Our side of the story: Changing the Police Media Narrative through Body Worn Cameras

• In Event: Constructing Legitimacy and Criminality in the Media

Abstract

Modern policing policies focus on the use of technology to monitor organizational success and individual officer behavior to increase organizational survival through controlling the visual narrative of the policing profession. In a culture that functions on multi-platform media images that are rapidly diffused via television and the Internet, law enforcement is pressed to find a solution to not only participate in the media dialogue but to seek technologies that will enable them to control their public image and the policing narrative in the visual economy. Law Enforcement officials often express concern that video images of police involved use of force incidents used by media are not shown in their entirety or are taken out of context. Using Walter Fisher’s (1989) paradigm of narrative rationality and Nicholas Mirzoeff’s (2011) concept of visuality, I argue that police organizations are utilizing body worn camera technology and its perceived benefits to organize the visual economy in a manner that places control over the police/community media narrative back into the dominant hands of police organizations. Content analysis of news media shows a shift in police organizational rhetoric that focuses on the narrative power of body worn cameras.

Keywords: police, body worn cameras, visuality, narrative rationality

Author

• Carolyn J. Zeppa, Virginia Commonwealth University