The Image of the Police in the Printed Media
Abstract
Police legitimacy and police confidence are indicators of whether the public agrees with how the police apply their authority and power and whether the public are willing to accept police decisions. These are important aspects of police work because how much citizens trust the police, the more they feel a moral responsibility to provide assistance and cooperation.
Part of the solution for the creation and maintenance of police legitimacy and trust is the establishment of an appropriate strategy for public relations, aimed to continuously maintain good image of the police. In such a strategy for public relations, the media are an important part because they are the means of creating and maintaining the police image as it is framed and ordered by the police. Police image directly affects both police legitimacy and trust and therefore, scholars dealing with the issues of police trust also have to deal with the media impact on building that trust.
Therefore, we have made a qualitative analysis of media reports about police and policing in Macedonia in order to see how police are portrayed in the mass media. Specifically, by analyzing the content we want to answer the following research questions: What aspects of policing are presented in the mass media? Are there more positive or negative portrayals of the police? What are the sources of information? And whether, on the basis of the information that is given to the public, can we "recognize" a police strategy for building public trust? The research interest is focused on the importance of both the language and the style of presentation, as well as on the message that is sent to the readers.
Keywords: police trust, media, media discourse, police news, Macedonia.
Downloads
References
Chamberlain, J. Martin (2013). Understanding criminological research, SAGE publication.
Chan K. Angela, Chan, M. Vanessa (2012) “Public perception of crime and attitude towards Police: examining the effect of media News”, Discovery SS Student E-Journal, Vo. 1, 215 – 237.
Chan, J. (1995). “Damage control: Media representation and responses to police deviance”, Law Text Culture, 2, 1995, 36 – 60. Retrived: 30 April 2015, from http://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol2/iss1/2.
Dowler, K. (2003). “Media consumption and public attitude toward crime and justice: the relationship between fear of crime, punitive attitudes and perceived police effectiveness”, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, vol. 10, issue 2, 109 – 126.
Fung, Kim-kum. (1994). Mass media and police: a study on the image of gatekeeper contributing to police legitimacy, School of Professional and continuing education, University of Hong Kong.
Hohl, K. (2001). The role of mass media and police communication in trust in the police: New approaches to the analysis of survey and media data., A thesis submitted to the Methodology Institute of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, September 2011
Pollack, E. & Allern, S. (2014). “Criticism of the Police in the News Discourses and Frames in the News Media’s Coverage of the Norwegian Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs”, Nordicom Review 35 (2014) 1, 33 – 50.
Reiner, R. (2007). “Media made criminality: the representation of crime in the mass media” In: Maguire, M, Morgan, R and Reiner, Robert, (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 302-337.
Van Dijk A. Teun (1988). News analysis, Case studies of international and national news in the Press, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Permissions
Authors are expected to obtain permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. BSSR will not be held accountable for any copyright infringement caused by the authors.
Copyright
The content offered in the BSSR remains the intellectual property of the authors and their publishers respectively. University “Goce Delcev”- Shtip, R. Macedonia and BSSR keap the right to promote and re-publish the texts.
