ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the debate programs where immigration has been the prime subject for debate. The term debate program refers to a TV or radio genre in which a group of people recognized for their expertise on the subject under focus, are invited to the studio to debate and exchange understandings. Debate programs attempt to portray pieces of reality with regard to multi-ethnic and multicultural Norway. In so doing, they reconstruct certain realities. Criminality stood as one of the major themes for the analyzed debate programs, and often emerged with reference to different causal relationships. The debate programs in the described period possessed a formidable influence and symbolic power and in fact stood as an important distributor of understanding concerning the culture and being of the other in Norwegian society. These cultural practices in debate programs were also characterized as a form of cultural reproduction since they relied on pre-existing cultural images and views concerning the other.
