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Mass Shootings, Mental Illness, and Terrorism

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Mass Shootings, Mental Illness, and Terrorism Obas, Alice 2019 Psychology Thesis Title: Mass Shootings, Mental Illness, and Terrorism: The Contextualization of Mass Shooters and Gun Violence in the Media and Public Advisor: Steven Fein Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Jeremy Cone Released: release now Authenticated User Access: Yes Contains Copyrighted Material: No Mass Shootings, Mental Illness, and Terrorism: The Contextualization of Mass Shooters and Gun Violence in the Media and Public by Alice Obas Steven Fein, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Psychology WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts May 20th, 2019 Abstract Since 1990, there have been 87 recorded mass shootings in the United States. In the year 2017, there were 11 reported mass shootings – the most ever recorded in a single year. How do we discuss these incidents when they take place? We explore the discourse in the media and public following mass shooting incidents. Starting with Study 1, we use a computational program to compare the frequency of the words “mental” and “terror” in newspaper articles as a function of the race of the shooter. In Study 2, we explore how conservatives and liberals might differ in their reactions to and opinions towards mass shootings. In Studies 3 and 4, we investigate how political identification might affect the way people perceive and react to mass shootings, and whether they seek out information about mass shootings and guns that confirm their preferred political narratives. Results suggest that there may be a bias in the way the media reports mass shooters. Additionally, we find evidence that the public may also hold these biases and that conservatives and liberals may differ in the ways they react to and think about mass shootings. These studies provide initial evidence that the way we frame our discussions about mass shootings, gun violence, and mental illness may be both racially and politically biased. 2 Mass Shootings, Mental Illness, and Terrorism: The Contextualization of Mass Shooters and Gun Violence in the Media and Public At approximately 9:30 AM on December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, shot his way inside Sandy Hook Elementary School, annihilating the school psychologist and principal upon arrival. Armed with an AR-15 as his primary weapon, Lanza proceeded to take the lives of 20 students – between the ages of 5 and 10 – and six adult faculty. In total, the carnage took 28 lives, including Lanza who shot himself in the head with a handgun at the scene; and his mother whom he’s believed to have shot around 9 AM before heading to the elementary school (Follman, Aronsen, & Pan, 2019). According to Mother Jones,1 the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre was the seventh mass casualty shooting of 2012. A mass shooting, as defined by Mother Jones, “is an incident occurring in a public place with a firearm, where the motive appears to be indiscriminate killing, and where a lone shooter takes the lives of at least three people – not including the shooter” (Follman, Aronsen, & Pan, 2019). Among the other mass shootings from 2012 is the Aurora theater shooting in Colorado, carried out by James Holmes, 24, on July 20th, killing six people including himself. In the past decade or so, the frequency of mass shootings has risen dramatically. Since 1990, there have been 87 recorded mass shootings in the United States. But 57% of all recorded mass shootings occurred in the past decade alone, with the number of mass shootings doubling by 2.4 times since the decade prior (“Mass Casualty Shootings,” 2018). In the year 2017 alone, there were eleven mass shootings – the most ever recorded in a single year (“Mass Casualty Shootings,” 2018). Among the 2017 shootings was the Las Vegas Strip 1 Mother Jones is a defined as a “reader-supported investigative news organization,” which covers stories on politics, criminal and racial justice, education, climate change, and food/agriculture. 3 massacre carried out by Stephen Paddock, 64, and the Texas First Baptist Church massacre carried out by Devin Patrick Kelley, 26. The massacres took 58 and 26 lives respectively. Mass shootings have gained extensive political attention, spawning controversial debates on gun control, mental health, terrorism, and school safety. These debates, and the shootings themselves, are exhaustively disseminated by the media to the point of numbness on the part of the public. How do we frame our conversations about these incidents when they occur? “Ore. suspect painted as a loner” reads the headline of a Chicago Tribune article about shooter Chris Harper Mercer, 26, and the Umpqua Community College shooting (Winton, 2015). “Shooting suspect reportedly had history of mental issues” is from another Chicago Tribune article about shooter John Zawahri, 23, of the Santa Monica rampage (Serrano, 2013). That both of these articles are by the Chicago Tribune is not the interesting aspect of these cases (at least not that we know of yet). Compare the previous two article headlines to the following: “Orlando isn’t about gun control; Attacks will be prevented by destroying Islamic State and not blaming gun-rights proponents;” and “Terror in Orlando: Attack Illustrates Extremists’ Far Reach” (Lukis, 2016; Abi-Habib, 2016). These latter two articles were in response to the Orlando nightclub massacre carried out by Omar Mateen, 29. From visual observation of the headlines, there seems to be a difference in the way the shooters are discussed in the media. However, these four articles are only a handful of cases – are they anecdotal or do they represent a wider bias in the way the media reports White and Muslim mass shooters? We set out to answer this question empirically. We predicted to find a bias such that when a mass shooter is White, the media rhetoric focuses on mental health and when the mass shooter is Muslim, on evidence of terrorist activity (or lack thereof). We designed Studies 1A and 1B to test whether the portrayal of shooters in the media differs as a function of the race of the shooter. We compiled a list of twenty-seven shooters 4 and retrieved corresponding newspaper articles for each shooter. We then compared the frequency of the words “mental” and “terror” in the full texts of the newspaper articles as a function of the shooters’ “race.” In this study – and those following – we use race as a term to describe Muslim. Non-Muslim Americans are likely to perceive Muslims as Other, distinct from White Americans, Black Americans, etc., essentially racially categorizing them as a group. We are aware that Muslim is a religious identification and by no means are suggesting that it is actually a race. In addition to media coverage, we also examine how ordinary people outside of the media might typically think about the issues of terrorism and mental illness when a mass shooting occurs in the United States. That is, are they more likely to be concerned about terrorism if the shooter was Muslim, but more concerned about mental illness if the shooter was White? And would this be especially true for political conservatives? These are the kinds of questions explored in Studies 2 through 4. Study 1A: Newspaper Analysis Day 1 The first study was designed to examine real newspaper articles that appeared the day of a mass shooting in the United States and whether the use of “terror” or “mental” in the article would vary systematically as a function of the race of the shooter. We hypothesized that articles about White shooters would show a higher frequency of the word “mental” than the word “terror.” For non-White and Muslim shooters, we predicted that articles would show a higher frequency of the word “terror” than the word “mental.” Method Procedure Mass Shooter List. We obtained a list of mass shooters from the Mother Jones database of mass shootings from 1982 to 2018. Starting from the chronologically most recent event, we selected the first 15 non-White and 15 White shooters with at least 20 search 5 results in ProQuest. We restricted the list to shootings after 9/11 because we believe 9/11 is in part to blame for the surge in terror-related Muslim rhetoric. Adhering to these criteria, we settled on a list of 28 shooters: 15 White shooters, and 13 non-White shooters. The non- White category combines Black, Hispanic, and Muslim shooters. We believe there were only 13 non-White shooters because mass shootings are more common among White men. The shooters and their incidents are included in Appendix A for further information. Shooter Race Classification. We categorized shooters such that they were either White, Non-White, Muslim, or not Muslim. Shooters’ categorizations were based on information available on the internet. There was one case which required a judgement call on our part. James Holmes, who is White, was also a Muslim-convert. We decided to classify Holmes as White instead of Muslim because Holmes was perceived by the public as a White man. We anticipated that news articles would be more likely to report him as a White man than a Muslim-convert. Article Selection Criteria. We used ProQuest Newspapers: U.S. Major Dailies to find articles on each mass shooter. This database searches through the full text of five major US newspapers: The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. This content is added daily by 8AM. We conducted identical advanced searches for each shooter. The shooter’s name was entered in quotes in the search bar (e.g., “Adam Lanza”). We first extracted articles that were published on the day of the shooting and restricted the document type to news, as we were not interested in mediums such as films, books, and videos.
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