Responses to mass shooting events

• Author: Tatyanna Begay,Anthony Stefanidis,Andrew Crooks,Arie Croitoru,Ashley Lee,Jacek Radzikowski,Alex Bettios,Ron Mahabir,Ross Schuchard,Sara Kien
• Date: 01 February 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12486
• Published date: 01 February 2020

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12486

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

COUNTERING MASS VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES

Responses to mass shooting events

The interplay between the media and the public

Arie Croitoru1Sara Kien2Ron Mahabir1

Jacek Radzikowski1Andrew Crooks1Ross Schuchard1

Tatyanna Begay3Ashley Lee3Alex Bettios4Anthony Stefanidis1

1George Mason University

2Northern Arizona University

3Dine College

4Langley High School

Correspondence

Arie Croitoru, Georgraphy and Geoinforma-

tionScience, George Mason University, 2204

Exploratory Hall, Fairfax,VA 22030.

Email:acroitor@gmu.edu

Research Summary: Public mass shootings tend to

capture the public’s attention and receive substantial cov-

erage in both traditional media and online social networks

(OSNs) and have become a salient topic in them. Moti-

vated by this, the overarching objective of this paper is to

advance our understanding of how the public responds to

mass shooting events in such media outlets. Specifically,

it aims to examine whether distinct information seeking

patterns emerge over time and space, and whether asso-

ciations between public mass shooting events emerge in

online activities and discourse. Towards this objective, we

study a sequence of five public mass shooting events that

have occurred in the United States between October 2017

and May 2018 across three major dimensions: the public’s

online information seeking activities, the media coverage,

and the discourse that emerges in a prominent OSN. To

capture these dimensions, respectively, data was collected

and analyzed from Google Trends, LexisNexis, Wikipedia

Page views, and Twitter. The results of our analysis sug-

gest that distinct temporal patterns emerge in the public’s

information seeking activities across different platforms,

Criminology & Public Policy. 2020;19:335–360. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp © 2020 American Society of Criminology 335

336 CROITORUET AL.

and that associations between an event and its preceding

events emerge both in the media coverage and in OSNs.

Policy Implication: Studying the evolution of discourse

in OSNs provides a valuable lens to observe how soci-

ety’s views on public mass shooting events are formed

and evolved over time and space. The ability to analyze

such data allows tapping into the dynamics of reshaping

and reframing public mass shooting events in the public

sphere and enable it to be closely studied and modeled. A

deeper understanding of this process, along with the emerg-

ing associations drawn between such events, can then pro-

vide policy and decision-makers with opportunities to bet-

ter design policies and communicate the significance of

their goals and objectives to the public.

Public mass shootings in general, and school shootings in particular, have a long history in the United

States. The earliest recording of a school shooting event dates back to 1764, but most school shooting

events were recorded from 1840 to present day (Paradice, 2017). Although not a formally defined

government statistic in the United States, many researchers have generally considered public mass

shooting as “a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms,

within one event, in at least one or more public locations, such as, a workplace, school, restaurant,

house of worship, neighborhood, or other public setting” (Krouse & Richardson, 2015, p. 2; see also

Dahmen, 2018; Murray, 2017; Silva & Capellan, 2019; Towers, Gomez-Lievano, Khan, Mubayi, &

Castillo-Chavez, 2015.). Moffat (2019) tallied 70 mass shooting events in the United States with 620

casualties and more than 1,000 wounded in the period beginning with the Columbine event in 1999

and concluding with the Parkland shooting in 2018. Although mass shooting events occur in various

countries around the world, the United States seems to be exceptional in terms of the sheer volume

of such events, positioning it well above any other country (Lankford, 2016). Lankford (2016) noted

that globally the United States also had a disproportionately high number of offenders (accounting for

31% of global public mass shooters) compared with its share of the global population (5%). Moreover,

public mass shootings have been on the rise in the United States overt he lastdecade (Blair & Schweit,

2014; Katsiyannis, Whitford, & Ennis, 2018).

These events tend to capture the public’s attention and receivesubstantial news coverage. For exam-

ple, in 2012, news editors, in an Associated Press year-end poll, placed mass shootings as the leading

news stories for that year (Fox & DeLateur, 2014). Similarly, The New York Times ranked mass shoot-

ing stories among its 100 most read stories in 2015, 2017, and 2018. In addition to such traditional

media outlets (i.e., newspapers and television news), online social networks (OSNs), such as Twit-

ter or Facebook, have recently emerged as a prominent source of information about breaking news,

including mass shootings. In the United States, OSNs recently surpassed traditional print newspapers

as a primary source for news and continue to gain traction on other traditional news sources such as

television and radio (Mitchell et al., 2018). This combination of traditional and emerging media can

be seen as a novel news ecosystem comprising both traditional news sources and online platforms

(e.g., news websites/apps and social media) that is highly participatory and fosters citizen engagement