ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the refugee crisis's impact on public opinion in the new host countries, particularly as the initial embrace of a “welcome culture” during the first wave of refugee arrivals in summer 2015 gave way to fear-mongering, false narratives, and a right-wing populist agenda across many countries. It presents findings from various “racism reports” by the Austrian NGO Zivilcourage und Anti-Rassismus-Arbeit (ZARA, or civil courage and anti-racism work), which documents and statistically analyzes on a yearly basis racist incidents in Austria. In the 1990s, with xenophobia and racism rising in the wake of the arrival of refugees from the Balkan wars, a group of university students founded ZARA as an anti-racism hotline in Vienna; more than 10,000 cases since have been reported to its counseling unit, and the group expanded its role through public awareness campaigns, training, and workshops. ZARA's challenges today, including a spike in documented racist incidents, are particularly revealing in the context of the role of media and communication technologies, because they appear to be linked to a massive increase in cyber hate against refugees and migrants, amplified online by “fake news” often recirculated by rightwing parties.
