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Paper short abstract

Documentary, audiovisual and digital ethnography of the representations of police work made by the a military police of Brazil, on the institution's official YouTube channel. It explores how state production of copagandistic media results in the lack of accountability in cases of police violence.

Paper long abstract

This paper discusses the social representations of police work created by the military police of the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The research was composed of a documentary, audiovisual and digital ethnography of the institution's official YouTube channel, with focus on the reality series Papa Mike SC, which followed the practices of military police officers and accumulated over 20 million views. The methodology was composed of four steps: a) panoramic analysis of the entire scope of the channel, b) description of the intersubjective experience of watching the series, c) dense descriptions of the audiovisual content of the 17 episodes, and d) content analysis of the public’s reaction to the videos through the comment sections. This study on police documents of communicational nature revealed that those narratives are composed of a copagandistic content. “Copaganda” describes pro-police propaganda in the media and has been associated with descriptions of the police as the only legitimate source of security and force and of police officers as morally, physically, intellectually and technologically superior individuals. The content also described predominantly black areas of the states, such as favelas, as “crime localities”. The analysis of the comments highlighted that the public’s response to the videos was an endorsement for police brutality in the areas categorized as dangerous. The findings lead to the conclusion that state production of copagandistic media resulted in the perpetration of a lack of accountability in cases of police violence through the promotion of these practices in the areas designated as deserving of it.