The Viewer and the Viewed. Circulating Images of the Police, between Professionals, the Mass Media and the Public

International audienceIn everyday life, we all experience literary, televised, or motion picture encounters with the police. It is impossible to mention, or analyse, the police as an entity without being assailed by innumerable images, emotions, and media-informed stereotypes. How can we, as sociologists of the police, include this powerful imagery in our analyses ? How can we study this media double, whose influence is so hard to quantify but so easy to observe in the everyday relations of officers with their own professional activity and with the public