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The Role of Media Content in the Genesis of School Shootings: The Contemporary Discussion

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School Shootings

Abstract

This literature review provides an overview of scholarly debate on the role of media content in the genesis of school shootings. It begins by showing that the idea that media depictions of violence have a general violence-promoting effect is scientifically contested. Published research is inconclusive on the question whether school shooters represent a risk group with a special susceptibility to negative effects of violent media content, but empirical findings supply clear indications that reporting of school shootings, especially in the mass media and the internet, can disseminate scripts potentially connected with copycat acts. The concept of cultural scripts of hegemonic masculinity explains why school shootings are committed predominantly by young males and accounts for the importance of a prior interest in violent media content and school shootings. Given the public communicative dimension of these acts and the enormous media attention they attract, there is a case for critical consideration of the way they are treated in the media.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Other scholars arrive at diverging totals, depending on the investigated period and the definition used, but these remain within the same order of magnitude. For example, Robertz and Wickenhäuser (2010, p. 13f.) tally 124 school shootings up to January 1, 2010.

  2. 2.

    Some authors assert that more than one thousand studies have been published (including American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2002; Muscari, 2002). According to Savage and Yancey (2008), these estimates are grossly overstated. However, the 431 studies Bushman and Huesmann (2006) found for their meta-analysis are still a respectable number.

  3. 3.

    Ferguson (2007) identifies the same problem in the violent games literature.

  4. 4.

    For example, various meta-analyses demonstrate that media violence has a greater impact on children, especially younger children, than on adolescents or adults (Bushman & Huesmann, 2001; Paik & Comstock, 1994); Bushman and Huesmann (2006) later refine this finding to show that short-term effects of media violence are greater for adults but the long-term effects greater for children. However, there are no valid findings on the childhood media behavior of school shooters, so it is impossible to tell whether they represent a risk group in this category.

  5. 5.

    In suicide research, the phenomenon of imitation following media reports of suicides is known as the “Werther effect” after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is said to have triggered numerous imitation suicides and was for that reason banned for a time in certain European countries (Gould, Jamieson, & Romer, 2003, p. 1270). As early as the 1970s and 1980s, Phillips demonstrated that newspaper and television reports about suicides were followed by an increase in suicide rates (Bollen & Phillips, 1981, 1982; Phillips, 1974, 1979; Phillips & Carstensen, 1986, 1988). Numerous subsequent studies also demonstrate this effect outside the United States (Sonneck et al. 1994; Jonas, 1992; Sonneck, Etzersdorfer, & Nagel-Kuess, 1994; Stack, 1996). Various studies also report an imitation effect of fictional suicides (Gould, Shaffer, & Kleinman, 1988; Hawton et al., 1999; Schmidtke & Hafner, 1988). This is variously described as a suggestion, contagion, or disinhibition effect.

  6. 6.

    Muschert’s media analysis (2007) shows that just two weeks after the Columbine shooting the media had already lost interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Educational Science/Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

    Peter Sitzer

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  1. Peter Sitzer
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Correspondence to Peter Sitzer .

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  1. , Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld, Universitaetsstrasse 25, Bielefeld, 33615, Germany

    Nils Böckler

  2. Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld, Universitaetsstrasse 25, Bielefeld, 33615, Germany

    Thorsten Seeger

  3. University of Bielefeld, Universitätsstraße 25, Bielefeld, 33501, Germany

    Peter Sitzer

  4. Inst. Interdisziplinäre Konflikt- und, Gewaltforschung, University of Bielefeld, Universitätsstr. 25, Bielefeld, 33615, Germany

    Wilhelm Heitmeyer

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Sitzer, P. (2013). The Role of Media Content in the Genesis of School Shootings: The Contemporary Discussion. In: Böckler, N., Seeger, T., Sitzer, P., Heitmeyer, W. (eds) School Shootings. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5526-4_13

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