Under color of authority: justifying violence in television crime dramas

The portrayal of violence is pervasive in contemporary American television programming. While a number of social scientific and psychology-based studies have been carried out to study how audiences react to fictional portrayals of violence, far fewer studies have addressed what portion of that violence is carried out by officers of the law-those acting under the color of authority-in television shows. This study employs content analysis to measure and analyze such violence across a range of contemporary television crime drama programs in order to identify the justification of violence performed by officials. This study begins the work of looking at the representation and justification of official violence in television dramas. Selected episodes of network crime dramas are viewed along with selected episodes of popular cable crime dramas. Incidents of violence by officials were quantified and compared to incidents of justified official violence to establish the numerical significance. An analysis of crime drama programming is used to answer two questions about justification of violence by official and non-official characters. Through a content analysis of select episodes of fictional television crime dramas, two hypotheses about justification of violence by officials are tested and examined. This study finds that official violence is extensive in television drama and the majority of that violence is justified. Existing definitions of the term violence are reviewed and discussed in order to provide classification guidance for the analysis of the television program content. Scholars in media studies have explored aspects of violence in fictional portrayals on television for decades. This study contributes by offering future directions of research to perform additional investigations into the justification of official violence in American television dramas.