Latent Sousveillance and the Rules of Digital Media Engagement

This chapter demonstrates the revelatory, narrative capacity of bystander video of police excessive force shared through social media, and its relationship with mainstream and police media representations of police ‘image work’. This hierarchical sousveillance can challenge hegemonic mainstream and police media agenda-setting and catalyse direct action, testing police credibility through the diverse range of perspectives characteristic of the ‘social media test’. Analysis of social and mainstream media representations of a case of police excessive force at the 2013 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, combined with police and non-police responses to in-depth interviews, shows the force of individual stories that can be glossed in police aggregate data published in mainstream news media. The chapter considers the power of ‘latent’ sousveillance; technological scrutiny of authority that while lawful may not be widely known. In this context, the lawful capacity for civilians to generally film police operations in public, that in conjunction with the capacity to share content through social media reached a critical mass in 2013. The chapter argues, and notes the challenges in achieving, the consistency required across representations of the police image to sustain public trust and confidence in police and police legitimacy in a multi-media saturated society.