Entre a violência e a mídia: percepções dos policiais sobre si

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between violence, the police and the media from the perspective of police officers, that is, how police officers perceive their self construction and the construction of their performance in the media chanels of the state of Pará. We note that military police officers are the mediators between violence, media and society. They are a main source of information, those who first come to an occurrence, and represent the voice that speaks for the state, the victim and the suspect at the same time. Together, violence, the police, and the media establish a communicative relationship marked by social interactions. In this sense, this paper has as its backbone the theoretical perspectives of symbolic interactionism, which assumes that one's actions are based on the meanings the world offers them; meanings are acquired from social interaction. The qualitative research method was used considering the subjective character of investigations, as well as narrative analysis, to understand the meanings that officers build of themselves and their daily lives. For data collection, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with military police officers who hold different positions in the operations department of the Military Police of the state of Pará, in the ostensive policing of the 20th Military Police Battalion, located in the neighborhood of Guamá, in Belém. We found that military police officers perceive the news as being disproportionate, considering the media's privilege to report only the negative aspects of officers’ activities and actions, most frequently appealing to exaggeration and sensationalism in search of audience. They also perceive the news about themselves as exhaustive, generalized and disregarding of their individuality. That is, it dissociates the individual from the professional. For police officers, the excess or systematic repetition of narratives of violence in Pará’s media is harmful because, as they explain, there is a desire for greater police apparatus, more demands, and for the police to take more space in the media’s narratives.