Media Coverage of Mass Killers: Content, Consequences, and Solutions

Lankford, Adam; Madfis, Eric

doi:10.1177/0002764218763476

Cited by 24 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Newspaper and online media stories are commonly employed as data sources in this type of work (Duwe, 2007; Huff-Corzine & Corzine, 2020; Petee et al, 1997; Taylor, 2018) and have been found to be an accurate source of information on mass killings (Huff-Corzine et al, 2014), in part because public mass shootings receive such intense media coverage (Lankford & Madfis, 2018b; Schildkraut et al, 2018). The team purchased subscriptions to newspapers.com, the archives of leading national papers (e.g., The New York Times , The Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , Chicago Tribune ), plus the local newspaper of record in proximity to any given shooting.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data.

Peterson¹,

Densley²,

Knapp³

et al. 2022

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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Mass shootings are often blamed on serious mental illness. This study assesses the role of psychosis in contributing to mass shootings along a continuum. The role of psychosis is compared with other motivations for mass shootings including employment issues, interpersonal conflict, relationship issues, hate, and fame-seeking. Perpetrators motivated by psychosis are also compared with other perpetrators on several well-established risk factors for violence. It is hypothesized that a mental health history is common among mass shooters, but symptoms of psychosis only directly motivate mass shootings for a minority of cases. A dataset of 172 mass shooters was created, coded on 166 life history variables using publicly available data. The entire dataset and codebook are publicly available. The findings show that symptoms of psychosis played no role in 69% of cases, but psychosis may have played a minor role in 11% of cases, a moderate role in 9% of cases, and a major role in 11% of cases. Perpetrators motivated by psychosis were similar to mass shooters with other motivations in terms of demographics and common risk factors for violence. The role of serious mental illness in mass shootings is complex. The data indicate that access to mental health care may help prevent mass shootings in a minority of cases, but this is far from the only solution to mass shootings.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data.

Peterson¹,

Densley²,

Knapp³

et al. 2022

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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“…United States Secret Service, 2021), and one reason it is recommended that the media be mindful about their reporting of mass violence (Lankford & Madfis, 2018) and adopt safe-reporting guidelines (Schildkraut, 2019).…”

Section: Interventions and Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A mixed‐methods analysis of averted mass violence in schools: Implications for professional school counselors

Cowan

Tedeschi

Corbin

et al. 2022

Psychology in the Schools

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The purpose of this study is to examine how recent incidents of planned mass violence in high schools within the United States were successfully averted. Using the Averted School Violence database, this study utilizes a mixedmethods content analysis approach to analyze 82 incidents of averted mass violence in high schools that occurred post-Columbine era. The following three themes were identified: attack motives and logistics, plot discovery, and attack aversion. Implications for professional school counselors in preventing similar mass violence attacks in the future are discussed, including fostering trusting relationships between students and adults, providing education to parents about social media platforms and proper firearms storage, establishing threat assessment teams, and educating parents, students, and school personnel about warning signs for violence.

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“…Because our study specifically targeted the federal legislation, we omitted state-level gun policies such as state-level prohibitions on certain types of guns, LCMs, or more lethal types of bullets. It is likely that the internet serves as a contagion and as a guide to potential mass shooters, allowing them to access weapons and multiple stories about other mass shooters [62,67,89,90].…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Firearm Surveillance on Gun Control Policy: Regression Discontinuity Analysis

Post¹,

Mason²,

Singh³

et al. 2021

JMIR Public Health Surveill

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Background Public mass shootings are a significant public health problem that require ongoing systematic surveillance to test and inform policies that combat gun injuries. Although there is widespread agreement that something needs to be done to stop public mass shootings, opinions on exactly which policies that entails vary, such as the prohibition of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. Objective The aim of this study was to determine if the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (FAWB) (1994-2004) reduced the number of public mass shootings while it was in place. Methods We extracted public mass shooting surveillance data from the Violence Project that matched our inclusion criteria of 4 or more fatalities in a public space during a single event. We performed regression discontinuity analysis, taking advantage of the imposition of the FAWB, which included a prohibition on large-capacity magazines in addition to assault weapons. We estimated a regression model of the 5-year moving average number of public mass shootings per year for the period of 1966 to 2019 controlling for population growth and homicides in general, introduced regression discontinuities in the intercept and a time trend for years coincident with the federal legislation (ie, 1994-2004), and also allowed for a differential effect of the homicide rate during this period. We introduced a second set of trend and intercept discontinuities for post-FAWB years to capture the effects of termination of the policy. We used the regression results to predict what would have happened from 1995 to 2019 had there been no FAWB and also to project what would have happened from 2005 onward had it remained in place. Results The FAWB resulted in a significant decrease in public mass shootings, number of gun deaths, and number of gun injuries. We estimate that the FAWB prevented 11 public mass shootings during the decade the ban was in place. A continuation of the FAWB would have prevented 30 public mass shootings that killed 339 people and injured an additional 1139 people. Conclusions This study demonstrates the utility of public health surveillance on gun violence. Surveillance informs policy on whether a ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines reduces public mass shootings. As society searches for effective policies to prevent the next mass shooting, we must consider the overwhelming evidence that bans on assault weapons and/or large-capacity magazines work.

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Media Coverage of Mass Killers: Content, Consequences, and Solutions

Cited by 24 publications

References 37 publications

Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data.

Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data.

A mixed‐methods analysis of averted mass violence in schools: Implications for professional school counselors

Impact of Firearm Surveillance on Gun Control Policy: Regression Discontinuity Analysis

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