The Power of Being Heard: How Claims Against Racism Are Constructed, Spread, and Listened to in a Hybrid Media Environment

The starting point for this chapter is that hybridization processes in contemporary media spheres, together with the growth of neo-conservative and xenophobic movements across Europe and a general tendency to understand radical anti-racism within a framework of political extremism, have created new conditions for claims-making against racism. Drawing on the politics of listening (Bassel, The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; Dreher, Continuum, 23(4), 445–458, 2009) and political claims-making theory (Koopmans et al., Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. University of Minnesota Press, 2005), this chapter focuses on four mediated events of racism and racialization in Helsinki and Malmo—two urban milieus marked by different historical, demographic, social, and political realities. By examining the content and circulation of claims against racism as well as the responses to such claims, and by showing the value of political listening in the analysis of debates on racism, the chapter examines how some events develop into “critical events” while others do not.