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Mediatized public crisis and civil society renewal: The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence

University of Melbourne, Australia, s.cottle{at}unimelb.edu.au

There have been many racist murders in Britain both before and since the killing of Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old black student, in April 1993. This particular murder, exceptionally, prompted widespread re-examination of questions of (in)justice, cultural identity and continuing racism in British society and it eventually initiated processes of institutional reflexivity including government policies targeting institutionalized racism within Britain’s most powerful organizations of state and civil society. The Stephen Lawrence case unfolded within the arenas and processes of the criminal justice system, but the public story of ‘Stephen Lawrence’, the central concern of this article, was principally played out within the nation’s media (and some international media too). It was here that the symbolic and moral charge of the case became generalized outwards to different publics in society, galvanizing emotions and appealing to a sense of moral solidarity subjunctively oriented to how society should or could be. This article, based upon analysis of the extensive media reporting over the ten year period 1993-2003 and developing theoretical ideas of ‘mediatized public crisis’ as a form of ‘society in action’, explores how the mainstream British media ‘performed’ the Stephen Lawrence case and thereby transformed it into a ‘mediatized public crisis’ embroiling as it did so powerful institutions of state (police, judiciary, government) and unleashing institutional reflexivity, social reforms and cultural change.

Key Words: media performance • mediatized public crisis • moral solidarity • publics • ritual • social drama • ‘society in action’

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