Crimecraft

Journalists, police, and news publics in an Argentine town

by Ieva Jusionyte

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Crime narratives emerge from a collaborative process that involves diverse social groups across different locales. This diffused production of stories is captured by the concept of crimecraft, which helps illuminate the relationship among news media, organized crime, and police violence in postdictatorship Argentina. There, news makers must creatively maneuver between official reports and public secrets by shifting the story's authorship from themselves to their audiences. They do this with online news forums, which provide a space for readers to anonymously criticize brutal police practices, sometimes leading to public protests. Such is the negotiated and shifting relationship between law and violence, as well as the processual and performative character of knowledge production, which crimecraft helps unpack.

Two female officers at the comisaría de la mujer (women’s police station
in Puerto Iguazú, June 29, 2010. Photo by Ieva Jusionyte.)
Two female officers at the comisaría de la mujer (women’s police station) in Puerto Iguazú, June 29, 2010. Photo by Ieva Jusionyte.
Two female officers at the comisaría de la mujer (women’s police station) in Puerto Iguazú, June 29, 2010. Photo by Ieva Jusionyte.
Two female officers at the comisaría de la mujer (women’s police station) in Puerto Iguazú, June 29, 2010.
Two female officers at the comisaría de la mujer (women’s police station) in Puerto Iguazú, June 29, 2010. (Ieva Jusionyte)