How Organizations Involved in Criminal Activity Sway Public Opinion: An Integrative Framework of Discursive Legitimation Strategies From a Scoping Review

This study explores how organizations involved in criminal activities try to publicly legitimize their actions by using discursive legitimation strategies. Often involving moral neutralization and blame deflection techniques, these discursive strategies present organizations involved in criminal activities as virtuous and justified to evade punishment and undermine public support for law enforcement. Although discursive legitimation strategies result in societal harm, little is known about what types of strategies exist for criminal activities, how they differ, and whether they change legitimacy judgments. Building on a communications-based legitimacy-as-process framework, this study presents insights from a scoping review that identifies, categorizes, and synthesizes the empirical evidence on discursive legitimation strategies used by organizations involved in criminal activities. We identify 10 strategies that are conceptually linked with distinct legitimacy dimensions, and develop testable propositions about how five mechanisms – licensing, contestation, enculturation, neutralization, and cleansing – as well as important boundary conditions may impact legitimacy judgments. Advancing the nascent discourse on legitimation processes of organizations and criminal practices, this study elevates our understanding of discursive legitimation strategies and their mechanisms to support the development of countermeasures to delegitimize criminal actions and enhance societal resilience.