23
Sep 09Mapping participatory media discourse on school shooting videos
In November, I will go to Helsinki for the conference Violence and Network Society: School Shootings and Social Violence in Contemporary Public Life. The title of my paper is YouTube Gunmen? Mapping participatory media discourse on school shooting videos. I just finished it, and feel quite satisfied with the ways in which I managed to mix some semi-experimental use of Google Trends data, with the discourse visualization techniques that I have been working on recently. Please, email me for the full draft if you are interested. Below are two excerpts (abstract + conclusions).
[...]
Before the school shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, as well as before the similar tragedies in Finnish Jokela 2007 and Kauhajoki 2009, the gunmen gave warnings by posting video clips on YouTube. This fact was strongly emphasized in the subsequent news media coverage of these events, and generally it can be said that there seems to have been a media panic about violence and the internet in the aftermath of the shootings. The aim of this paper is to look beyond the assumption that the panic reaction is all-encompassing. Firstly, I will review some search engine and online news statistics in order to evaluate the existence and extent of a panic reaction. Secondly, I will analyze YouTube user comment discourse on school shooting clips. Telling from previous research, it seems reasonable to assume that such participatory media discourse differs largely from traditional news media discourse. The overarching question is whether the panic reaction sequence can be identified in the YouTube comment discourse, or if the latter displays a different pattern.
[...]
Even though the moral panic reaction sequence can be clearly identified in news reporting as well as search traffic relating to issues at the intersection of digital media and school shootings, the main result of this paper is that broadly applying the panic perspective would paint a simplified picture of the emerging new media landscape where audiences play an increasingly active role as co-producers of content (Gauntlett, 2004; Jenkins, 2006b; Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robinson, 2009).
In line with this, Angela McRobbie and Sarah Thornton (1995) have suggested that the emergence of “multi-mediated social worlds” require a revision of how moral panics are conceived of. While Cohen’s original model was developed for a society where media were univocal, and hegemonical relations were monolithic, today’s media are characterized by fragmentation and multiplicity. McRobbie and Thornton argue that classic moral panic studies (such as Hall et al. 1978; Pearson 1983) have a tendency to overstate the power of hegemony and social control, while understating the role played by counter-discourses. In the age of participatory media it becomes increasingly important to “take account of a plurality of reactions, each with their different constituencies, effectivities and modes of discourse” (McRobbie and Thornton 1995, 564). With this argument, McRobbie and Thornton call for an exploration of various mass, niche and micro-media.
In this paper I have analyzed one such mode of discourse in one particular medium, namely YouTube user comments to school shooting videos. The comment threads under analysis illustrate that the media is to a diminishing degree something that is separable from society. The analyzed texts are not reports on, or narratives about, the school shootings in the traditional media sense. Instead, they illustrate the process wherein social reality is “experienced through language, communication and imagery” (McRobbie and Thornton 1995, 570). The reality of school shootings is continuously being defined in these comment threads, as users discuss issues of bullying, high school culture, gun control, and racism, while at the same time publically, socially, and emotionally trying to deal with the trauma of these events.
[...]
In November, I will go to Helsinki for the conference Violence and Network Society: School Shootings and Social Violence in Contemporary Public Life. The title of my paper is YouTube Gunmen? Mapping participatory media discourse on school shooting videos. I just finished it, and feel quite satisfied with the ways in which I managed to mix some semi-experimental use of Google Trends data, with the discourse visualization techniques that I have been working on recently. Please, email me for the full draft if you are interested. Below are two excerpts (abstract + conclusions).
[...]
Before the school shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, as well as before the similar tragedies in Finnish Jokela 2007 and Kauhajoki 2009, the gunmen gave warnings by posting video clips on YouTube. This fact was strongly emphasized in the subsequent news media coverage of these events, and generally it can be said that there seems to have been a media panic about violence and the internet in the aftermath of the shootings. The aim of this paper is to look beyond the assumption that the panic reaction is all-encompassing. Firstly, I will review some search engine and online news statistics in order to evaluate the existence and extent of a panic reaction. Secondly, I will analyze YouTube user comment discourse on school shooting clips. Telling from previous research, it seems reasonable to assume that such participatory media discourse differs largely from traditional news media discourse. The overarching question is whether the panic reaction sequence can be identified in the YouTube comment discourse, or if the latter displays a different pattern.
[...]
Even though the moral panic reaction sequence can be clearly identified in news reporting as well as search traffic relating to issues at the intersection of digital media and school shootings, the main result of this paper is that broadly applying the panic perspective would paint a simplified picture of the emerging new media landscape where audiences play an increasingly active role as co-producers of content (Gauntlett, 2004; Jenkins, 2006b; Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robinson, 2009).
In line with this, Angela McRobbie and Sarah Thornton (1995) have suggested that the emergence of “multi-mediated social worlds” require a revision of how moral panics are conceived of. While Cohen’s original model was developed for a society where media were univocal, and hegemonical relations were monolithic, today’s media are characterized by fragmentation and multiplicity. McRobbie and Thornton argue that classic moral panic studies (such as Hall et al. 1978; Pearson 1983) have a tendency to overstate the power of hegemony and social control, while understating the role played by counter-discourses. In the age of participatory media it becomes increasingly important to “take account of a plurality of reactions, each with their different constituencies, effectivities and modes of discourse” (McRobbie and Thornton 1995, 564). With this argument, McRobbie and Thornton call for an exploration of various mass, niche and micro-media.
In this paper I have analyzed one such mode of discourse in one particular medium, namely YouTube user comments to school shooting videos. The comment threads under analysis illustrate that the media is to a diminishing degree something that is separable from society. The analyzed texts are not reports on, or narratives about, the school shootings in the traditional media sense. Instead, they illustrate the process wherein social reality is “experienced through language, communication and imagery” (McRobbie and Thornton 1995, 570). The reality of school shootings is continuously being defined in these comment threads, as users discuss issues of bullying, high school culture, gun control, and racism, while at the same time publically, socially, and emotionally trying to deal with the trauma of these events.
[...]
