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Policing’s New Visibility

Policing’s New Visibility. Andrew Goldsmith Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention University of Wollongong Griffith University, 26 May 2010. “video evidence… turns us inside out and exposes the pitiful banality of our misdeeds” (Conrad 2000). Policing as mediated activity.

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Policing’s New Visibility

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  1. Policing’s New Visibility Andrew Goldsmith Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention University of Wollongong Griffith University, 26 May 2010

  2. “video evidence… turns us inside out and exposes the pitiful banality of our misdeeds” (Conrad 2000)

  3. Policing as mediated activity • 3 phases (cumulative) • Age of print press: news media: crime reporters, investigative journalism (Chibnall 1977; Ericson et al 1989): [citizen as consumer, passive] • Age of broadcasting: Film based media: television cameras, TV investigative journalism, CCTV (Mawby 2002; Gould 2004) [citizen as consumer, passive] • Post-broadcasting age: portable video cameras, YouTube, social networking sites eg Facebook [citizen as producer, active participant]

  4. Geraldton , April 2009

  5. Vancouver International Airport, October 2007

  6. Police caught behaving badly • G20 footage of Ian Tomlinson • Sir Paul Stephenson (Home Affairs Committee, 19 May 2009) • Expressed “concern over the imagery of the actions of a small number of police”, accepted the “potential for damaging public confidence” • “[A]s technology changes there are different ways and many more opportunities for [police] to be caught behaving badly if they choose to behave badly”

  7. Policing as performance • Balancing act: ‘dirty worker’ AND moral agent • “proper performances” – those in accordance with the “officially accredited values of the society” (Goffman, Presentation of Self 72) • “Impressions fostered in everyday performances are subject to disruption” (G, PoS 45) • Disruptions -> ‘front’/ ‘back’ distinction breaking down

  8. The New Visibility • Panopticons and synoptic events • From “viewer society” [consumers of images] (Mathiesen, 1997) to “media producer society” [producers as well as consumers]

  9. Tools of New Visibility • Digital recording technologies (eg mobile phone cameras [commercialized from 2003] • Video-sharing platforms (eg YouTube) [new since 2006] • Social networks sites (eg Facebook [opened 2006], Twitter)

  10. YouTube: video-sharing platform • Started 2005, acquired by Google 2006 • Two billion views each day (May 2010) • Average user – 15 minutes each day • Around 25 hours of video material uploaded every minute • Uploads from mobile phones increased 1700% in first 6 months of 2009

  11. Facebook – social networking • Global audience, March 2008: 50 million • Global audience, May 2010: 461 million • 200+ million – use it daily • Demographics: 18-55 years

  12. The New Visibility • Thompson (2005:31): • [T]he making visible of actions and events is not just the outcome of leakage in systems of communication and information flow that are increasingly difficult to control; it is also an explicit strategy of individuals who know very well that mediated visibility can be a weapon in the struggles they wage in their day-to-day lives. [emphasis added]

  13. Monitory democracy • John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009) • “the multiple and overlapping means citizens now have to scrutinize, complain about and resist their governments, not just through parliaments, but also through watchdogs, audits, regional assemblies, civil society monitors, and so on.” (Runciman 2009)

  14. Sous-veillance • Sous-veillance - the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity,” one that “decentralizes observation to produce transparency in all directions” and that seeks to “reverse the otherwise one-sided panoptic gaze” (Mann, Fung, and Lo 2006, 177)

  15. Implications for accountability? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNDLSCaSNSo&feature=related

  16. Politics of interpassivity • Van Oenen: • Characterized more by connection than commitment, in which the public sphere “increasingly becomes a stage upon which …roles and sentiments are played out…[e]motions are experienced, reputations flaunted and frustrations vented, desubjectified and without aim’ • (van Oenen 2006: 23).

  17. Implications for legitimacy? • Greater visibility likely to provide more reasons to distrust police, government • Link to procedural justice (Tyler et al) • People more willing to defer to the decisions of legal authorities when decisions are perceived as being made fairly • “It is possible that perceptions of violations of procedural justice distort or even swamp positive assessments of government trustworthiness” [Levi, Sacks and Tyler 2009]

  18. References • Geraldton Incident Footage • http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25392553-2761,00.html • Robert Dziekański Incident Footage • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPe_hf7aBXM

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