2​0​1​6​) estimated that four billion people worldwide experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year, while Schewe et al. (2014) projected growing water-scarcity pressures under climate change. Islamic traditions of hima (protected areas) and restrictions on water monopolization offer culturally resonant resources for community water governance (Faruqui et al., 2001). Connecting these ethical principles with water science could link immediate concerns about access and scarcity to long-term stewardship. For the present video analysis, Table A5 documents the 11 environmental coding references and their original evidence IDs, linking the coded passages to the counts in Table 1.

Table 2 summarises public engagement for the 18 videos and VADER sentiment scores for 801 sampled top-level comments. Data retrieved via the YouTube Data API v3 on 8 September 2026 showed totals of 640,008 views, 23,684 likes and 5,075 comments. Across the 18 videos, the unweighted mean of the video-level average compound sentiment scores was +0.17; the corresponding means of the positive- and negative-comment percentages were 54.6% and 26.4%. The Deir el-Balah displacement video (Video 6) had the fewest views (813) and the most negative average sentiment (−0.37), while the ICJ-submission video (Video 9) received 8,382 views and an average sentiment of +0.37. These measures describe responses to each video as a whole. Negative sentiment around humanitarian testimony may express distress, grief or disapproval concerning the events depicted, so it should not be treated as a direct measure of approval of the video.

This study connects the distribution of environmental themes in faith-based digital media with the knowledge and cultural resources available for community development. Within the broader agenda of sustainability governance (B​i​e​r​m​a​n​n​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​1​2), media can provide a space for relating environmental problems to shared responsibilities and practical responses. The comparatively small environmental share in the sample therefore invites attention to how programming could more consistently connect ecological concerns with community life.

From this perspective, the contribution of faith-based media depends on the breadth, continuity, and practical relevance of its environmental reporting, as well as the balance among SDG themes. The priorities below build on the observed content pattern by linking editorial planning with community concerns and Islamic environmental ethics.

Islamic environmental ethics offer resources for developing this approach. Khalifah fil ardh (stewardship on Earth) provides a theological basis for ecological responsibility (Izzi Dien, 2000), while the prohibition of fasad (corruption or destruction) supports opposition to environmentally damaging practices. Mizan (balance) connects with ecological interdependence and sustainability, and hima (protected areas) provides a model for community-based natural resource governance relevant to water security and biodiversity conservation (Faruqui et al., 2001).

These concepts are proposed as resources for future content development. Integrated with scientific explanations and local examples, they can connect environmental stewardship with values familiar to Muslim communities. This approach offers a practical way to develop reporting that is scientifically informed, culturally relevant, and attentive to community priorities.

The study also illustrates how bibliometric mapping and qualitative content analysis can inform environmental communication planning. VOSviewer provides a view of the relevant scholarly landscape, while NVivo supports a closer examination of the selected media content. Used together, these approaches connect research context with editorial questions about thematic coverage and opportunities for future programming.

Developing this approach involves several practical challenges for editorial planning and communication. The first is to give environmental issues a more consistent place alongside social and economic reporting. The distribution observed in the sample suggests room to expand both the range and continuity of coverage, including stories on water, energy, biodiversity, and climate adaptation that connect with everyday community concerns.

A related challenge is to build on the environmental dimensions of conflict and humanitarian reporting. Stories about damaged infrastructure, displacement, and resource scarcity offer opportunities to connect immediate needs with longer-term questions of environmental recovery and governance.

Accessibility and cultural relevance also matter. Collaboration with community organizations and educators can help adapt environmental information to different levels of digital access and local knowledge. Relating environmental issues to livelihoods, public health, and Islamic ethical principles provides several routes for making coverage meaningful to diverse Muslim communities.

The findings reflect 18 purposively selected videos and the judgments of one principal coder, supported by time-delayed re-coding and co-author discussion. The literature screening was also conducted by a single researcher. Separate logs of excluded video candidates and the preliminary Scopus filtering decisions were not retained. The sample does not represent the channel’s full output, and translation may affect interpretation. Engagement metrics describe whole videos, while VADER has limited sensitivity to non-English comments and to the objects of expressed emotions. Community resilience and audience responses to the proposed strategies were not directly assessed. The study’s contribution is to identify a pattern of content and develop an agenda for further editorial and audience research.

The analysis suggests the following priorities for strengthening environmental communication on Islam Channel’s YouTube platform.

Set editorial goals for environmental coverage. Establish practical goals for greater consistency, depth, and thematic diversity, with attention to renewable energy (SDG 7), biodiversity (SDG 15), water resources (SDG 6), and climate change (SDG 13). Progress can be reviewed over time through the relevance of coverage to community concerns and the range of issues addressed.

Connect environmental reporting with Islamic ethics. Use khalifah, mizan, fasad, and hima to frame discussions of ecological stewardship, water conservation, and climate change. Collaboration with Islamic environmental scholars and organizations such as the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES) can help integrate theological perspectives with scientific information.

Develop solution-oriented reporting. Alongside coverage of environmental problems, present practical responses and community experiences of water conservation, renewable energy, and climate adaptation. Connecting risks with feasible action can make environmental communication more useful to communities (Moser, 2010). Build on links among environmental, economic, and social issues. Reporting on Gaza and other humanitarian concerns can give greater attention to water infrastructure, resource scarcity, and environmental recovery alongside displacement and livelihoods. This approach develops environmental coverage through subjects already prominent in the analysed videos.

Develop environmental partnerships. Explore collaboration with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), IPCC Communications Office, national environmental agencies, and civil society organizations, in line with SDG 17. These relationships could support access to scientific expertise, visual materials, and community-focused reporting opportunities. Use evidence to guide content planning. Combine periodic content analysis with audience research to review coverage, identify emerging concerns, and refine programming. NVivo can support the assessment of thematic patterns, while community feedback can help editors understand the relevance and clarity of environmental messages.

Support environmental literacy and access. Work with educational institutions, digital literacy initiatives, and community organizations to make environmental information accessible in settings with limited digital infrastructure. Materials adapted to local needs and communication practices can extend the practical value of the channel’s environmental reporting.

Across 18 Islam Channel YouTube videos, environmental themes accounted for 11% of the 99 coding assignments, compared with 54% for social themes and 35% for economic themes. Environmental communication thus formed the smallest part of the sample’s SDG-related content. The study interprets this pattern from a community development perspective, emphasizing the value of linking environmental knowledge with the social concerns and cultural resources already present in faith-based media.

The environmental references frequently appeared within humanitarian and conflict reporting. These connections provide a useful basis for extending coverage from immediate damage and resource needs to water governance, ecological recovery, and climate adaptation. Editorial planning can build on this relationship while creating space for a broader range of environmental stories.

Islamic concepts of stewardship, balance, protection, and responsibility offer a culturally grounded resource for this work. Bringing these principles together with scientific knowledge and community experience can help shape environmental reporting that connects faith, practical concerns, and the SDGs.

This study proposes five practical priorities for strengthening faith-based media’s contribution to the 2030 SDG agenda: more consistent environmental coverage, theologically informed narratives, solution-oriented journalism, partnerships, and evidence-informed planning.

Future studies can develop this agenda through comparisons across Islamic media platforms, longitudinal tracking of environmental coverage, and research on audience interpretation and community responses. Examining how editorial decisions and platform conditions shape environmental reporting would also help connect content patterns with the processes behind them.