Abstract
Since true crime podcasts emerged in the 2010s, short-form podcasts that post single episodes on discrete topics have become a popular style of true crime podcast. These episodes draw upon publicly available information or interviews with police, victims and criminalised people. As police appear routinely as guests, this article explores the role of contemporary short-form true crime podcasts in shaping the police image. Drawing from five Australian short-form true crime podcast episodes with police guests, this article examines how the podcasts’ aesthetic and technical qualities can shape and circulate police narratives. It outlines how the host’s role as facilitator, first-person perspectives and selective reflection can play a role in maintaining the position of police as primary definers of crime in the symbolic economy of policing and intervene in the conditions of new visibility. This article argues that these conventions indicate that short-form TCPs should become an important site for examining contemporary police image work.
Introduction
Since true crime podcasts (TCPs) emerged in the 2010s, they have proliferated in number and style (Vitis, 2024). TCPs include long-form podcasts like The Teacher’s Pet where investigative journalists examine a single case over multiple episodes. They also include short-form podcasts where hosts post single episodes on discrete topics, drawing from interviews with guests or publicly available material (Vitis, 2024). Despite the attention placed on long-form podcasts, short-form podcasts are more popular, representing prolific sites where the public engage with crime stories (Vitis, 2026).
Short-form podcasts publish account-focussed episodes, where the host interviews people with experience of the criminal legal system – including police, victims and criminalised people – about their personal and professional experiences (Vitis, 2024). Because of this, police frequently appear as guests and share their professional experiences of policing (Vitis, 2024). This saturation of police voices in podcasts is not surprising. Media depictions of police entrench their symbolic place in society (McVey, 2022); and as Loader (1997: p. 9) argues, to understand how the public make meaning of police, ‘one can learn as much from examining public calls for police assistance, as one can from looking at how police work is dramatised and represented’. As is evident from the prominence of police guests in TCPs, the symbolic power of depictions of police work is well understood by police, who have always engaged in intended or unintended practices of image work that ‘communicate images of policing’ (Mawby, 2002: 10).
However, the conditions shaping the police image are constantly shifting. In legacy media contexts, police could control their image by selectively releasing information to journalists (McGovern and Phillips, 2017). In new media contexts, police can bypass journalists and communicate directly with the public on social media (Wood and McGovern, 2021); yet these advantages are not without complications. Contemporary image work is shaped by what Wood and McGovern (2021) describe as the conditions of ‘new visibility’. While police contribute to the symbolic economy by communicating directly with the public, citizen journalism and networked social media adds complexity to this relationship. Firstly, police have become more visible to the public through the scrutiny of sousveillance and citizen journalism (Greer and McLaughlin, 2010; Wood and McGovern, 2021). Secondly, public access to recording technologies coupled with a news media landscape more receptive to anti-establishment news has led to public recordings of police misconduct undermining dominant images of police as the thin blue line between order and chaos (Greer and McLaughlin, 2010). At the same time, police are also threatened with invisibility, as algorithmic environments override police control over message dissemination (Wood and McGovern, 2021). Therefore, police participate in a media economy where critical images questioning police legitimacy circulate, and algorithmic cultures drive public engagement (Lee and McGovern, 2013; McGovern and Phillips, 2017). As a result, late modern police image work is characterised by the need to, first, access the ever-shifting sites of public attention and, second, maintain the police image in ways that reflect algorithmic cultures and contend with critical narratives.
Police have responded to these conditions by engaging directly with algorithmic cultures and attempting to circulate police images that reflect popular cultural trends (McGovern and Phillips, 2017; Wood and McGovern, 2021). This includes sharing memes and short-form content that address younger audiences (Wood and McGovern, 2021). However, these conditions of in/visibility have driven not just the need to engage in popular content creation but also the perpetual search for new mediums where the objectives of image work – to access attention and maintain the police image – can be realised.
It is within this environment that police have increasingly appeared in TCPs. TCPs are sites where the public are coalescing. In Australia, podcasts are popular, with 43% of Australians 1 listening to a podcast each month (Edison Research, 2023). Content analyses of Australian TCPs highlight that short-form podcasts are some of the most listened to podcasts and account-focussed episodes featuring police guests are some of the most popular episodes (Vitis, 2026). Therefore, short-form podcasts are sites where the public can have in-depth encounters with police. Despite this, there are no detailed examinations of how understandings of policing are circulated in short-form TCPs and the role of podcasting in shaping the symbolic economy of policing.
Therefore, this article explores the role of short-form TCPs in sharing and shaping the police image. Drawing from an analysis of five Australia short-form TCP episodes where police feature as guests, this piece examines the role the aesthetic and technical qualities of podcasts played in producing and circulating police narratives. I outline how the host’s role as facilitator, first-person perspectives and selective reflection, evident in these episodes, have the potential to allow police narratives to intervene in the conditions of new visibility and maintain the position of police as primary definers of crime. I conclude this article with a discussion of how TCPs can mould the symbolic economy of policing, arguing that TCPs should become an important site for examinations of contemporary police image work.
In the following sections, I outline the role of media in maintaining the symbolic authority of police and how police have adapted to changing media environments. I then explore the affordances of TCPs and the impact they have on listeners. Finally, I describe the methodological approach employed in this study and present the findings of my thematic analysis of five Australian short-form TCP episodes where police feature as guests.
Background
Media and the symbolic economy of policing
The social meaning of policing is established and circulated through the public’s mediated and corporeal encounters with police, with mediated encounters occurring via the saturation of police voices in news media and depictions of police in popular culture (Loader, 1997). The stories exchanged through these encounters serve to reinforce and sustain the symbolic authority of police and the justification for police power (McVey, 2022; Reeves and Packer, 2013). In late modern contexts, the public’s mediated encounters with police take place in a ‘vibrant symbolic economy’ characterised by a ‘flow of text and images, of social media news feeds, of true crime documentaries and reality television programmes’ through which the ‘political theatre of police’ is laid out (Linnemann, 2022: 25).
Police image work
Police play a key role in this social economy particularly as image work is a core police responsibility. Mawby (2002: p. 10) defines image work as ‘all the activities in which police forces engage and which project meanings of policing’. Importantly, Mawby (2002) identifies image work as the ‘overt’ practices of image management such as police acting as formal news sources. In addition, he also describes image work as the ‘unintended’ and ‘mundane practices of police work’ which shape the police image. Ultimately, this conceptualisation recognises that police play an important role in the communication of the meaning of the police, both intentionally and unintentionally.
Image work, however, is set against several interleaving techno-social and political shifts related to legitimacy, professionalisation, new media and algorithmic cultures. Foremost, image work occurs in the context of ongoing tensions around police legitimacy (Lee and McGovern, 2013; Mawby, 2002). Mawby (2002: p. 2) argues police have always engaged in image work because it is central to the ‘legitimation process’. Lee and McGovern (2013: p. 121) note further that police image work is a form of simulated policing intended to foster police legitimacy while countering perceptions of illegitimacy. While historically constant, the contemporary practice of police image work reflects the professionalisation of police media communications. In the 1990s, public scandals surrounding police violence and inaction coupled with 24-hour news cycles created the impetus for police to professionalise their media work (Mawby, 2002). While sworn members have traditionally communicated with the public, media units staffed by communications professionals now engage in public relations across social media, radio, film and television (Lee and McGovern, 2013; McGovern and Phillips, 2017). Professionalisation has enabled increased control over the public image of police, as resource-constrained journalists are more reliant upon media units to meet their constant demands for information (McGovern and Phillips, 2017).
Police and social media
Beyond professionalisation, police image work has been shaped by the shift from legacy to new media. The user-generated content, peer-to-peer distribution and collective acts of consumption in new media (Surette, 2015; Yar, 2012) have created a social media environment where professionalised police image workers can bypass journalists to communicate directly with the public and produce content. Harnessing new media, however, is constrained by the conditions of ‘new visibility’ (Wood and McGovern, 2021: 305). Police are now more visible to a sousveillant public that can disrupt their ability to act as ‘primary definers’ (Hall et al., 2013), by recording police misconduct and disseminating counter-images (Wood and McGovern, 2021). Yet they are simultaneously under ‘threat of invisibility’. In legacy media contexts, police utilised relationships with journalists to disseminate curated information (Colbran, 2020); however, in algorithmic attention economies, there is no guarantee that communications will be disseminated to intended audiences. Therefore, police must contend with the aesthetics and demands of algorithms and social media cultures to circulate messages (Wood and McGovern, 2021).
These interleaving tensions around image work, legitimacy and visibility are reflected in the police social media practices, both intended and unintended. Police use X (Twitter), Instagram and TikTok for community policing, communicating crime risks, crowdsourcing information and re-establishing their visibility (Henry, 2024; Jones et al., 2025; McGovern and Phillips, 2017). They also circulate memes, emojis and humorous posts that align with popular trends (Henry, 2024; Jones et al., 2025). This use of humorous and friendly symbols like memes and emojis aim to engage the public ‘in a more reciprocal fashion in keeping with the non-hierarchical peer-to-peer expectations of social media itself’ (Henry, 2024: 453) in addition to humanising police by communicating a sense that there is a real person behind the post (Jones et al., 2025). Friendly and humorous posts reflect what Lee and McGovern (2013) describe as the simulated nature of policing, as police aim to create positive mediated encounters with the public to maintain legitimacy.
While these examples demonstrate the intentional and professional use of social media, Mawby’s (2002) conceptualisation of image work as ‘unintended’ is important to return to when discussing police and social media. For example, Jones et al.’s (2025) research with police and police civilian staff who use social media in their roles, highlighted how all police are recognised as potential image workers on social media. They noted ‘a dominant cultural mind-set in policing that social media posed considerable professional risks’ (Jones et al., 2025: 12), which is reflected in early career police being instructed to monitor their personal social media accounts to ensure that they don’t identify themselves as police or do anything they would ‘regret’ (Jones et al., 2025: 12). This attempt to constrain personal social media usage demonstrates an understanding that police image work is not limited to the intentional professional practice but extends to mediated practices where police present themselves to the public.
The scope of social media also reflects the topographical dimensions of image work. Police seek to generate positive mediated encounters with the public across the symbolic economy by continuously adapting to social media platforms. Wood and McGovern (2021) note that while this is consistent with the police’s historical use of media to control their image, contemporary strategies reflect ‘engagement work’. Where image work aims to promote a positive police image (Mawby, 2002), engagement work seeks virality by aligning communications with algorithmic demands, platform vernaculars and internet culture (Wood and McGovern, 2021). This is evident in meme strategies, where police adapt popular memes to police-focussed messages and rely upon jocularity and cuteness (Wood and McGovern, 2021). Such strategies aim to simulate a joyful encounter and saturate the symbolic economy with police messages by making content that is more likely to become ‘viral’ in algorithmic environments (Wood and McGovern, 2021). The meme strategies employed by police demonstrate how engagement work involves seeking new sites where the public coalesce and aligning the police image with the aesthetic sensibilities of these sites (Wood and McGovern, 2021).
True crime podcasts and public engagement with crime
Police participation in short-form TCPs is a contemporary example of how police stories adapt to new media sites where the public coalesce. In Australia, TCPs have become popular sites for accessing crime information (Vitis, 2024; Vitis and Ryan, 2023). Since the emergence of Serial (2018), TCPs have proliferated and are published by legacy and born-digital news organisations, independent journalists, police and true crime enthusiasts (Vitis, 2024). Australian audiences identify true crime as a preferred podcast topic (Triton Digital, 2023) and short-form TCPs, which publish regular episodes every week or month, have also become popular.
Unlike long-form podcasts, which examine single cases over multiple episodes, short-form podcasts focus single episodes on single topics and are stylistically varied. A recent content analysis of popular Australian TCPs identified that account-focussed episodes where guests – usually criminalised people, victims and police – are interviewed about their experiences are the most common form of episode (Vitis, 2026). Moreover, the most frequent guests are police, who are invited to share their insights into cases, crime and policing (Vitis, 2026). This reliance on police guests shows how the interleaving pressures on media production, which have always allowed police to function as ‘primary definers’ (Hall et al., 2013), are replicated in new settings. The decline in print advertising and the platformisation of journalism have meant that journalists are now incentivised to produce podcasts as digital ‘content’. Similarly, because news organisations have pivoted to subscription models (Poell et al., 2023), TCPs are used to generate new revenue streams (News Corp Australia, 2022). The proliferation of TCPs represents a response to these changes; however, the prominence of police guests can be seen as a specific response to the demands to ‘retain high visibility online’ in an attention economy (Abidin, 2020: 79). Regular inclusion of guests allows podcasts to produce a steady flow of episodes, and the inclusion of police guests allows podcasts to produce attention-grabbing information in the public interest. Therefore, the demands of the attention economy – like the demands of the 24/7 news cycle – support the reliance on police as resources. Chermak (1995) argues that such reliance undermines the potential for critical discourses on policing to emerge. As such, TCPs can become contemporary sites for maintaining the police image (Vitis, 2026).
True crime podcasts and police encounters
The symbolic meaning of police is shaped by new encounters between public and police and the affordances of the mediums where those encounters take place (Wood and McGovern, 2021). TCPs have qualities that are useful to examine in this process. Podcasting is an intimate medium that generates close connections between hosts, stories and listeners. Podcasts directly address the audience through the private, enclosed space of their headphones (McCracken, 2017; Swiatek, 2018) and use sound to transport listeners between the imagined and present (Herrity, 2020) and into interior worlds where they imagine the people and places within the podcast (Boling, 2019). TCPs also provide opportunities for listeners to forge connections with guests through direct access to the voices of victims, criminalised people and police. Guests share personal experiences, generating a sense of authentic insight into closed institutions and hidden experiences, further intensifying the relationship between the listener and the narrative (Boling, 2019; Buozis, 2017; Doane et al., 2017; McCracken, 2017; Rae et al., 2019). Indeed, TCP listeners view themselves as ethical earwitnesses who memorialise victims by listening to their stories (Vitis, 2023). Podcasts can also generate intimacy by positioning listeners as active participants. Late modern true crime interpolates audiences into the role of discerning jury members (Bruzzi, 2016) and TCPs often address listeners as co-investigators in criminal cases.
The intimacy of the form is also enhanced by the relational dynamics between hosts and listeners. Podcasts can be parasocial as their personal address creates the perception that the listener knows the host and ‘could even be friends with them’ (Lindgren, 2016: 31). These internal and one-sided friendships (Perks and Turner, 2019) are also enhanced by portability, as listeners consume podcasts as a background to everyday life (Vitis and Ryan, 2023). The role of the host and their position in relation to the text is also unique. Short-form podcasts tend to favour a more informal and conversational style. For example, American TCP My Favourite Murder, hosts focus on personal reactions to cases, rather than research (Horeck, 2019). Para sociality, and informality, therefore, place short-form hosts in powerful positions as both perceived friends and information resources. While this makes podcasts engaging, it also increases the risk of misinformation; as Heiselberg and Have (2023: p. 644) argue, ‘a parasocial relationship between the audience and the host will decrease the counterargument against the message’.
The significance of intimacy, first-person narratives, para sociality, jurification and informality in TCPs raises questions about their role in the symbolic economy of policing. Particularly their ability to raise critical questions with (police) guests who speak in positions of authority about their professional experiences. Despite the prominence of police guests on Australian TCPs, there has been no empirical examination of police narratives in TCPs or their relationship with podcast affordances.
Method
To address this gap, this article focuses on the role of the aesthetic and technical qualities of podcasting in shaping the police image. It presents the findings from an analysis of popular short-form Australian TCP episodes published from January 2023 to December 2023. The first stage of the project used qualitative content analysis to identify the crimes and guest in popular podcast series. The second stage, the findings of which are presented below, used a reflexive thematic analysis of five podcast episodes featuring police guests to examine the role of podcasts in maintaining the police image. This project received ethics approval from the Queensland University of Technology.
The five episodes analysed below were identified from the sample of podcast episodes obtained during Stage 1 of the project. As this project aimed to examine TCPs that have the ‘widest resonance with popular consciousnesses’ (Allen et al., 1998: 64), I used Triton podcast ranker to identify podcast series with the largest number of Australian monthly listeners and downloads during the period January 2023–December 2023. From this list, I selected for my sample Australian podcasts in the ‘short-form’ style. 2 This yielded 6 podcast series with a total of 360 episodes (see Table 1).
Australian TCPs.
In Stage 1, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of 360-episode summaries to identify patterns in episode styles, crimes and guests. This found that 153 episodes were account-focused 3 and police were the most frequent guests. 4 In Stage 2, I examined police narratives, identifying account-focussed episodes with police guests. From this sample, I randomly sampled one episode per podcast series for analysis to ensure that the characteristics of each series were included. Only five of the six popular series utilised account-focussed episodes with police guests; therefore, five episodes were included in the analysis (see Table 2). Importantly, selecting five episodes from popular podcasts has clear limitations. These findings are not generalisable the wider landscape of short-form TCPs. However, this approach intends to identify patterns for future exploration of the relationship between short form TCPs and police narratives.
Final sample.
This group is a militarised division that responds to critical incidents (Victoria Police, 2023).
I transcribed the five episodes manually and reviewed each transcription for accuracy. I analysed the transcripts using Braun and Clarke’s (2021) six-phase reflexive approach to thematic analysis, focussing on the guest’s narrative, the host’s questions and their interactions. In line with reflexive thematic analysis, I listened to each episode multiple times and manually transcribed each one, checking for accuracy. I then examined each transcript using open coding to generate primary themes. Next, those themes were reviewed and cross-checked with the original transcripts and, finally, refined and reorganised around the central research questions. As noted above, the analysis presented in this paper draws from a small number of episodes with police guests, therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalised to police stories across all TCPs. In the following sections, I outline how the host’s role as facilitator, first-person perspectives and selective reflection illustrate how short-form TCPs have to potential to allow police to maintain a position as primary definers of crime and intervene in the conditions of new visibility.
Role of the host
While the episodes were described as interviews, their hosts did not perform the role of journalist asking critical questions about policing; rather, they performed the role of facilitator for the guest’s narrative. Heiselberg and Have (2023: p. 6342) note that because podcast listening is more private and solitary it encourages an ‘intimate and friendship-like communication from the host’. Indeed, podcast listeners indicate feelings of friendship towards their favourite hosts and value the ‘ordinariness’ of their engagement with the guest (Maloney Yorganci and McMurtry, 2024). The informality of the form was extended to the host’s orientation towards the guest. With the exception of episode E, where the host was more active, most hosts did not control the interview through questions. Instead, they invited the guest to share personal anecdotes with minimal interjection. This was evident in the introductions, where the episode was described as a forum for stories:
In the episodes examined, guests talked in long, often uninterrupted reflections, only pausing for the host to prompt for details or affirm their story. For example, in episode A, the guest outlined the difficulties of undercover work, and the host affirmed his perspective and pressed him to continue:
Similarly, in episode D, the guest recalled participating in a homicide investigation and the host prompted him to provide voyeuristic details:
The position of the host as a facilitator to the guest’s narrative reflects the informal conventions of short-form podcasts. Informal conversations present a simulacrum of friendship that resonates with listeners (Maloney Yorganci and McMurtry, 2024); therefore, if the host is a friendly facilitator, the guest becomes a trustworthy friend.
Hosts also facilitated the narrative by establishing themselves as a friend to the guest or demonstrating comradery. This was evident when guests were introduced as long-term friends:
Late modern police image work often uses jocularity to create the sense that police are ‘just like us’ (Wood and McGovern, 2021: 318). Here, the parasocial overtones of podcasting are used to reproduce the same feelings of connexion. These friendly, informal conversations humanise guests and encourage the listener to trust their story.
The performance of friendship was pronounced in episode B, as both the guest and host were former homicide detectives and the episode was presented as a collaboration between old friends rather than an interview:
Hosts also performed friendship through flattery. For example, in episodes A and E, the guests recounted managing their undercover personas or community policing strategies while the hosts praised their cleverness and reiterated the difficulties of policing:
Moreover, the position of the host as facilitator affirms the supremacy of police perspectives in the symbolic economy of policing. The potential for para sociality of podcasts makes counter-arguments to the host’s perspective difficult to establish (Heiselberg and Have, 2023: 644); therefore, if hosts defer to individual police narratives as authoritative, police perspectives are asserted without opposition. This facilitator-host dynamic was evident in the absence of critical questions about policing. For example, in episodes C and A, guests shared the negative impacts of using violence and undercover work:
These remarks could have prompted a critical discussion about militarised or undercover policing, but this was not raised by either host. Instead, they praised the guest or avoided challenging their individualisation of these problems. For example, in episode A, when the guest described how public speaking helped them to manage the psychological impacts of their work, the host avoided questions about police management. Similarly, in episode C, the host described how the guest was addressing PTSD in the police force by establishing support groups for critical incident police and then ended the episode by celebrating this as a solution to the traumatisation of police:
In other episodes, hosts avoided criticising the guest’s actions. For example, in (A), the guest described how he befriended two women connected to his undercover investigation and later placed one of these women under protection:
Placing community members’ lives at risk for the benefit of an investigation raises serious ethical questions about police conduct with human sources. This issue was raised in the recent Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants in Victoria, which described police engaging in ‘atrocious breaches’ of their sworn duties and recommended greater oversight of police conduct in this area (Royal Commission, 2020: 6). However, the host in episode A did not question the police’s use of informants.
First-person perspectives
The primacy of police perspectives was also maintained through first-person narratives. Police stories are often told from the police ‘point of view’ which both reinforces the police perspective as the reality of crime and works to reproduce conservative ‘us or them’ narratives (Hall et al., 2013; McGovern and Phillips, 2017). These episodes replicate these dynamics, as guests shared detailed accounts of specific moments, chronological accounts of investigations, anecdotes and references to internal dialogue, drawing on their experiences in the police force. The emphasis on individual recollections coupled with open critiques of external judgements of policing, allowed the narrative to take place in enclosed internal zones beyond the public purview. Reinforcing the authority of police to define policing.
Most of the episodes examined presented a first-person narrative of an event or a series of events like undercover operations (A), homicide investigations (B, D), or shootings (C). Guests provided detailed accounts by narrating specific moments in time in detail. For example, in episodes C and A, the guests described the actions, sounds and sights of shootings and undercover operations:
Such retellings reduce policing to moments in time by recounting events as though the listener were alongside the teller. The listener is thus immersed in a controlled reality over which the guest has authority and where the meaning of policing is constituted solely by the guest’s perspective. The use of specific moments to narrow perspective was also evident in the use of anecdotes. For example, in episode E, the guest shared his career story through specific anecdotes about community policing, policing drug distribution, extortion and homicide, offering listeners insight into police management through the similarly narrowed lens of isolated strategies.
Chronologies also reinforced the individual police perspective. Episodes B and D were both chronological accounts of missing persons cases and homicide investigations where guests shared procedural details outside the public purview. The excerpts below describe how homicide detectives are called to a scene and the surveillance of a homicide suspect:
Like detailed accounts of specific moments, chronological accounts give authority to the police narrative. First, guests control the narrative because they share details only known to police (Hall et al., 2013), constituting policing through procedure and professional experience. Moreover, as these episodes include chronological accounts of solved cases, the listener is given limited space to speculate on policing as they already know that the guest has been successful in solving the case when the episode begins.
The control of perspective was also facilitated by the guests’ use of first-person narratives to share their internal dialogue or police ‘mindset’. For example, guests often referred to their ‘thinking’ during key moments, or police intuition during an investigation:
This insight into the guest’s internal life and police mindset can create intimacy between the teller and listener and brings a degree of authenticity to the guest’s narrative. However, it also further encloses the listener in a zone beyond speculation. The narrative includes the details of events listeners never saw, procedures they likely do not understand and internal thoughts they could never access. The emphasis on individual police experiences, internal dialogue and procedural information grants the teller control over the narrative and narrows the lens through which the public can understand policing, creating closed realities where the listener cannot speculate. In late modern true crime media, audiences are often interpolated into the role of jury members evaluating the evidence (Bruzzi, 2016). However, these first-person accounts were not participatory, but rather closed texts. The teller was positioned as the supreme authority, while the listener was compelled to see through the individual police perspective.
The use of first-person narratives was further evident when external views of police were raised. Guests critiqued media and public perspectives on policing as inaccurate. For example, in episode A, the guest criticised the representation of policing in the Australian television show Stingers.
Similarly, in episode B, the guest criticised public perceptions of policing due to the influence of popular culture, and framed the podcast as an opportunity to correct public views:
Guests and hosts also criticised the public’s views of police attitudes. For example, in episode B, the host and guest discussed the investigation of a murder of a young woman who was a sex worker, and the host (a former detective) criticised the perception that police do not investigate crimes against sex workers:
This comment clearly asserts who should be allowed to judge police and the conditions in which such judgement can be made. In framing the public as ignorant outsiders and the episode as an accurate rendition, the first-person narrative curates the police image. Here, a broader public perception of police prejudice is countered by an individual example of police behaving respectfully. This individual account is then constituted as the reality of policing and the attitudes of police as a whole.
Similarly, in episode E, the guest described being reviewed during the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service (1997). The Commission described NSW police as being in a ‘state of systemic and entrenched corruption’ (Wood, 1997: 84); however, the guest described how evidence of corruption was not found in his area:
The phrase ‘not that anyone appreciated it’ aligns with the rejection of external scrutiny of policing evident in other episodes, while references to ‘down the line’ policing similarly set the individual anecdotes of good police against these external findings of corruption.
In other episodes, this tension between the public perceptions and individual accounts was asserted explicitly. For example, in episode C, the host stated:
This comment plainly affirms that policing can only be understood and discussed by police. The public – absent professional experience and procedural understanding – are framed as unworthy to render judgement. Moreover, this emphasis on ‘living with the consequences’ further undermines external perspectives on policing, reinforcing the view that police and not the public are impacted by police work. The podcast excerpts also distinguish the ‘media’ from the podcast, framing television as an inaccurate construction and the podcast as reality.
The emphasis on the authenticity of individual accounts and the exclusion of external meaning making is in dialogue with the conditions of new visibility. New visibility is characterised by the circulation of multiple perspectives on policing in ways that supervene on police control (Wood and McGovern, 2021). The details of professional experience and the denigration of outside perspectives relate to these conditions by placing emphasis on the primacy of the singular police perspective and constituting the ‘realities’ of policing in relation to professional expertise and procedural knowledge – thereby, reinforcing the role of police as the primary definers of crime and justice.
Selective reflection
The final convention that played a role in the presentation of the police image was selective reflection. The narratives shared in the episodes were intrinsically reflective, as each guest was a retired officer who recounted incidents that took place from the 1980s to the 2000s. Moreover, because the stories were told by celebrated senior officers with experience in homicide, management, undercover work and critical incidents the stories were particularly positive and exciting. These autobiographical reflections also ensured that the police work was constituted at a temporal remove from the listener, meaning that the guests had greater control over the narrative, reducing the potential for critical reflection from the listener.
As noted above, the guests were all retired officers, who reflected on undercover work in 1993 (A), homicide investigations in the early 2000s (B, D), shootings in 1988 (C) and drug distribution during the 1980s and 1990s (E). In addition, the guests were all recognised for their excellence and long service, through awards and their role in well-known cases, as described in the following excerpts:
Their expertise and skills were also reinforced through valorising language, which described them as ‘legendary’, ‘excellent’ people who ‘lived on the edge’, engaged in ‘instrumental discoveries’ and survived on their ‘wits’ in ‘heart-pounding moments’.
Police work is largely done by junior general duties officers, who interact with the public at the level of summary justice. Because this work allows police to exercise their discretionary powers more opaquely, it is often the site of differential policing. However, narratives of former senior officers who had received accolades resulted in an emphasis on rarer, more newsworthy case types, including missing persons, homicides and shootings.
This relationship between the nature of the anecdotes shared by the retirees and the constitution of a narrow image of policing was also evident in guests’ selective reflection on their experiences. Each guest had a long career, and this allowed them to reflect on a wider repertoire of anecdotes and then select the ‘worst’ or ‘best’ stories:
This was particularly evident in episode E, where the guest had an extensive career in senior leadership and shared anecdotes of his successes in policing drug distribution, extortion, homicides and management. His accounts included no references to personal failure, thus reinforcing the image of police as ever competent, ethical and successful.
Moreover, the inclusion of retired police officers allowed the episodes to centre on well-known cases that supported police mythology. For example, in episode A, the guest described working on undercover operations related to Kath Pettingill, a Melbourne woman associated with drug trafficking during the 1970s and 1980s.
This anecdote is likely of particular interest to listeners as Kath Pettingill’s story has dominated Australian true crime and she served as inspiration for the character ‘Smurf’ in the critically acclaimed Australian crime film Animal Kingdom.
Similarly, in episode D, the guest was invited to speak about her work on the highly publicised homicide investigation of John Sharpe, who murdered his wife Anna and daughter Gracie in 2004. This case received extensive media attention because Sharpe appeared on television insincerely pleading for information about Anna and Gracie’s disappearance before being convicted of their murders.
The recirculation of well-known stories was further evident in the repeated references to the Walsh Street police shootings. In 1988, Victorian officers Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre were murdered in South Yarra and these murders are routinely referenced in Australian true crime media and used to exemplify the dangers of policing. In episode A, the guest noted that the people he was investigating were connected to these shootings:
Episode C also included mention of this case when the guest recounted killing a suspect in the murders, Jedd Houghton.
The use of retired police officers as guests ensured that people and cases that already resonate with the public and have been established as part of police mythology were drawn upon and recirculated for new audiences.
Beyond facilitating a highly selective account of policing, inviting retirees to reflect on past incidents or cases allowed them to further exert control over the police narrative. Reflecting on incidents from prior decades meant that the stories recounted were at a temporal remove from (present-day) audiences. Reflection at a temporal remove gives the storyteller greater control over the narrative and, in turn, greater power to neutralise any critical examination of policing. As Cohen’s (1977) work on ‘retrospective restructuring’ highlights, reflective autobiographical accounts draw upon memory and affective experiences to create a new, restructured account of past actions. Additionally, if the narrative does explore or highlight any inadequacies, reflection at a temporal remove allows such problems to be cleaved from the current police institution and attributed to the time period. As the guest noted in episode E, ‘[t]hings changed a lot after that, with the findings of that Commission of Inquiry’. This aligns with Russell’s (2017) work on police participation in pride events, which highlights how police engage in image management by recalling past homophobic violence in order to contrast these histories with a progressive present.
Furthermore, temporal reflection creates distance between the stories told by police and the public’s day-to-day experiences of policing. Podcasts utilise sound to transport listeners across time and into imagined places (Herrity, 2020) to generate immersive experiences. Reflection at a temporal remove, coupled with the transportive qualities of podcasts, has the potential to reduce the capacity for the listener to critically reflect on the guest’s account as their attention is more easily shifted away from contemporary experiences or discourses on policing and into the guest’s narrative. This process is enhanced insofar as reflections are focussed on specific moments in time or discrete past incidents, which further contains the site of immersion and excludes the contemporary context. While the episodes were presented as accounts of the realities of policing, their deployment of temporal reflection further narrowed the lens through which the story of policing can be understood.
Discussion
This article examined the role of short-form TCPs in shaping the police image, highlighting how, the host’s role as facilitator, the emphasis on first-person perspectives and the selective reflection evident in the episodes, can create the conditions to reinforce the role of police as primary definers of crime and justice. Police are participating in new sites of public attention and sharing their professional stories in ways that intersect with the affordances and cultures of those sites. Police social media strategies on platforms like Facebook show how police stories are extensively altered to align with algorithmic and online cultures (Wood and McGovern, 2021). However, this article has highlighted how police narratives can be easily adaptable to and disseminated through short-form TCPs. Access to first-person narratives via podcasts allow listeners gain insight into hidden experiences through the intimate and transportive space of their headphones (Rae et al., 2019). When police guests share exciting and emotional anecdotes, the intimacy of the form can imbue their narratives with greater authenticity and authority. Additionally, the friendly disposition of the host and the primacy placed on informal conversations and procedural detail can reduce the potential for critical discussion of police practices to emerge. Moreover, the reliance of short-form TCPs on individual guests allows for more anecdotal and selective accounts to be published, which in this context shapes the types of narratives about police that are available for the public to make meaning of police work. In this way, short-form TCPs can become an important site where the authority of police perspectives can be reasserted.
As relatively new sites, short-form TCPs are also important because they highlight the role of podcasts in expanding the spaces for police stories to circulate. As outlined above, each guest was a retired officer invited to share their experiences dating from the 1980s to the early 2000s. In this regard, while professional communications staff are central to contemporary media narratives, short-form TCPs allow retired police officer to participate. Retired police have always contributed to the symbolic authority of policing through memoirs, interviews and film consultations; however, the dynamics shaping the emergence of short-form TCPs create a new place for these narratives. In an attention economy, driven by the need to maintain visibility (Abidin, 2020), short-form podcasts publish regular episodes with engaging guests. Unlike other mediums, they are relatively inexpensive and quick to produce. In removing barriers to participation, podcasts have the potential to create a site for retired police to participate in the symbolic economy of policing and generate new encounters with the public. This can allow the police image to be further curated, as retired police guests selected exciting and positive stories of their work, at a temporal remove from listeners.
In addition to providing a new site for police stories, this analysis highlights how short-form TCPs have the potential to intervene in the conditions of new visibility. By prioritising individual accounts of policing and treating them as authoritative, these episodes demonstrate how individual accounts can counter accounts of policing that are external and collective. This intervention is evident when the narratives in these episodes are contrasted with recent collective accounts of policing which have highlighted issues within police organisations. For example, the recent Commission of Inquiry (Commission of Inquiry, 2022) into Queensland Police Service (QPS) responses to domestic and family violence collected submissions and survey responses from approximately 11,000 QPS members and found evidence of ‘sexism, misogyny and racism’ (Commission of Inquiry, 2022: 6). It noted the importance of framing these issues as systemic rather than individual: ‘[t]hese issues are not isolated. There are not just a few bad apples’ (Commission of Inquiry, 2022: 6). Moreover, anonymous survey responses from QPS members highlighted several issues with police practices and culture, including poor leadership, bullying and the targeting of members who make complaints (Commission of Inquiry, 2022). In contrast, the episodes analysed in this paper deviate from this framing by giving primacy to the individual experience. Providing listeners with the details of key moments or career highlights in an intimate exchange presents an individual perspective as the lens through which policing can be understood.
The analysis of these dynamics in these episodes, highlights how short-form TCPs have the potential to become contemporary sites for the reassertion of police perspectives in the symbolic economy of policing. However, there are important limitations to acknowledge in this piece. As this research examined five individual episodes from popular short-form TCPs, it is not possible to generalise these findings to the wider array podcasts. Therefore, more research is needed with a larger number of short-form TCP episodes to explore whether the patterns observed in these episodes are reflected in the wider landscape. Ultimately, these findings highlight that the informal, transportive and intimate conventions of podcasting are crucial for researchers to consider when examining how the public make meaning of police.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.