Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Tales of the Timeline: Discourses of the Failures of Video Evidence

Fri, May 26, 15:30 to 16:45, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Floor: 2, Indigo 202A

Abstract

Governmental authorities have employed photography as a disciplinary tool from the technology’s earliest days. Today, video has become part of the disciplinary toolkit, but one that is shared with the general population as well. Police departments across the U.S. are engaged in programs to augment dash-cams with officer body cams, but citizens are rolling on events as well. Whether it’s called sousveillance, cop-watching or citizen journalism, easily accessible production and distribution have yielded an abundance of video evidence.
Much like photography, which has indexical value rooted in the recording perfection of a camera, video has exceptional, though limited, evidentiary value. The truth-value of an image is largely drawn from, and weakened by, its contexts of creation, verbal anchorage, and constructive purpose. These limits have long been exploited in the forensic environment to impeach the camera as witness. Unlike still photographs, however, video —more specifically, raw and unedited video —provides an additional evidentiary dimension that can consolidate competing perspectives: the timeline. Video’s temporal characteristic carries with it an embedded narrative, one that can enhance its persuasive force. This temporal dimension also affords those who would impeach a particular video’s evidentiary value an opportunity to question what happened before the camera was rolling.
This project examines the discursive strategies used by stakeholders in the police accountability debate to both employ and impeach video evidence. It uses mixed methods: ethnographic observations and interviews with video activists, and critical discourse analysis of public texts about video evidence. The analysis suggests that video’s greatest evidentiary strength, the timeline, is the target for most impeachment efforts, surpassing questions about context, construction and point of view. This strategy serves to perpetuate public faith in the camera generally, as well as pull control of the narrative back to governmental authorities.

Author