Policy Reform After a Mass Shooting

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-65
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Las Vegas ◽  
Policy Reform ◽  
Gun Violence ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
Assault Weapons

This chapter focuses on the case study of the Las Vegas mass shooting. Utilizing analyses of news media content and results from interviews with gun violence prevention (GVP) advocates, it explores the policy debates occurring after this shooting. Findings indicate that within the news media coverage the two main targets for policy change were bump stock devices and assault weapons. Bump stock devices had a direct link to the shooting and ended up banned; however, there are some issues with the way this measure was passed. There was also no traction on renewing the assault weapons ban. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the news media coverage was shown to adopt a defeatist tone indicating that no policy reform was expected to take place, citing a lack of action after previous incidents and the current political landscape as the reasons why nothing would happen.

Creating a Climate of Fear

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-52
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Las Vegas ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Death Toll ◽  
The Future ◽  
Culture Of Fear ◽  
Mass Shooting

This chapter looks at the news media articles relating to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting incident. It is shown that this incident is categorized by death toll in media coverage. Mass shootings generally are portrayed as an “ongoing trend” and are “normalized” to the extent that it appears they will occur again in the future. The news media also debates whether the incident should be defined as terrorism, deliberating about the criteria needed for an attack to be viewed as a terrorist act. Moreover, a sense of fear is conveyed and then amplified in news media coverage through accounts from eyewitnesses, descriptions of the shooting, and visualizations of the attack. This ultimately creates a culture of fear, whereby the risk of becoming victimized by a mass shooting is disproportionate to the actual threat faced.

Poor Kids versus Bad Teachers: Vergara v. California and the Social Construction of Teachers

2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jeanne M. Powers ◽  
Kathryn P. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Spectacle ◽  
The Public ◽  
Print News ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Social

Background In the past decade, the laws governing teachers’ employment have been at the center of legal and political conflicts across the United States. Vergara v. California challenged five California state statutes that provide employment protections for teachers. In June 2014, a California lower court declared the statutes unconstitutional because they exposed students to “grossly ineffective teachers.” Purpose The purpose of the article is to document and analyze how Vergara was presented in the print news media. It is important to understand how the print news media presents education policy debates to the public, because the print news media shapes the general public's understanding of education and other public policy debates by providing frames and themes for interpreting the issues in question and people associated with them. Research Design Using the social construction of target populations and political spectacle as conceptual lenses, we conducted a content analysis of print news media articles on the Vergara case published between June 2012 and November 2014. We provide a descriptive overview of the full corpus of articles published during this period and a thematic analysis of the 65 unique news articles published in the aftermath of the decision. The latter focuses on news articles because they are intended to provide more objective coverage of the case than opinions or editorials. Findings In the print news media coverage, the word “teacher” was often paired with a negative qualifier, which suggests that Vergara was an effort to change the relatively advantaged social construction of teachers. Similarly, metaphors and the illusion of rationality associated with political spectacle were used in ways that bolstered the plaintiffs’ claims. While Vergara consumed a substantial amount of philanthropic and public dollars, ultimately it did not change the policies that govern teachers’ employment in California. Vergara may have been more successful in shaping the general public's perceptions of teachers and the conditions of teachers’ employment in the period following the trial.

scholarly journals Negativity, emotionality and populist rhetoric in election campaigns worldwide, and their effects on media attention and electoral success

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 410-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Gerstlé ◽  
Alessandro Nai
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Fear Appeals ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Electoral Campaigns

Very little is known in broad comparative terms about the nature and content of election campaigns. In this article, we present the first systematic and comparative assessment of the electoral campaigns of candidates having competed in elections across the world along three dimensions: negative campaigning, emotional campaigning and populist rhetoric. We do so by introducing a new dataset, based on expert judgements, that allows us to retrace the content of campaigns of 97 candidates having competed in 43 elections worldwide between 2016 and 2018. To put the importance of these three dimensions of electoral campaigns into perspective, we comparatively assess the extent to which these three dimensions are more or less likely to capture the attention of news media and to determine the electoral fate of those who rely on them. Our analyses reveal that negativity and emotionality significantly and substantially drive media coverage and electoral results: more positive and enthusiasm-based campaigns increase media attention, but so do campaigns based on personal attacks and fear appeals, especially during presidential elections and when the number of competing candidates is lower. Looking at electoral success, negativity backlashes overall, and yet personal attacks can be used successfully to increase the chances of an electoral victory. Furthermore, both appeals to enthusiasm (but not when a lot of candidates compete) and fear (especially in presidential elections) work as intended to capture the attention of the public and transform it into better electoral fortunes. We also discuss the results of a case study of the 2017 French presidential election, where we compare the campaigns of four leading candidates (Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen, François Fillon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon); results of the case study offer interesting insights to understand the general trends, and beyond.

The New Zealand Print Media and the 2004-2007 Local Elections: A Case Study

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 897-914
Author(s):  
Jacky Yaakov Zvulun
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
National Election ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Political Processes

Voters gain their information from news media, and in particular from print media, about politicians. More importantly, voters develop their understanding of political processes based on what they read. In this paper, I examine the print media coverage of the campaign introducing new electoral system Single Transferable Vote (STV) in the New Zealand Local Body Elections 2004 and 2007 compared with the campaign introducing Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system in the 1996 national election. I focus particularly on the coverage of the alternative electoral system, STV, by two newspapers – the Dominion Post and the Otago Daily Times from the perspective of type, nature, and number of the articles published and the attitudes toward encouraging participation and introducing new electoral system [STV]. The study shows that both newspapers offered a significantly poorer coverage of the 2004 and 2007 local elections compared to the campaign in 1996 national election. This also might lead to the prediction of one of the reason decreasing or increasing voter turnout.

scholarly journals Investigative News of Online Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Septiawan Santana Kurnia ◽  
Dadi Ahmadi ◽  
Firmansyah Firmansyah
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Online News ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Online Journalism ◽  
Investigative Reporting ◽  
News Stories

An investigative reporting has changed quite rapidly in the last few periods after the development of information technology. The presence of online media encourages the emergence of online journalism. The existence of online journalism, within the framework of online media, gives a certain touch to investigative reporting activities. Investigative reporting developed in online media has managerial uniqueness and certain coverage patterns. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how the management of editorials and online media coverage patterns in Indonesia conducting investigative coverage.Data for this research is obtained through interviews with data analysis using a qualitative approach and a case study method of single case-multilevel analysis. Research subjects (journalism) and research objects (online investigative news) of this study are Detik.com and Tirto.id.The results of the study show that investigative data are at the core of investigative reporting in online media. It can be in the form of direct observation under investigation (disguising) or the disclosure of new facts that have not been revealed before. The online news media in Indonesia, although it relies on the speed, also still takes into account the accuracy and rules of journalism, especially in the coverage of investigations. The online media strategy in reporting investigations is to divide investigative data into several news stories with one theme, but each headline is different according to the investigative reporting to be reported in parts.

Mediated Public Diplomacy Redefined: Foreign Stakeholder Engagement via Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 1665-1683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy J. Golan ◽  
Ilan Manor ◽  
Phillip Arceneaux
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Stakeholder Engagement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Definition Of

Mediated public diplomacy literature examines the engagement of foreign audiences by governments via mediated channels. To date, scholars have examined the competitive contest between global rivals in promoting and contesting one another’s frames as reflected in global news media coverage. Recognizing the meaningful impact of social media platforms, along with the global rise of government-sponsored media organizations, the current study builds on previous mediated public diplomacy scholarship by expanding the scope of the literature beyond the earned media perspective to also include paid, shared, and owned media. The article presents a revised definition of the term mediated public diplomacy along with a case study of government to foreign stakeholder engagement via the social media platform, Twitter.

scholarly journals Scandal mining: political nobodies and remediated visibility

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 893-908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Trottier
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Federal Election ◽  
First Pass ◽  
Media Channels

This article considers the 2015 federal election in Canada as the emergence of seemingly citizen-led practices whereby candidates’ past missteps are unearthed and distributed through social and news media channels. On first pass, these resemble citizen-led engagements through digital media for potentially unmappable political goals, given the dispersed and either non-partisan or multi-partisan nature of these engagements. By bringing together journalistic accounts and social media coverage alongside current scholarship on citizenship and visibility, this case study traces the possibility of political accountability and the political weaponisation of mediated visibility through the targeted extraction of candidate details from dispersed profiles, communities and databases.

scholarly journals Bots fired: examining social bot evidence in online mass shooting conversations

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Schuchard ◽  
Andrew Crooks ◽  
Anthony Stefanidis ◽  
Arie Croitoru
Keyword(s):  
Extreme Events ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Las Vegas ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
School Shooting ◽  
Centrality Measures ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
The Media

AbstractMass shootings, like other extreme events, have long garnered public curiosity and, in turn, significant media coverage. The media framing, or topic focus, of mass shooting events typically evolves over time from details of the actual shooting to discussions of potential policy changes (e.g., gun control, mental health). Such media coverage has been historically provided through traditional media sources such as print, television, and radio, but the advent of online social networks (OSNs) has introduced a new platform for accessing, producing, and distributing information about such extreme events. The ease and convenience of OSN usage for information within society’s larger growing reliance upon digital technologies introduces potential unforeseen risks. Social bots, or automated software agents, are one such risk, as they can serve to amplify or distort potential narratives associated with extreme events such as mass shootings. In this paper, we seek to determine the prevalence and relative importance of social bots participating in OSN conversations following mass shooting events using an ensemble of quantitative techniques. Specifically, we examine a corpus of more than 46 million tweets produced by 11.7 million unique Twitter accounts within OSN conversations discussing four major mass shooting events: the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting, the 2017 Sutherland Springs church chooting, the 2018 Parkland School Shooting and the 2018 Santa Fe school shooting. This study’s results show that social bots participate in and contribute to online mass shooting conversations in a manner that is distinguishable from human contributions. Furthermore, while social bots accounted for fewer than 1% of total corpus user contributors, social network analysis centrality measures identified many bots with significant prominence in the conversation networks, densely occupying many of the highest eigenvector and out-degree centrality measure rankings, to include 82% of the top-100 eigenvector values of the Las Vegas retweet network.

scholarly journals Visualizing narrative patterns in online news media

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 919-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Koivunen-Niemi ◽  
Masood Masoodian
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
User Study ◽  
Online News ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Narrative Patterns ◽  
Illustrative Case Study ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Over Time

Abstract News media play an important role in shaping social reality, and their multimedia narrative content, in particular, can have widespread repercussions in the public’s perception of past and present phenomena. Being able to visually track changes in media coverage over time could offer the potential for aiding social change, as well as furthering accountability in journalism. In this paper, we explore how visualizations could be used to examine differences in online media narrative patterns over time and across publications. While there are existing means of visualizing such narrative patterns over time, few address the aspect of co-occurrence of variables in media content. Comparing co-occurrences of variables chronologically can be more useful in identifying patterns and possible biases in media coverage than simply counting the individual occurrences of those variables independently. Here, we present a visualization, called time-sets, which has been designed to support temporal comparisons of such co-occurrences. We also describe an interactive prototype tool we have developed based on time-sets for analysis of multimedia news datasets, using an illustrative case study of news articles published on three online sources over several years. We then report on a user study we have conducted to evaluate the time-sets visualization, and discuss its findings.

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