Researching Law Fall 2020 - Flipbook - Page 9
VO L 31 | NO 2 | FA LL 2020
sure to Police Use of
Affect Political Engagement?
visibility and framing on political
interest is critical for evaluating
the public’s likelihood of holding
politicians, police chiefs, and
others responsible for problems
in their police department.
Burch argues that the failure to
contemplate both visibility and
framing of officer-involved killings
can lead researchers to miss critical
political effects in these cases.
“First, you have to know about an
event,” says Burch. “Then you have
to think it’s a problem. Only then
can we think about how resources
and mobilization can come together
to show up as political activity.”
Visibility of OfficerInvolved Killings
Burch contends that visibility is a
critical first step towards a political
response. She cites R. Douglas
Arnold’s 1990 work, The Logic
of Congressional Action, which
argues that policy effects must be
perceptible in order to generate a
citizen response. But Burch finds
that police use of force is difficult
for the public to assess because
it is not easily perceptible. Often,
police and government officials
work to reduce transparency and
construct narratives around police
Burch finds that
police use of force is
difficult for the public
to assess because
it is not easily
perceptible.
and victim actions. Information on
officer-involved killings is not made
readily available by government
officials for the public to assess. In
fact, officials can work actively to
hide such incidents from the public,
and the failure to investigate police
use of lethal force can contribute to
a lack of visibility.
News organizations, social media,
and public interest groups help
amplify the visibility of victims of
police-involved killings. Activists
and the media play a vital role
in publicizing counter-narratives
of police killings. They may
even provide the only data that
is readily available. But despite
these sources of information,
few instances of officer-involved
killings are ever known by the
public. The Black Lives Matter
movement and increased media
attention have resulted in amplified
visibility for only certain victims.
Thus, members of the public may
overestimate the extent to which
they know about these incidents.
To support the idea of
overestimation, Burch cites statistics
about the media coverage of officerinvolved killings in the United States
over the past several years. She found
that fewer than half of the victims
examined for her study trended on
Google in their local area at the time
of the killing. She also found that
nationwide between 2000 and 2014,
only about half the victims of officerinvolved killings were reported in
local or national news. This suggests
that approximately fifty percent of
police killings may not be highly
visible to the public.
This absence of comprehensive
media coverage has led the public to
recognize and protest some deaths
more than others. A lack of public
perceptibility surrounding officerinvolved killings leads some victims
Activists and the
media play a vital role
in publicizing counternarratives of police
killings.
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