ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way two opposing stakeholders, police accountability activists and law enforcement officers, and discusses the evidentiary value of such videos. Based on ethnographic material and a small case study, it argues that the interpretation of video evidence relies simultaneously on its indexicality and contingency, enabling discourses of and discourses about “what happened.” Critical discourse analysis (CDA) will guide the effort, as it offers not only a method but a way of thinking about how language and power are intertwined in the contextualizations of evidentiary video. Because it is concerned with the relationship between power and language, CDA is well suited for studying the police accountability videos. Language can explain – or explain away – events portrayed in video, and so discourse about video serves as a productive site for CDA.
