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

Abstract

The paper explores the interplay of offence, (de)normalization and moral conflict triggered by media racism. The paper is premised on the assumption that public interventions to moral transgressions occasion moral conflicts in which transgressions can be (de)normalized through impoliteness, more specifically the acts of offence taking and causing. A YouTube video discussing the racist media coverage of the Ukrainian refugee crisis was analyzed along with a sizable amount of related user-generated comments. The analysis showed that offence taking and offence causing have morally restorative and (de)normalizing functions in moral conflict. This highlights the fact that the relationship between morality and impoliteness is much more complex than is usually theorized, wherein impoliteness is often perceived as a morally norm-disruptive behavior or a negatively valenced evaluation thereof. Not only can impoliteness be morally justified in moral conflicts, it can also be a necessary form of restorative public intervention. This necessitates greater attention to (de)normalization in (im)politeness theorizing.