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“Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters

Relying on more expansive criteria for defining “mass shootings” than much existing research, we examine a subset of a unique dataset incorporating 7,048 news documents covering 2,170 shootings in the United States between 2013 and 2019. We analyze the descriptive language used to describe incidents...

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Autores principales: Bridges, Tristan, Tober, Tara Leigh, Brazzell, Melanie, Chatterjee, Maya
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9557287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248468
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.966980
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author Bridges, Tristan
Tober, Tara Leigh
Brazzell, Melanie
Chatterjee, Maya
author_facet Bridges, Tristan
Tober, Tara Leigh
Brazzell, Melanie
Chatterjee, Maya
author_sort Bridges, Tristan
collection PubMed
description Relying on more expansive criteria for defining “mass shootings” than much existing research, we examine a subset of a unique dataset incorporating 7,048 news documents covering 2,170 shootings in the United States between 2013 and 2019. We analyze the descriptive language used to describe incidents and perpetrators and discover significant racial disparities in representation. This research enables a critical examination of the explanatory frames utilized by news media to tell the public who mass shooters are and journalistic attempts to explain why they occur. Data were analyzed utilizing a mixed methods approach, relying on content analysis to inductively code emergent categories of descriptions of shooters and binary logistic regressions to analyze the preponderance of descriptive categories when comparing news articles reporting on shootings committed by differently racialized shooters. Our results confirm some recent research showing that mass shooters racialized as white are more likely to be described with kind and compassionate language. With our larger sample, however, we also find that mass shooters racialized as white are additionally more likely to be described with negative language as “bad” or “evil” in comparison to shooters of color. We discuss how these data demonstrate that media reports present a more complex picture of white mass shooters for the public than shooters of color.
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spelling pubmed-95572872022-10-14 “Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters Bridges, Tristan Tober, Tara Leigh Brazzell, Melanie Chatterjee, Maya Front Psychol Psychology Relying on more expansive criteria for defining “mass shootings” than much existing research, we examine a subset of a unique dataset incorporating 7,048 news documents covering 2,170 shootings in the United States between 2013 and 2019. We analyze the descriptive language used to describe incidents and perpetrators and discover significant racial disparities in representation. This research enables a critical examination of the explanatory frames utilized by news media to tell the public who mass shooters are and journalistic attempts to explain why they occur. Data were analyzed utilizing a mixed methods approach, relying on content analysis to inductively code emergent categories of descriptions of shooters and binary logistic regressions to analyze the preponderance of descriptive categories when comparing news articles reporting on shootings committed by differently racialized shooters. Our results confirm some recent research showing that mass shooters racialized as white are more likely to be described with kind and compassionate language. With our larger sample, however, we also find that mass shooters racialized as white are additionally more likely to be described with negative language as “bad” or “evil” in comparison to shooters of color. We discuss how these data demonstrate that media reports present a more complex picture of white mass shooters for the public than shooters of color. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9557287/ /pubmed/36248468 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.966980 Text en Copyright © 2022 Bridges, Tober, Brazzell and Chatterjee. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Bridges, Tristan
Tober, Tara Leigh
Brazzell, Melanie
Chatterjee, Maya
“Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters
title “Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters
title_full “Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters
title_fullStr “Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters
title_full_unstemmed “Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters
title_short “Husband, father, coward, killer”: The discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters
title_sort “husband, father, coward, killer”: the discursive reproduction of racial inequality in media accounts of mass shooters
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9557287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248468
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.966980
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