Mass Shootings and Mass Media: Understanding Media Representation of Gun Violence

The rise in mass shootings and mass media over the past twenty years has been connected by cultural studies, political science, sociology, psychology, and other scholars to illustrate the influence of media on public understanding of the phenomena. Many of these studies involve content analysis which may fully link media representations of mass shootings to a change in comprehension about them. However, the field of media representations of mass shootings lacks a study using a bottom-up approach to analyze the issues of problematic representations of mass shootings. In this proposal, I will analyze some of the current literature on media representations and then highlight the importance of a study that uses an interview method to gain a deeper knowledge about how people’s responses to mass shootings change based on their representation. This proposal will introduce the relevance of my project, review some current literature on the subject, and detail my methodology