Media Framing and Police Body-Worn Camera Footage

• In Event: Technology, Transparency, and Public Trust

Abstract

The implementation of body-worn cameras (BWCs) is a large part of the response to demands for police reform addressing transparency and accountability. Attention to BWC footage has increased in recent years, with a high point in 2014 after the police-involved shooting deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Laquan McDonald in Illinois, and continuing into the 2020s. Although BWC use is often present in public discussions on use of force, the existing scholarly literature has placed limited focus on media framing of BWC footage, which is crucial to understanding how public perception of police-community relations is shaped. The current study intends to fill this gap in the research by examining the ways in which media reporting constructs and characterizes events with police BWC footage. This qualitative content analysis uses articles (N=120) from top circulated newspapers, spanning a four-year period from 2019 to 2023. The findings demonstrate that news reports predominantly cover cases involving police misconduct, excessive use of force, and issues related to police accountability, which reflects several established media frames, including conflict, morality, and attribution of responsibility (An & Gower, 2009; Naoroz & Cleary, 2019). Implications for research, theory, and policy will be discussed.

Authors

• Tatianna Kailani Kilgore, Sam Houston State University

• Miltonette Olivia Craig, Sam Houston State University