Establishing 911: media infrastructures of affective anti-Black, pro-police dispositions

To facilitate deeper investigations into the U.S.'s centralized emergency number, 911, this article attends to the first decade of the service's implementation in the mid-twentieth century. Ostensibly, 911 was created to hasten responses by public services for health and safety. Yet, feder...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCritical studies in media communication Vol. 39; no. 5; pp. 394 - 407
Main Author Mason, Myles W.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 20.10.2022
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
20th century
Affect
anti-Blackness
Black people
Discourses
Emergency communications systems
Health services
Infrastructure
Investigations (Law enforcement)
Mass media effects
media infrastructure
Police
Police community relations
policing
Public health
Public services
Race
Riots
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Summary:To facilitate deeper investigations into the U.S.'s centralized emergency number, 911, this article attends to the first decade of the service's implementation in the mid-twentieth century. Ostensibly, 911 was created to hasten responses by public services for health and safety. Yet, federal backing for 911 first occurred in 1967 in a report admonishing the recent "race riots," articulating predominantly Black communities as a threat to white society and articulating white individuals as essential extensions of the police. Notably, 911's media infrastructure is replete with affective anti-Black discourses that produced an atmosphere of anti-Black, pro-police dispositions that uniquely capacitated white citizens to discipline the Black body. This history opens deeper inquiry into 911 and offers context for contemporary 911 controversies.
ISSN:1529-5036
1479-5809
DOI:10.1080/15295036.2022.2086991