A Historical Perspective on the “Mental Illness as Motive” Narrative

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-62
Author(s):  
Cassandra Kearney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
News Media ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
The Media

In an effort to better understand the historical significance of the “mental illness as motive” narrative, this essay investigates what has been recognized as the first mass shooting in the modern United States—Howard Unruh’s 1949 mass shoot¬ing in Camden, New Jersey. Given that mass shootings were an unprecedented phenomenon, the news media played an important role in explaining the event. As will be shown, many Americans felt uncertain about how mental illness man¬ifested and who was vulnerable. Given the often undisclosed, albeit perceived threat of schizophrenia, the public needed reassurance that there would be some indicator of insanity. Accordingly, the media used evidence of religious fanaticism and unfavorable physical descriptions of Unruh to cast him as separate, outside, or an “other.” Ultimately, the media’s rhetorical choices differentiated Unruh and attempted to make mental illness easier to identify for an audience afraid of its influence.

Are the Deadliest Mass Shootings Preventable? An Assessment of Leakage, Information Reported to Law Enforcement, and Firearms Acquisition Prior to Attacks in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Lankford ◽  
Krista Grace Adkins ◽  
Eric Madfis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Warning Signs ◽  
Federal Bureau ◽  
Specific Interest ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Active Shooters ◽  
Mass Shooting

This study examined the 15 deadliest public mass shootings in the United States from March 1998 to February 2018 to assess (a) leakage of violent thoughts/intent, (b) leakage of specific interest in mass killing, (c) concerning behaviors reported to law enforcement, (d) concerning interest in homicide reported to law enforcement, and (e) firearms acquisition. We then compared our findings on the deadliest public mass shooters with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) findings on active shooters in general. Overall, the results suggest that most incidents were indeed preventable based on information known about offenders in advance, and that the deadliest mass shooters exhibited more warning signs and were more often reported to law enforcement than other active shooters. Future prevention efforts should aim to educate, encourage, and pressure the public to report warning signs to law enforcement, educate and train law enforcement so that they can more effectively investigate potential threats, and limit firearms access for people who have admitted having homicidal or suicidal thoughts or being interested in committing a mass shooting. These relatively straightforward steps could significantly reduce the prevalence of future attacks.

Mental Illness, the Media, and the Moral Politics of Mass Violence

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
pp. 766-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott W. Duxbury ◽  
Laura C. Frizzell ◽  
Sadé L. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Black Men ◽  
News Media ◽  
White Men ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Latino Men ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Moral Politics ◽  
The Media

Objectives: We examine how news media portrays the causes of mass shootings for shooters of different races. Specifically, we explore whether White men are disproportionately framed as mentally ill, and what narratives media tend to invoke when covering mass shootings through the lens of mental illness as opposed to other explanatory frames. Methods: The study examines a unique data set of 433 news documents covering 219 mass shootings between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2015. It analyzes the data using a mixed methods approach, combining logistic regression with content analysis. Results: Quantitative findings show that Whites and Latinos are more likely to have their crime attributed to mental illness than Blacks. Qualitative findings show that rhetoric within these discussions frame White men as sympathetic characters, while Black and Latino men are treated as perpetually violent threats to the public. Conclusions: Results suggest that there is racial variability in how the media assign blame to mass shooters. While Black men and Latinos are cast as violently inclined, White men are treated as victims or sympathetic characters. Results also indicate that there are noteworthy differences in how blame is assigned to Black men and Latinos.

Experimental Writing On Recent Mass Shootings

2021 ◽  
pp. 194084472110495
Author(s):  
Kurt Borchard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Experimental Writing ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
Compare And Contrast

In 2017 the author published a poem about a mass shooting in Orlando where forty-nine people died. Two shootings in March 2021 in Atlanta and Boulder, where eighteen people total were killed, have since garnered national news media attention. But mass shootings are more common than nationally reported. A Wikipedia page, titled “List of Mass Shootings in the United States 2021,” states that there were over one-hundred shootings involving four or more victims in the first three months of this year. The author here uses a compare and contrast list, recent headlines and quotes from news sources, and speculative scenarios to consider again this highly familiar and durable trope in American news.

scholarly journals Media Bias

Communication ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lichter ◽  
Justin Rolfe-Redding ◽  
Stephen Farnsworth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Bias ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ideological Bias ◽  
The Media ◽  
Recent Addition ◽  
The Public Sphere

Are the news media biased? This has long been a heated question in the public sphere, particularly in the American political setting. The question has drawn extensive attention from scholars as well as politicians and political partisans. The contentious nature of what constitutes biased and unbiased coverage—both conceptually and methodologically—has been a central concern for this literature. Indeed, a lack of commonly agreed-upon standards has limited the development of a coherent research tradition. This article focuses on media bias within the United States, which has seen the most robust debate and scholarly examination of the topic. It focuses principally on claims of ideological bias, along with the structural and negativity biases that are often presented as alternative explanations, rather than attempting to catalogue the panoply of issue-specific biases of which the media stand accused. While the fields of communication and political science have traditionally hosted investigations of media bias, economics has become a relatively recent addition to the scholarly conversation, generating work on new measures of bias and the role that audience preferences may play in producing slanted news. While arbitrating the existence and extent of bias has been a focus of research, other works have investigated what leads individuals to perceive bias (even in neutral reporting) and what effects biased coverage may have.

Australian Mass Shootings: An Analysis of Incidents and Offenders

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (19-20) ◽  
pp. 3939-3962
Author(s):  
Samara McPhedran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
The United States ◽  
Life Stressors ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
International Policy ◽  
New Information ◽  
Mass Shooting

Mass shooting events are relatively underresearched, and most study comes from the United States. Despite significant international interest, little is known about other countries’ experiences of these events. The current study examines Australian mass shooting incidents and offenders, with emphasis on mental illness, life strains, and offenders’ life histories. Australia had 14 mass shootings between 1964 and 2014. Most offenders experienced acute life stressors and/or chronic strains leading up to the event; however, diagnosed mental illness was less commonly documented. These observations provide new information about mass shooting incidents and offenders, and can help to inform international policy development.

Media Salience and Mass Murder

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaclyn Schildkraut ◽  
Glenn W. Muschert
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Time Dimension ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
Space Frames ◽  
Columbine High School ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
The Media

Mass shootings in the United States continue to be a cause for national concern both for the public and politicians alike. A key component in this pervasive discourse is the news media, which, since most people never will directly experience a mass shooting or other episodic violent crime, acts as the main source for information about these and other crime events. The present study analyzes the media coverage and framing patterns of 12 years of public mass shootings following the 1999 attack at Columbine High School. A two-dimensional analytic model is used to examine framing at both the spatial and temporal levels. The findings indicate that while the framing across the time dimension remains consistent with previous research, the use of the space frames departs from previous research, indicating a shift in the coverage. These findings and their associated implications for policy responses to mass shootings also are considered.

How to Tell the Truth without Outraging the Press?

MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Li Xiguang
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Chinese News Media

The commercialization of meclia in China has cultivated a new journalism business model characterized with scandalization, sensationalization, exaggeration, oversimplification, highly opinionated news stories, one-sidedly reporting, fabrication and hate reporting, which have clone more harm than good to the public affairs. Today the Chinese journalists are more prey to the manipu/ation of the emotions of the audiences than being a faithful messenger for the public. Une/er such a media environment, in case of news events, particularly, during crisis, it is not the media being scared by the government. but the media itself is scaring the government into silence. The Chinese news media have grown so negative and so cynica/ that it has produced growing popular clistrust of the government and the government officials. Entering a freer but fearful commercially mediated society, the Chinese government is totally tmprepared in engaging the Chinese press effectively and has lost its ability for setting public agenda and shaping public opinions. 

More than “Fake News”?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrícia Rossini ◽  
Jennifer Stromer-Galley ◽  
Ania Korsunska
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Presidential Primary ◽  
The Media ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Abstract While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on several themes, including castigating them for malicious gatekeeping, for being out of touch with the views of the public, and for being a bully. Only Trump routinely attacks the news media for trafficking in falsehoods and for colluding with other interests to attack his candidacy. Our findings highlight the ways that candidates instrumentalize the news media for their own rhetorical purposes; further constructing the news media as harmful to democracy.

Mental Health Ontologies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janna Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way

Mental health presents one of the defining public health challenges of our time. Proponents of different conceptions of what mental illness is wage war for the hearts and minds of patients, practitioners, policy-makers, and the public. Debate and fragmentation around the nature of the entities that feature in the mental health domain divide resources and reduce progress. The way mental health is publicly discussed in the media has tangible effects, in terms of stigma, access to healthcare and resources, and private expectations of recovery. This book explores in detail the sorts of statements that are made about mental health in the media and public reporting of scientific research, grounding them in the wider context of the theoretical frameworks, assumptions and metaphors that they draw from. The author shows how a holistic understanding of the way that different aspects of mental illness are interrelated can be developed from evidence-based interpretation of the latest research findings. She offers some ideas about corrective, integrative approaches to discussing mental health-related matters publicly that may reduce the opposition between conceptualisations while still aiming to reduce stigma, shame and blame. In particular, she emphasises that discourse in the media needs to be anchored to an overview of all the research results across the field and argues that this could be achieved using new technological infrastructures. The author provides an integrative account of what mental health is, together with an improved understanding of the factors driving the persistence of oppositional accounts in the public discourse. The book will be of benefit to researchers, practitioners and students in the domain of mental health.

Mental Illness and the Media: Part II. Content Analysis of Press Coverage of Mental Health Topics

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 431-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Matas ◽  
N. El-Guebaly ◽  
D. Harper ◽  
M. Green ◽  
A. Peterkin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Accuracy Check ◽  
The Media ◽  
Selection Of

The public image of psychiatry has been tarnished in recent years. In order to determine the extent to which press coverage has contributed to negative attitudes towards psychiatry, we conducted a content analysis of a random selection of newspaper articles which appeared over a twenty-year period in two different newspapers. We found that although there had been some minor, cosmetic changes over the years, such as more appropriate headlines and more direct quotes from psychiatric experts, on the whole, content and attitudes had changed very little. An accuracy check of media reporting of forensic cases over a 20-year period revealed that when reporters have access to written material, the accuracy levels are greatly improved.

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