Roundtable: Reflections on ‘Copaganda’ in Popular Media after George Floyd

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract/Description

One demand of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in response to the police killing of George Floyd, was the call to defund and/or abolish the police. Such calls were both reflected and contested in popular media. We situate our roundtable discussion around this pronounced, but momentary, shift in public discourse acknowledging the violence in police work and how it is disproportionately centered on black folks. Backlash to this acknowledgement, however, was swift– pro-police media narratives soon abounded, resonating with a theory of policing logics. Thus rose the copaganda critique, or public critiques directed toward entertainment media perceived as advancing policing logics through seductive narrative and image work. In this roundtable, we explore comic books as one prominent aspect of popular culture where debates around defunding and abolishing the police play out in both new and familiar ways.

Sub Unit

• Area XIV. Roundtables

Chair

• Nicholas J. Chagnon, University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu

Discussants

• Staci Strobl, Shenandoah University

• Nicholas J. Chagnon, University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu

• Sarah F. Fischer, Marymount University

• Nickie D. Phillips, St. Francis College