1st Edition
The Communicative Architecture of Policing Community, Power and Legitimacy in the Age of ‘New Media’
Introduction and Outline, 1. Crime, Policing and News Media, 2. Approach in the Field, 3. Constructing and Policing the Community, 4. Audiences, Sources and Newsroom Values: Self-Legitimation in Contemporary Local Journalism, and its Crises, 5. Constructing and Legitimating Police Communicator Identity, 6. The Labour of Police Legitimation, 7. The Architecture of Contemporary Police-Media Relations, 8. Contemporary Police-Media Relations in the Governance Field: Community, Identity, and the Mechanics of Local Governing Power
Biography
Cian Ó Concubhair is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Maynooth University’s School of Law & Criminology. Cian researches across criminal law, policing and media, with a particular focus on police legitimacy, police– media relations and the politics of criminal justice.
Modern police and media have been locked in brittle co-dependency since their early nineteenth century development. Each contributed to the other’s legitimation and consolidation into key agents of the hegemony of capitalist states.
This important book adds a lot to our understanding of the recent intensifying travails of both institutions. It is based on meticulous and insightful empirical research, mainly observational ethnography of local media and police communication departments in several forces. This forms the basis of a sophisticated theorisation of the local communications field.
The book is an illuminating and valuable study of two key institutions struggling in the face of massive transformation in political economy and the means of communication notably the digital revolution and emergence of social media. It is vital reading for researchers, students, practitioners and policy makers.
Robert Reiner, Emeritus Professor of Criminology, London School of Economics
Relationships with the media are central to the dialogues through which police legitimacy is established, reproduced, and, equally, undermined. In this important and timely book, Cian Ó Concubhair examines police-media relations through a fine-tuned ethnographic lens. Rich description and analysis reveals the relational dynamics of power, operating in embedded social contexts, that function to establish the position of both institutions within contemporary society.
Ben Bradford, Professor of Global City Policing, University College London
