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This article discusses how certain sensibilities and techniques from a network perspective can facilitate different levels of thinking about symbolic interaction in mediated contexts. The concept of network implies emergent structures that shift along with the people whose connections construct these webs of significance. A network sensibility resonates with contemporary social media contexts in that it focuses less on discrete objects and more on the entanglements among elements that may create meaning. From a methodological stance, this involves greater sensitivity to movement and connection, both in the phenomenon and in the researcher’s relationship to this flow. The goal is to embody the perspective of moving with and through the data, rather than standing outside it as if it can be observed, captured, isolated, and scrutinized outside the flow. Rather than reducing the scope, the practice of moving through and analyzing various elements of networks generates more data, more directions, and more layers of meaning. We describe various ways a network sensibility might engender more creative and ethically grounded approaches to studying contemporary cultures of information flow.

Purpose – This chapter analyses social networks and discourses in relation to YouTube videos and user comments relating to the traumatic event of a school shooting.

Methodology/approach – First, general patterns in the YouTube responses are mapped. What was the overall structure of the flow of videos posted in response to a shooting? Second, social network aspects are discussed. Which systems of interrelated (re)actions emerge through the videos? Finally, a set of three videos representing key texts in the analysed discursive formation are further analysed as regards the written discourse of their comment threads.

Findings – Participants were organised in the form of relatively autonomous and isolated islands of meaning making, but one could still identify a core public engaging in the creation, maintenance and negotiation of the branching and relatively open-ended narratives that recount and try to make sense of what happened and why.

Implications – The main result is that, also in relation to largely dramatic and tragic events such as a school shooting, there are patterns to support the idea of an emerging new media landscape where audiences play an increasingly active role as co-producers of content and interpretations.

Originality of paper – The paper deals with comments as well as video content, and on analysing them from the joint perspectives of social network analysis and discursive network analysis. This means that results give knowledge about two things; how the YouTube audience(s) to videos about the Virginia Tech shooting is/are organised, and what topics are discussed in relation to the videos.

Klas Backholm is post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Developmental Psychology at Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland.

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.

No matter how much human beings strive to make strictly rational choices, they are incapable of doing so because human knowledge is limited and suffers the influence of psychological aspects. This paper aims to demonstrate how the use of foresight methods has contributed to minimize problems inherent to human rationality through a qualitative descriptive study of the case of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation – Embrapa.

This paper collected primary and secondary data through document analysis and interviews with managers of the Embrapa’s strategic intelligence system (SIS), Agropensa (a recognized success case of strategic intelligence (SI)/futures studies in Brazilian public administration).

The results show that it was possible to strengthen corporate behavior in the long term, minimize biases inherent to the decision-making process and bring relevant information into the management of the organization. Foresight methods and tools have made it possible to mitigate problems arising from bounded rationality (BR) in the Embrapa’s decision-making processes. The change in company’s culture potentiated long-term views and access to future-bearing information. Embrapa’s SIS contributes to mitigate difficulties inherent to human nature by bringing uncertainty into managerial discussions.

Taking in consideration all the advances in the future studies/SI approach, this paper realizes that this particular practical case can contribute to scientific community deepening the understanding of how a structure dedicated to run future studies/SI can diminish BR impacts on the company’s decision-making process.