Police Are Using Social Media to Control the Narrative, Here’s What That Looks Like

Carefully crafted video content is being spread by police departments across the country - the impact is huge.

Youtube channel of the Los Angeles Police Department.

When I was 10-years-old my entire family and I watched a documentary that convinced us of the existence of mermaids. 

It was one of those lazy fall afternoons when school was out for Thanksgiving break, but the holiday has already passed, as well as the stress of preparing that came with it. Back in the days of cable when pickings were a bit slimmer, a mermaid documentary wasn’t a bad choice for a family made up mostly of children (5 kids, 2 adults). We were extremely invested, eating up every eyewitness account and grainy cellphone video of mermaid-like creatures in the sea. 

By the end, we were ready to spread the news that mermaids, and at this point probably many other mythical creatures, were indeed real. 

Except, at the very end of the documentary, it was revealed that the entire thing was fake. 

The documentary was a “mockumentary” -  a film made to test what people would believe when presented with minimal, single-source information, a less harmful way of testing the power of propaganda. I remember feeling so deceived I vowed never to blindly trust a message like that again and to make sure I researched the media I was consuming. 

Most media, social media, in particular, relies on the fact that most people cannot be bothered to fact-check everything they see on a daily basis - and police departments across the country utilize this to soften their image. 

Following two years of some of the most expansive police brutality coverage in history, departments have turned to social media to combat the numerous and volatile examples of bodycam and phone videos that captured their violence against unarmed civilians. Here’s what the newest of “copaganda” looks like: