Hong Kong Police's Image and its Representations in Crime-Fighting and Order-Maintenance Duties: A Content Analysis of Newspaper Accounts in Post-Handover Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, it is an open secret that the police officers always met public challenges and even suffer various humiliations in recent years. On the other hand, Hong Kong Police Force has recently won a credit of the Best Public Image Award. This paradoxical social phenomenon might be resolved by specifically dividing the representations of police image in undertaking crime-fighting duties versus order-maintenance duties. In doing so, this study asks: would it be that the representations of police image tend to be negative when the police perform their order-maintenance duties? Simultaneously, would it be that the representations of police image turn to be positive when the police assume their crime-fighting responsibilities? Against this background, this empirical project aims to investigate police image and its relation to the police’s specifically categorized duties in Hong Kong. The qualitative and quantitative content analysis of local newspaper accounts are used as the research methods.