Information-seeking in the Wake of Tragedy: An Examination of Public Response to Mass Shootings Using Google Search Data

Abstract

Mass shootings are a highly visible form of violence in the United States, although public response to these events varies considerably. Drawing on social problems and collective threat perception literature, we use search data for all Google-using Americans following mass shootings since 2004 to examine how event attributes such as the number of victims, venue, and type of weapon(s) predict public information-seeking related to gun control and gun rights. The results demonstrate that the number of victims, news coverage, school venue, and the use of certain weapons all significantly increase public interest in gun control and gun rights. These key predictors interact with one another to further influence information-seeking behaviors related to both gun control and gun rights. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and the potential for Google Search data in social science research.

Netiquette: Ethic, Education, and Behavior on Internet—A Systematic Literature Review

“…The last two decades have shown the capacity for technological development and the human ability to incorporate it into daily routines [9][10][11]31,32,35]. In the case of the Internet, its birth and evolution have meant a before and after in humanity [12,13,33,34], and has altered the way people communicate and collaborate [1,18]. Having and using a smartphone [21], even becoming addicted [51], or spending time on social networks [2] are new patterns of behavior in a society where digital skills are becoming essential [26,27,29,36,38].…”

“…This is an interest that responds to a historical moment in which social networks offer the right possibilities to cover everything from the individual to the social [31], including work [32]. Some of the main characteristics that may justify this phenomenon are: being a quick and easy alternative to access a wide range of information [33,34], offering almost instantaneous interaction and communication [35], opening up business possibilities in global environments and not just local ones [36], and even serving as a parallel strategy to find out preferences and interests in particular issues [37]. These applications accompany the new digital habits, especially among the young, whose interest in the more classic media is declining and who are developing new digital skills in areas such as content consumption [38].…”

Officer-Involved Killings and the Repression of Protest

“…While actual exposure to a death cannot be tested directly with these data, it is possible to determine the visibility of a death more generally using Google Trends. 5 Several papers have used Google Trends data as a measure of public attention to particular phenomena (Lee, Kim, and Scheufele 2016; Semenza and Bernau 2020). This service “analyzes a percentage of Google web searches to determine how many searches were done over a certain period of time.” 6 For any search term entered, Google Trends returns a number between 0 to 100 that indicates the popularity of that search term relative to others within a certain location and time period.…”

Complex Network Analysis of Mass Violation, Specifically Mass Killing

“…Several recent studies reported data-driven models and frameworks to study mass violence, including [ 16 , 17 ]. Public response data can also be employed to model the violence at the mass level [ 18 ]. However, comparatively, it is challenging to consider social media and news media as a structured sources of information that can be credible and robust for such studies.…”