Research Catalog

Title

The politics of force : media and the construction of police brutality / Regina G. Lawrence.

Author

Lawrence, Regina G., 1961-

Publication

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 306 pages : illustrations; 25 cm.

Summary

"Twenty years ago, when The Politics of Force was first published, the issue of police brutality was rarely covered in the news. This book was inspired by events following the Los Angeles Police Department's brutal treatment of Rodney King, a Black motorist whose beating by LAPD officers was captured from the balcony of a nearby resident, George Holliday, who happened to have a video camera (this, of course, was in the era before digital phones). First aired by a local television station, scenes from that videotape were shown repeatedly on national news outlets for weeks, giving rise to an unprecedented public reaction. "When George Holliday's video surfaced," one Black journalist observed, "it signaled to a lot of citizens just how bad police violence visited upon marginalized communities actually was" (Smith 2015). The officers' subsequent trial and acquittal, and the uprising in Los Angeles that followed, kept the issues of race and policing in the news for many weeks. That tumult was eventually replaced by relative silence on the issue, occasionally punctuated by news coverage of other violent police-citizen encounters, such as the brutal NYPD assault on Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in 1997 and the death of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999, hit with 19 bullets fired by NYPD officers. But as is the case with other policy problems not championed by elites, coverage of police brutality was limited, sporadic, and largely tied to the occasional incident that became a major news story. Then, in the summer of 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Though what exactly lead up to Brown's death may have been unclear, the aftermath was captured on a bystander' cell phone video. It showed Brown's body left uncovered and unattended, face-down in the street, while neighbors grew agitated and police seemed to mill casually about. Suddenly, the issue again became national news. Brown's death and the intense social media activity and protest it evoked within and beyond Ferguson prompted another, more prolonged and more searing national argument about police brutality"--

Series Statement

Journalism and political communication unbound

Subject

• Police in mass media
• Police brutality
• African Americans > History
• Police brutality > Black people > History
• African Americans
• Black people

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-286) and index.

Contents

Foreword / Allissa V. Richardson -- Introduction -- Mediating Realities: The Social Construction of Problems in the Media Arena -- Making a Problem of Brutality -- Normalizing Coercion: Competing Claims about Police Use of Force -- Setting the Agenda: Rodney King and the Los Angeles Times -- Making Big News: Story Cues and Critical Coverage of Policing -- Struggling for Definition: Policing Problems in the New York Times -- Interpreting Rodney King: Police Brutality in the National Media Arena -- Accidents Will Happen: The News and Event-Driven Problem Definition -- A New Conclusion.

Call Number

Sc E 23-569

ISBN

• 9780197616550
• 0197616550
• 9780197616543
• 0197616542
• 9780197616574 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2022021585

OCLC

1322059799

Author

Lawrence, Regina G., 1961- author.

Title

The politics of force : media and the construction of police brutality / Regina G. Lawrence.

Publisher

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]

Edition

Updated edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Journalism and political communication unbound

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-286) and index.

Research Call Number

Sc E 23-569