From “thank god for helping this person” to “libtards really jumped the shark”: Opinion leaders and (in)civility in the wake of school shootings

Abstract

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 5996 tweets and 480 mainstream news stories about the Florida State University (FSU) and the Ohio State University (OSU) shootings, we examine who emerges as opinion leaders during crises, the kinds of narratives they help construct about school shootings, and the relative civility of these narratives. We find that the opinion leaders who emerge after a crisis are assumed to have local knowledge about the incident and/or are able to quickly curate information about the incident. In addition, we find that the quality of information spread by opinion leaders is critical to narrative construction and civility. The largely fact-based narratives associated with the FSU incident were far more civil than the OSU narratives, which were based on disinformation and polemics. We conclude the article by calling on scholars to take a more nuanced approach to conceptualizing and studying opinion leaders.

Another Person’s Peril: Peanut Allergy, Risk Perceptions, and Responsible Sociality

“…Building off this, our concept of responsible sociality offers scholars analytic leverage in considering other consequences and scope conditions of the personal responsibility trope, such as competing visions about what problems are remediable, what preventative measures are preferable and why, and who is worthy of empathy. We see our case’s analogic resonance with other culturally fraught issues that center individualism versus collectivism—such as the anti-vaccination movement, anti-discrimination legislation, climate change interventions, and undoubtedly COVID-19—and that reflect and reify often-partisan divides over risk, rights, needs, and obligations (Hagen 2019; Hochschild 2016; Rohlinger et al 2019). Our analysis clearly demonstrates the cultural challenges of institutionalizing responsible sociality, as it shows the dialectic produced by the competing moral orientations of personal benefit and prosocial conduct (Molm 1994; Whitham 2021).…”

“…Improved understanding of social frictions over responsibility for well-being when disparate risk frames collide is critical and timely. The past two decades have been characterized by neoliberal and instrumentally rational approaches to public health, favoring private, market-based, and individual-level solutions to consumption and health risks (Conrad 2005; MacKendrick 2018; Szasz 2007), alongside concerns voiced by scholars and pundits alike about dwindling empathy (Breithaupt 2019; Hochschild 2016) and a civility crisis in public, political, and online discourses (Boatright et al 2019; Coe, Kenski, and Rains 2014; Rohlinger, Williams, and Teek 2019). Our study’s cultural approach to risk perception has clear application to other cases where safety concerns about shared, everyday settings characterize the practice and challenges of responsible sociality—including, notably, contested social distancing guidelines and facemask mandates for slowing the spread of COVID-19 (Facciani 2020; Palmer and Peterson 2020; Shepherd, MacKendrick, and Mora 2020), including on airplanes (Duncan 2021; Vigdor 2021).…”

Does the Musk Twitter Takeover Matter? Political Influencers, Their Arguments, and the Quality of Information They Share

“…We find that politicians respond differently to the account bans. Although this may be a function of who has the most standing at a given moment with an audience (Rohlinger, Williams, and Teek 2020), it may also reflect the incentives associated with tweeting. Politicians, who often aspire for higher office, are likely to tweet in ways that will further their professional goals.…”

“…First, scholars find that there are different ways in which an account, and its content, may become visible (Meraz and Papacharissi 2013). Rohlinger, Williams, and Teek (2020), for example, found that, after school shootings, accounts with local expertise (e.g., local journalists and students) and seemingly credible information (e.g., trolls posing as eyewitnesses) have more standing on Twitter and, subsequently, get far more attention than those of well-known activists, celebrities, or gun organizations. Likewise, and more relevant here, scholars find that accounts which send large numbers of tweets occasionally send posts that get a lot of attention.…”

Shifting moods on Sina Weibo: The first 12 weeks of COVID-19 in Wuhan

“…In the less than two decade period since their introduction, social media have come to be used for a wide range of purposes, including entertainment, information-seeking, self-expression, socializing, emotional expression, identity management, political engagement, and horizontal/social surveillance. Social media are also becoming increasingly involved in the handling of extraordinary, disruptive events (Castillo, 2016; Jennex, 2012; Li et al, 2019; Liu et al, 2015; Öztürk and Ayvaz, 2018; Rohlinger et al, 2020; Tandoc and Takahashi, 2017; Xu and Zhang, 2018). The effectiveness of social media crisis response is a primary measure of societal resilience (Leong et al, 2015; Zhao et al, 2020), so the topic deserves serious research attention.…”