Entitlement, masculinity, and violence? an analysis of New York Times reporting and Twitter discourse on US school shootings

Abstract

A handful of salient factors are consistently omitted in public discourse surrounding school shootings in the United States. Uniformity of shooters’ race and gender persists across almost all of these events, as perpetrators of US school shootings have overwhelmingly been white boys and men. Following the work of previous scholars, I assert that the production and perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity and aggrieved entitlement play a pivotal role in school shootings. Today’s world relies heavily on the media for information dissemination, which in turn shapes our understanding of major events, social issues, and cultural values .I collected reports of recent US school shootings from the New York Times and later collected tweets that allowed for a comparison of how traditional (NYT) vs new social media (Twitter) frame these events. My research suggests that conversations surrounding the role of racialized/toxic masculinity and school shootings are occurring in some spaces rather than others, and has generated findings that could assist future scholars/activists in identifying how to effectively disseminate discourse surrounding this factor.