Behold the monster: Mythical explanations of deviance and evil in news of the Amish school shooting

Self Cite

This critical textual analysis examines the symbolic annihilation of race and racisms by the use of hashtags, such as #BBQBecky and #CornerstoreCaroline, in news coverage of White people in the United States who called or threatened to call 911 to report everyday behavior of Black individuals in 2018. This study argues that the use of humorous and virtual hashtags to represent the callers contributed to overall coverage of racially charged incidents in ways that reduced the events’ seriousness in terms of social policing of Black individuals. Collectively, this coverage formed a type of symbolic annihilation of racist interpretations of callers’ acts and Black resistance and meanings embedded within the hashtags themselves.

Section: Method: Unpacking the Missing In News Textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

#DiminishingDiscrimination: The symbolic annihilation of race and racism in news hashtags of ‘calling 911 on Black people’

Gutsche¹,

Cong²,

Pan³

et al. 2020

Self Cite

“…Secondly, insufficient attention has also been given to differences between local and national coverage of school shootings. Only a handful of studies have conducted such comparative analyses (Gutsche and Salkin, 2017; Holody, Park, and Zhang, 2013; Leavy and Maloney, 2009). In their study of the media’s response to the 2005 Red Lake Indian Reservation and 1999 Columbine school shootings Leavy and Maloney (2009) performed a content analysis of the New York Times , and the two local papers finding that Columbine received more coverage at the national level than did Red Lake.…”

Section: Mass Shootings In the Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finishing the story: Narrative ritual in news coverage of the Umpqua Community College shooting

Alaimo

2021

This article applies Victor Turner’s schema of ‘social drama’ to examine narrative rituals and the roles performed by a local and national newspaper in their coverage of the Umpqua Community College shooting that took place in October 2015. Textual analysis is used to compare stories from The Roseburg News-Review and the New York Times in terms of the narrative’s movement from breach, crisis, redress and finally to either reintegration or separation. This study finds that narrative patterns for the local and national newspapers do not parallel, suggesting differences in role perceptions. Instead, journalistic ritual is subject to the crisis, proximity to the tragedy and audience. The local outlet reinforces consensus with authority by focusing on victims and the grieving process to achieve the social good of healing and recovery; and the national newspaper challenges the status quo by focusing on the shooter and legislative reform. While the News-Review reaches reintegration by achieving a sense of normalcy, the New York Times stalls in a state of liminality. Both papers move the discourse on school shootings toward a societal ideal though neither narrative reaches the transformative discourse that has invoked national reflexivity noted in past instances of tragedy.

“…Journalistic work, in combination with other cultural forces, serves to co-construct narrative myths (of polarization or goodwill, danger or safety, prosperity or scarcity, etc. ), that influence society (Gutsche and Salkin, 2017). That is to say, all journalistic content, be it a long lyrical profile or a series of tables and searchable databases, is ultimately filtered humanistically by audiences, who inevitably blend the content into their historical lives and moral outlooks (Sayer, 2011).…”

Section: Social Scientific Journalism’s Rise To Hegemonymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a humanistic turn for a more ethical journalism

Parks

2019

This article argues that the social scientific epistemology that has dominated journalism for the past half-century has devalued the moral implications of public affairs and deprived citizens of the ethical tools necessary to make humane political decisions. Reviewing the contingent history of the integration of journalistic and social scientific methods leading to journalism’s computational turn, the essay calls for a humanistic reconceptualization away from journalists’ role as political interpreters toward a comparable role as moral interpreters.