Voices of authority: exploring the emergence of the official police podcast

It is well established that modern police forces are increasingly skilled at managing their public image through various media strategies, including public relations departments, reality-style television programs and social media. This paper considers the more recent move of policing agencies in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand into the world of podcasting. This evolution in police image work has seen several state and national police forces release official podcast series that purport to ‘shine a light’ on or offer ‘a rare glimpse’ into the ‘real world’ of policing. In providing a preliminary examination of how and why police present themselves and the work they do to the public using this contemporary media format, the paper highlights the continued importance of criminological interrogation of police media work in the context of recent conversations on the proliferation of copspeak and copaganda.