CJ presents: Dr. Bailey Gerrits

Wed. Sep. 25 12:30 PM - Wed. Sep. 25 01:30 PM
Contact: b.dobchuk-land@uwinnipeg.ca or 988-7662
Location: Room 1L13

CJ presents: Dr. Bailey Gerrits, UWinnipeg's Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, who will give her talk More police and prisons: Explaining how police influence domestic violence news patterns in Canada.

Abstract:
Domestic violence is a pressing social issue in Canada. How the news media covers this violence has the potential to generate social responsibility or reinforce misconceptions about its causes, prevalence, and solutions. Little research documents more recent patterns in Canadian news and few, if any, explain the factors influencing the prevalence and persistence of Canadian domestic violence news patterns. Drawing on an extensive content and discourse analysis of recent Canadian newspaper attention to domestic violence and interviews and observations with keys news workers and their sources in four cities in Ontario, I argue that the news continues to individualize responsibility and racialize the violence. What is more, the police play a significant role in shaping the news. From contributing to carceral framing to actively and effectively silencing stories, police communication is a core component of the fifth estate's work. This raises questions the independence of the news and its ability to hold police accountable.

Bio:
Bailey Gerrits holds a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Winnipeg in the Department of Criminal Justice. Dr. Gerrits earned her PhD in Political Studies from Queen's University in 2019, which was funded through the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, SSHRC, and the International Council of Canadian Studies, among others. Her work examines how police exercise discursive governance through their engagement with traditional news media and digital technologies and explores the ways in which political economic and policy factors shape police political communication. She has published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Feminist Media Studies, Atlantic: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, & Social Justice, and International Journal of Communication, and co-edited a volume for the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen's University. Dr. Gerrits is also passionate about ending gendered violence and has collaborated with the Sexual Assault Centre Kingston and Kingston Police to work towards that end.