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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9557287 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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