Alyce McGovern

‘Cop[ying] it Sweet’: Police Media Units and the Making of News

Over the past two decades police media units have played an ever-increasing role in managing the dissemination of information between the police and media organisations. Using the example of the New South Wales Police Media Unit in Australia (hereafter NSW PMU) this article assesses the journalistic deployment of PMU information and develops a broader sociopolitical argument explaining the growth of PMUs more generally. We analyse qualitative research data, in the form of interviews with journalists and NSW PMU staff (n = 29), and quantitative data from an analysis of two Sydney-based daily newspapers. We suggest that the growth of PMUs can be explained with reference to new programs of governing crime that developed throughout the last quarter of the 20th century as well as significant changes to the global media landscape.

Force to sell: policing the image and manufacturing public confidence

In recent years, policing organisations have become increasingly savvy at producing positive images of police work through both the old and new media via the growth in professionalised police public relations (PR) infrastructure. This image work comes as a response to a number of modern policing and political challenges such as the public fear of crime, a range of police reform agendas, the perceived crisis in policing consent and the withering of ‘old media’ such as newspapers and a proliferation of new media, social media and citizen journalism. With a growing body of international research pointing to the need for policing organisations to foster public confidence and organisational legitimacy through the practice of procedural and distributive justice, much less research has looked at public confidence in the context of police media work. Based on original qualitative data,1 which includes interviews with key uniformed and civilian directors of PR branches in Australian police organisations, this article constitutes a comparative case study and explores how media and PR directors within Australian police organisations conceive of the links between their ‘image work’, public confidence in the organisation, trust in policing and legitimacy in the police institution. We investigate both the discourses and practices of public confidence raising amongst a number of elite police PR managers.

Degrees of Difference? A Preliminary Study of 'Criminology' Degrees at Australian Universities

While the discipline of ‘criminology’ has existed within Australian universities for more than half a century, the introduction of discrete ‘criminology’ and justice programmes is much more recent. Little is known, however, about the current state of play when it comes to what a degree in ‘criminology’ actually entails. With growing student enrolments in such programmes, reflecting on the status of these programmes is important in the context of student and employer requirements and expectations. Drawing on the findings of a preliminary study, this paper will explore what it means to study for an undergraduate degree in ‘criminology’ in Australia. Specifically, we will focus on the content, availability and range of ‘criminology’ and justice degrees available in Australia, in order to gain a better understanding of the convergences and divergences across degree programmes, and make some recommendations for future research.

Logics of risk: police communications in an age of uncertainty

The risk society thesis suggests that risk thinking has, in the twenty-first century, become pervasive across numerous organisations, including police. Police are now one of a number of agents that put themselves forward as expert advisers on risk reduction and management techniques. Police organisations not only govern through risk logics and make claims to special expertise in risk management, communication and reduction; they are also increasingly governed by risk logics that, amongst other things, circumscribe what information can be released to the media and public, when, by whom, and to what ends. Based on qualitative research interviews with police communications professionals in Australian policing organisations, this paper argues that risk as an organising logic has strongly influenced the nature of contemporary police/media/public communications.

Media, legal and young people’s discourses around sexting:

The term sexting has come to be associated with media, political and public concern over young people’s involvement in the sending and/or receiving of nude or semi-nude images and/or videos of one another. Public discourses around sexting have framed the practice as problematic, reflecting long-held – and often very real – anxieties over young people and their sexuality. Of particular focus in relation to sexting have been the risks and harms associated with the practice and current or potential legal responses. Missing from much of this public discourse, however, have been the voices of young people themselves. In order to bring young people’s voices into the discourse, this article draws on research conducted with young people, as well as extensive legal and media analysis of sexting by young people. It contrasts these popular and legal discourses around sexting with the discourses of young people themselves, exploring the ways in which they understand and perceive sexting and how these perceptions converge with and diverge from dominant discourses. In this way, the article demonstrates the fundamental discord between such discourses, indicating the need to rethink legal responses to sexting between young people.

Review of Existing Research

In line with the critical approach of this book, it is useful to precede our own contribution to the field of research with a discussion and evaluation of the methods and approaches to researching sexting that have been used in research to date. This chapter starts with a critical analysis of the existing surveys into sexting practices by young people and then looks more closely at current qualitative research. A review at the time of writing identified ten such quantitative surveys.1 Most of these are aimed at identifying the prevalence of sexting among young people and only a small proportion drill further into the practices of, and the motives or reasons for, sexting (National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008; Mitchell et al. 2012; Dake et al. 2013), or the emotional or practical consequences of sexting (Dake et al. 2013; Phippen 2009; National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2008; Strassberg et al. 2013; Mitchell et al. 2012; Talion et al. 2012).

Image Work(s): The New Police (Popularity) Culture

This chapter identifies emerging forms of police ‘image work’ (Mawby, 2002) that we argue also operate as a form of ‘simulated policing’ (O’Malley, 2010). This policing takes place not on the beat or in the patrol car or even at the police station. Rather, the policing we identify here occurs in virtual cyber-spaces, on tele-visual ‘observational documentaries’, and through the lens of the police digital video camera as reproduced on the daily news bulletin. Yet while these forms of simulated policing rely on a swathe of new technologies, they are traditional in nature. That is, they generally seek to achieve traditional goals of public policing such as the deterrence of crime, social control, compliance with the law, and seeking to secure public consent for policing.

A Sexting ‘Panic’? What We Learn from Media Coverage of Sexting Incidents

This chapter explores media discourses around young people and sexting incidents, with a particular focus on the UK and Australia. Following a review of the literature on media coverage of sexting, the chapter identifies the key themes delineating discussions about young people’s sexting. It then moves on to develop an analysis around a number of case studies to demonstrate the ways in which media identifies risks and moral boundaries around people’s sexting, and the potential influences of this on public debates around young people’s intimate communications. The chapter then reflects on whether these media discourses bear relation to the way in which young people themselves understand sexting behaviours. We conclude by suggesting panic around sexting must be understood in the context of competing discourses around young people and sexual expression.

An Introduction to Sexting and Young People

Young people integrate online and digital technologies into their everyday lives in increasingly complex ways. As McGrath (2009, p. 2) notes, ‘[y]oung people…see technologies (especially the internet) as a vital part of their social life and the building of their identity’. As mechanisms for socialising, education, relaxation, gaming, romance or communication between friends and peer groups, new technologies provide a key framework within which young people live their lives. Yet, the ways in which they incorporate romantic and sexual relationships and practices into this technology-dominated, virtual world has been relatively underexplored by researchers and, subsequently, it has become problematic for policymakers. Media and social commentators play an important role in drawing our attention to the intersections of digital technologies, sexuality and sexual practices of young people. However, such commentary has also seen these complex interconnections misunderstood and oversimplified. At the very core of contemporary debates around young people’s online sexual practices, new technologies, social media, and childhood sexuality has been the phenomenon dubbed ‘sexting’. While sexting has many meanings, which we critically explore in more detail below, it generally refers to the digital taking and distribution of images of a nude/semi-nude person through mobile phone or social networking sites.

Online Survey Data

While sexting between young people has become a significant cultural phenomenon, a topic of popular media discussion, and the target of concern from law and policymakers, when it comes to young people themselves our knowledge of their practices and perspectives in relation to sexting is still relatively limited. The little we do know of young peoples’ engagement with sexting comes from the handful of medium-scale quantitative surveys, and an even smaller number of qualitative studies discussed in the previous chapter.