(Online) public denunciation, public incivilities and offence

‘Relatively civilized, relatively European’: Offence and online (de)normalization of media racism

“…That was evident in the video producer's and some commenters' responses who considered Mr. Di Gata's later apology as unacceptable. Offence taking on the part of the video producer aimed to position Mr. Di Gata as morally lacking and his action as denounceable, which thereby legitimized online public denunciation (Haugh, 2022). This poisoning was further reinforced by the use of metaphorical expression 'dog whistles', which indicated that Mr. Di Gata use of suggestive language to garner support from a particular social group.…”

“…The video also featured other foreign correspondents working for other media outlets, such as NBC and ITV, who made similar controversial comparisons which indicated that this type of racist media coverage was not an idiosyncratic but rather a systematic media practice. Charlie Di Gata’s remark, along with those of the other correspondents, was positioned as denounceable by framing it as morally transgressive (Haugh, 2022). The video producer’s perception of the ethnic and racial contrast between different refugees as morally transgressive was expressed by registering and sanctioning in his commentary on the video.…”

“…Framing the correspondent’s remark, which was produced in a complex social and political context, as morally transgressive in this way was expected to be contested by the online public audience because, as stated by (Haugh, 2022), it ‘necessarily involved selecting elements from a particular scene for public inspection and evaluation, it follows that public denunciations of public incivilities are always open to contestation’. This contestation is always expected to polarize and divide up across few camps due to the deindividuated online environment, wherein the users ‘construct themselves mostly as members of a relevant social category’ (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010: 542).…”

“…Second, the corpus represented types of data sensitive to the perception of self and other, which made it extremely relevant to the investigation of how racism and moral conflict might be interconnected. Finally, since the comments included in the corpus were posted in response to controversial media coverage, the data provided a rare opportunity to explore (de)normalization of media racist practices from a top-down perspective, as presented by a renowned content producer who discursively positioned the correspondents' conducts as publicly denounceable through framing these conducts as morally transgressive (Haugh, 2022). This top-down perspective was supplemented by a bottom-up, ordinary citizen perspective, as represented in the comments posted in the video comment section As for the ethical considerations, the two parts of the data, that is, the video content and the user-generated comments, are produced in the public domain and are thus considered part of public discourse (Marlow, 2017;Page et al, 2014).…”