Calling All Cars: Radio Dragnets and the Technology of Policing - Couverture souple

Battles, Kathleen

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0816649146 ISBN 13 : 9780816649143

Editeur : University of Minnesota Press, 2010

Synopsis

Calling All Cars shows how radio played a key role in an emerging form of policing during the turbulent years of the Depression. Until this time popular culture had characterized the gangster as hero, but radio crime dramas worked against this attitude and were ultimately successful in making heroes out of law enforcement officers. Through close analysis of radio programming of the era and the production of true crime docudramas, Kathleen Battles argues that radio was a significant site for overhauling the dismal public image of policing. However, it was not simply the elevation of the perception of police that was at stake. Using radio, reformers sought to control the symbolic terrain through which citizens encountered the police, and it became a medium to promote a positive meaning and purpose for policing. For example, Battles connects the apprehension of criminals by a dragnet with the idea of using the radio network to both publicize this activity and make it popular with citizens. The first book to systematically address the development of crime dramas during the golden age of radio, Calling All Cars explores an important irony: the intimacy of the newest technology of the time helped create an intimate authority-the police as the appropriate force for control-over the citizenry.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Kathleen Battles is assistant professor of communication and journalism at Oakland University.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Minnesota Press
• Date d'édition: 2010
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0816649146
• ISBN 13: 9780816649143
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 288
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Pays-Bas