This book investigates how the media shape contemporary police practice and decision-making by examining the image work activities of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) over the past two decades. The book expands the geographical reach of mediatization scholarship to the Global South and offers an original six-phased process for mediatized policing. Adopting an institutionalist approach, it uses expert interviews with Audio-Visual and Corporate Communications personnel, Sergeants, Inspectors, and Commissioners of Police. 

The book discusses how Audio-Visual Units form and later become ‘engine-rooms’ for police image work; the magnetic field of mutual interests between the media and the police; how the police compete in the attention economy and use crime television shows and documentary film-making; how Facebook organises the work day of media unit personnel; and what gives rise to Mediatized Commissioners of Police.

Abbigail Ajim has taught media and communications for over 15 years at higher education institutions in China and her native Trinidad and Tobago. She has worked in public relations and as a freelance journalist in the press and television. Her research interests lie in police public relations, crime reporting, and the use of digital media in the newsroom, in corporations, and higher education.