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Purpose: The study explores how educators use mass media to sensemake their experiences in relation to school shootings.

Methodology/approach: The present chapter uses content analysis to analyze educator tweets and results from an anonymous online survey.

Findings: Twitter is used by educators in the aftermath of school shootings to sensemake the impact these events have on teaching and learning outcomes. Moreover, educators turn to Twitter to debate larger issues related to gun control and arming teachers. Collectively, educators remain committed to their institutions and students; however, they may struggle to meet the ever-changing demands of what it means to be a teacher in the post-Columbine educational landscape.

Research limitations: While providing a starting point for understanding how educators sensemake their experiences with mass media, there are limitations. The sample size was limited to 55 tweets and 40 survey respondents. Furthermore, researcher bias is a concern. Both researchers work in higher education and have experienced the emotional “heaviness” that comes with discussions of school shootings.

Originality/value: This study provides insights into how educators use mass media to sensemake school shootings as both content producer and consumer. Findings indicate that through the identification of patterns within educators’ sensemaking processes, educational institutions can develop better systems for processing the effect of gun violence on the teaching experience and within the classroom.

Purpose – In the midst of the second wave of data collection for a Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI) research project, a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This tragic incident provoked responses across the United States, including intense political discourse, organized student protests, and active shooter drills. In order to assess the potential influence of a major threat to school safety on the perceptions of adolescents, this chapter analyzes the survey responses of middle and high school students in St. Louis County.

Methodology/approach – Approximately one-third of the sample was surveyed prior to the shooting and the remaining students completed surveys within three months after the shooting. The authors examines the potential influence of the shooting on students’ reports on a number of school safety issues, including fear and perceived risk of victimization, likelihood of reporting guns on campus, and engaging in avoidance behaviors.

Findings – Results indicate that the shooting significantly influenced students’ perceptions of school disorder and likelihood of reporting a weapon at school, especially in white, less disadvantaged schools. The results also reflect meaningful effects based on the timing of data collection post-shooting, with many of the significant changes appearing within three weeks after February 14, 2018.

Originality/value – This study explores how external events may influence student perceptions of school safety. Moreover, this study offers a methodological contribution by demonstrating an assessment of the Parkland shooting as a potential threat to internal validity.

Purpose – Video game violence has historically been offered by policy-makers and some scholars as one contributing factor to mass homicides, particularly with shooters who are young, male, and white. However, the evidence for or against such beliefs has not been closely examined.

Approach – The current chapter examines the research exploring violent video game playing and its links with violent and aggressive behavior. Further, research regarding mass school shooters is also examined. The chapter also engages in a sociological analysis of structural factors within both the general society and scientific community by which media is often identified as a potential cause of social problems.

Findings – Current evidence cannot support proposed links between video game violence and aggressive or violent behavior, whether mild or mass homicides. Efforts to blame mass homicides on video games appear to be due to unfamiliarity with games among older adults, prejudicial views of young offenders, and a well-identified cycle of moral panic surrounding media as a scapegoat for social ills. Poor peer-reviewing within the scientific community allowed scholars to participate in this moral panic.

Social implications – Time focused on video games as a cause of mass school shootings is time wasted. Discussions of mental health issues and mental health care are likely to bear more fruit in relation to mass school shootings.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the incidence and main characteristics of mass shooting events in Australia and the USA in the period 1981-2013.

The study adopted a conservative definition of mass shootings derived from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, covering four or more fatalities not including the offender. Australian cases were accessed from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s National Homicide Monitoring Programme (NHMP) database and several secondary sources. The US data were collected from the Mother Jones database, a report prepared for Mayors Against Illegal Guns and a New York Police Department report. The time series data were related to changes in firearms regulations in the two jurisdictions.

For Australia, the study identified 13 mass shooting events and 104 fatalities from gunshot wounds. For the USA, there were 73 events and 576 victims. Of note is the fact that all cases in Australia pre-dated the implementation of the restrictive 1996 National Firearms Agreement. In the USA, a small decline was evident during the 1994-2004 Federal Assault Weapon Ban. Incidents and fatalities increased after 2004.

Of necessity, the paper adopts a conservative FBI-based definition of mass shootings that limits the number of cases captured. The absence of an official government US database also most likely limits the number of cases identified.

The findings lend support to policy considerations regarding regulating access to firearms.

The paper is unique in comparing mass shootings in these two jurisdictions over three decades in association with changes in firearms regulation.

Purpose – This chapter is an exploration of how the Canadian media characterize the entire population of Canadian school shootings over a 25-year time period.

Methodology/approach – This chapter uses frame analysis to examine how the media characterize and frame Canadian school shootings within The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper.

Findings – This chapter demonstrates that the Canadian media utilize a small number of frames consistently over the 25-year period of analysis. Instead of changing their frame use within events over time, Canadian school shootings receive their own “frame emphasis,” reflecting the unique characteristics of each particular shooting. Additionally, the media utilize “exemplars,” or references to past North American school shootings, that serve as rhetorical anchors for future discussion of shooting events as they occur.

Research limitations/implications – As only one Canadian newspaper was utilized, this chapter may not be reflective of all Canadian news media.

Social implications – This chapter demonstrates the need to explore entire populations of school shootings in order to understand media frame use within and across events over time. It also demonstrates the need for international comparisons of school shootings, as the media utilize international exemplars to demonstrate links between school shooting events.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter is unique in that it examines the entire population of Canadian school shootings to date (n=27), and it is the first to undertake a frame analysis of exclusively Canadian shootings.

This book contributes to the current academic discussion on school shootings by analysing this contemporary phenomenon in a broader context of media saturation in contemporary social and cultural life. We argue that in order to understand school shootings as a cultural and sociological phenomenon, we need to analyse this type of public violence from a variety of academic perspectives. By drawing on a range of empirical analyses of different school shooting incidents in the United States, Germany, Finland, and Canada, the authors in this volume demonstrate the diverse ways in which the media and school shootings are connected in contemporary society. Numerous frameworks are applied in these original analyses, including media violence, journalism, visual culture, and social networking. Our shared goal is to understand the complex interplay between media, society and school shootings, and certainly how this interaction is carried out in a range of cultural and societal contexts and settings.

This chapter seeks to shed light on the many factors that contribute to people becoming school shooters. These factors are divided into four domains: biological, psychological, social, and cultural. At the biological level, this chapter explores the potential influence of genetics, pre- and post-natal development, and body-related issues that may affect the perpetrators' sense of self. A psychological typology is presented, consisting of psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized school shooters. Socially, school shooters often have multiple setbacks, failures, and rejections that contribute to their distress. Finally, the cultural domain includes such factors as media violence, role models for killing, and ideologies of hatred and supremacy. Rather than attributing school shootings to a simplistic cause such as bullying, this chapter discusses a wide range of potential influences that combine to cause mass attacks at schools.

Reducing fatalities and increasing the number of students able to remain safe during an active shooter event is paramount to the health and well-being of schools and communities. Yet, methodological limitations and ethical concerns have restricted prior research on security measures during school shooter lockdown drills. This study aims to fill that gap by using virtual reality (VR) to statistically examine the effectiveness of active shooter response protocols in a simulated high school.

Using a full factorial, within-subjects experimental design, this exploratory investigation used VR technology to investigate whether automatic classroom door locks, centralized lockdown notifications and the presence of a school resource officer (SRO) significantly impacted student safety and casualty mitigation. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 37 individuals who volunteered to participate in 24 school shooter scenarios within a simulated virtual environment.

Multiple one-way analysis of variances indicated significant main effects for automatic classroom door locks and SRO presence. Automatic locks yielded faster lockdown response times, and both factors were significantly associated with higher numbers of secured classrooms.

Findings from the current study address the gap in existing literature regarding evidence-based school safety protocols and provide recommendations for using VR simulations to increase preparedness and reduce fatalities during an active school shooter event.

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the visual coverage of amok school shootings with the aim of tracing particular patterns of visualization relating to the representation of victimizers and victims.

Methodology – Based on a qualitative mixed-method design combining visual content with visual context analysis of print and online coverage of the incidents, a tentative typology is developed to be tested in future empirical studies. The exploratory study builds on empirical data derived both from print and online coverage of two amok rampage incidents in Germany (Winnenden/Wendlingen, March 2009; Ansbach, September 2009). For comparative reasons the online visual coverage of three amok school shootings in the United States (Littleton, 1999; Red Lake, 2005; Blacksburg, 2007), two in Finland (Tuusula, 2007; Kauhajoki, 2008), as well as two additional cases in Germany (Erfurt, 2002; Emsdetten, 2006) were included in the sample.

Findings – A typology of mainly press photographs about amok school shootings with three main categories – visuals portraying the perpetrator(s), visuals portraying the victims, and visuals about the context. For each of the three main categories there are several subcategories. However, quality media focus on context visuals while tabloid media focus on the perpetrator, and sometimes on the victims. Additionally, a clear distinction between print and online media emerged, with quality print media adhering more strictly to privacy laws than both tabloid and quality online sites.

Research limitations – Different samples of amok events; only one with a full sampling of both print and online newspapers and magazines; TV coverage not taken into account.

Practical implications – Heightened media attention and the pervasive need of media to visualize violent events underscore the relevance of empirically based guidelines for photojournalists and editors alike. The results of this study are a first step in this direction.

Originality – The chapter contributes to visual communication research insofar as it presents a first theoretical and methodological approach to operationalize visuals in the context of reporting about a particular type of violent event.

Purpose – This study looks at the explanations given in Finnish media for the two school shootings that took place in the country in 2007 and 2008. It also investigates how Finnish journalists reflected on the explanations and the problems they posed to journalists’ professional values.

Design/methodology/approach – The study gives an overview of the most common explanations for the two incidents in the media through a textual analysis. A qualitative reading of interviews with journalists after the two school shootings sheds more light on journalists’ reflections on the explanations given. The findings are considered against the concept of professional values of journalism in Finland.

Findings – The media coverage of explanations varied markedly between the two school shootings. After the first rampage, explanations centered on the shooter and portrayed the incident as an “isolated case,” whereas after the second rampage journalists focused on societal problems and authorities’ wrongdoings in their explanations. The change can be attributed to the different nature of the two incidents, plus journalists’ increased need to pay attention to audience feedback in the rapidly changing media landscape. The altered ways of reporting also indicated a partial rethink of the professional values among journalists. With the school shootings, Finnish journalists’ traditionally strong support for deontological ethics as the cornerstone of disaster reporting declined slightly, with teleological ethics gaining prominence.

Originality – The study provides new insights into recent changes and developments of disaster reporting and journalists’ professional values in Finland.