Copaganda: The Cultural Foundations of Police Trust

Despite widespread evidence and news coverage of police misconduct, public trust in American law enforcement remains remarkably stable. This persistence challenges foundational assumptions about institutional legitimacy—that trust derives primarily from real-world performance and lived experience. We argue that entertainment media offers an alternative basis for institutional trust through repeated exposure to heroic police narratives that can reframe contradictory realities. Using text analysis of television scripts, we document consistent pro-police narratives across top-rated ``cop drama’’ programming. Four national surveys reveal robust associations between media exposure and favorable policing attitudes. Two experiments show that entertainment media cultivates trust in police across racial groups and experiential divides, including among those whose direct encounters contradict media portrayals. Effects emerge regardless of viewers’ content preferences. In a democracy increasingly shaped by mediated narratives, trust may flow not to the most accountable institutions, but to those most effectively mythologized.

Recommended citation: Reny, T., Kim, E., & Fernandez, E. "Copaganda: The Cultural Foundations of Police Trust."
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