Published February 3, 2025
| Version v1
Journal article
Open
Academic Copaganda
Creators
- 1. University of Chicago
Description
How does social science insulate police from social movements' demand for abolition? We explore this through a content analysis of policing social science research funded by Arnold Ventures, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Institute of Justice published from 2011 to 2022 (N = 143 studies). Our mixed method content analysis revealed what we call "Academic Copaganda," or studies contesting social movement claims by authors (1) masking their conflicts of interest, or (2) espousing police epistemology. Although Academic Copaganda comprised 20% of studies in the sample, they received most media mentions after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. We conclude by discussing our contributions to legal scholarship on police legitimacy and empirical critical race theory.
Data availability
Replication materials are available at https://github.com/uchicago-justice-project/academic_copaganda.Files
Academic-Copaganda.pdf
Files
(4.0 MB)
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Additional details
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1017/lsr.2025.1
- Other
- oai:uchicago.tind.io:14668
Funding
- Unknown funder
- A gift made in the memory of Morris and Gayle Janowitz