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Individual Claimsmaking After the Parkland Shooting* Deana A Individual Claimsmaking after the Parkland Shooting* Deana A. Rohlinger, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology Florida State University Caitria DeLucchi Graduate Student in Sociology Florida State University Warren Allen, Ph.D. Teaching Faculty Rutgers University *We thank Sourabh Singh for his feedback on this paper. The lead author thanks her early morning “writing with randos” group for their support, including Beth Popp Berman, Danna Agmon, Christina Ho, Sarah Woulfin, Derek Gottlieb, Dahlia Remler, Dale Winling, Meredith Broussard, Adam Slez, Didem Turkoglu, Jason Windawi, Elizabeth Mazzolini, Jennifer Sessions, Louise Seamster, Daniel Hirschman. 1 On February 14, 2018, a former student killed 17 people and injured 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Some of the student survivors mobilized in protest of loose gun laws, and state legislatures across the country began passing bills to restrict gun access. This was true even in Florida, which is a testing-ground for National Rifle Association (NRA) legislation and whose Republican-dominated legislature often rejects modest restrictions on gun access. In less than a month, the legislature passed “the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act” (SB 7026), which raised the minimum age requirement for purchasing a firearm from 18 to 21, required a three-day waiting period for the purchase of a gun, prohibited the purchase and selling of bump stocks, expanded mental health services in the state, allocated monies to help harden schools, and funded a “marshal” program that allowed the arming of teachers and staff. Arguably, there are a number of reasons that the legislature opted for quick action. Governor Rick Scott who indicated that he was going to run against Bill Nelson, a popular Democratic incumbent for U.S. Senate, needed to erode some of Nelson’s support to win this competitive seat. It’s likely that his Republican colleagues in the state were amendable to helping Scott in his unchallenged election bid. The Trump administration also signaled support for regulation. In February, Trump signed a memorandum instructing the attorney general to regulate the use of bump stocks and voiced support for raising the minimum age to buy/own a gun to 21-years old. Floridians also expressed a great deal of support for gun regulation. A Quinnipiac poll found that 63% of Floridians agreed that it was too easy to buy a gun in the state and 50% of voters believed that the NRA supported policies that were "bad for Florida."1 1 The poll is available at https://poll.qu.edu/florida/release-detail?ReleaseID=2524. 2 We examine the two-week period in which SB 7026 was debated, passed, and signed into law by Scott in order to analyze the ideas championed by citizens, and, more specifically, identify factors that may help explain when individual claimsmaking converges around a common set of messages on forums across a complex media system. Better understanding the relationship between the contemporary media system and individual claimsmaking is important for two reasons. First, better understanding when individual claimsmaking converge around a common set of ideas across the media system can illuminate what ideas politicians attend to and act on – or at least the messages that politicians may find difficult to ignore. Politicians use information gleaned from individual claims online to inform their decision-making (Kreiss, Lawrence, & McGregor, 2018; McGregor, 2020). McGregor (2020) found that campaign professionals use numerical data, such as the number of likes a comment gets, and the content of a comment to “take the temperature of the room” on candidates and issues, and, then, adjust their campaign strategies accordingly. Second, studying individual claimsmaking can shed light on factors that seem to influence discourse across a media system, and warrant further empirical investigation. This exploratory work is particularly important given the variety of ways in which individuals can express their opinions virtually and the varying limitations and norms associated with different platforms. For instance, due, in part, to character limitations Twitter users employ more abbreviations, fewer definite articles and convey their ideas more tersely (Gligoric, Anderson, & West, 2018). Compare this to email where individuals are not constrained by character limitations, and can elaborate on their ideas at length directly to politicians more politely (Bunz & Campbell, 2004). In short, identifying factors that appear to affect claimsmaking across 3 different kinds of forums can help scholars pinpoint variables that influence online political expression. We take a first step at analyzing individual claimsmaking across different mediums, and assess the extent to which two factors identified in the literature as relevant to individual expression – elite frames and movement mobilization – seem to influence claimsmaking in three mediated forums - Twitter, Letters to the Editor and op-eds that appear in mainstream news outlets, and emails sent to Rick Scott about the legislation during the two-week period in which SB 7026 was debated, passed, and signed into law. We find that movement mobilization, in particular, seems to have influenced individual claimsmaking across the forums. Additionally, we find that there is more coalescence in claimsmaking around the gun control movement than the gun rights movement, and that movement coordination may help explain these differences. INDIVIDUAL CLAIMSMAKING IN A HYBRID MEDIA SYSTEM Andrew Chadwick’s (2013) concept of a “hybrid media system” provides a useful starting point for understanding the communication environment as a dynamic, networked space, where individuals are exposed to – and help amplify - a variety of political ideas. Briefly, Chadwick argues that different kinds of media do not simply coexist, but form a system that evolves as “newer” and “older” media logics, or “bundles of technologies, genres, norms, behaviors and organizational forms” (2013: 4), interact with one another. He foregrounds hybridity to draw attention to the complex relationship between politics and society, and to explain power dynamics within and across different kinds of systems. Among other things, understanding the communication environment as a reflection of a hybrid media system illuminates how actors “create, tap, or steer information flows in ways that suit their goals and in 4 ways that modify, enable, or disable others’ agency, across and between a range of older and newer media settings” (Chadwick, 2013: 4). There are two aspects of Chadwick’s conceptualization of the hybrid media system that are relevant to understanding individual claimsmaking in the digital age. First, like other systems or fields, the hybrid media system is a relatively coherent social space that is comprised of a network of relationships among actors who determine their actions relative to one another (Bourdieu, 1998b; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). This means that the hybrid media system is structured, and that this structure creates relatively stable interactions among actors as well as (re)produce hierarchies of power within the system (Bourdieu, 2005; J. W. Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Rao, Morrill, & Zald, 2000). This structure advantages some voices and disadvantages others, and this can affect individual claimsmaking. In a hybrid media system, the information economy is in the hands of a small number of companies (Mansell, 2004; McChesney, 2013), giving corporate sponsors and established news outlets an advantage when it comes to framing political debates. News media proffer interpretive constructs for understanding political problems, their causes and their solutions (Iyengar & Simon, 1993; Valkenburg, Semetko, & De Vreese, 1999 ), and individuals integrate the frames received via news into their conversations (Boyle et al., 2006; Gamson, 1992; Kwak, Williams, Wang, & Lee, 2005) and their digital claimsmaking (Author Cite). Moreover, “legitimate” sources such as politicians and government officials typically dominate news coverage (Entman, 2006; Gans, 2003; Tuchman, 1973) and use mainstream outlets to champion their positions and policy ideas (Edelman, 1964). Since individuals see the same news stories in the same outlets on- and off-line (Flaxman, Goel, & Rao, 2016; Nechushtai & Lewis, 2019) and elite actors typically 5 dominate coverage, it is possible that individuals will use the frames proffered by politicians in their own claimsmaking in forums across the media system. Second, like other systems and fields, the structure of relations within the hybrid media system are not monolithic (Bourdieu, 1998a; Chadwick, 2013). This means that actors with less power can sometimes leverage different mediums and platforms for their own purposes in ways that affect claimsmaking. Social movements, which may be more or less structured in the digital age (Bruns, Moon, Paul, & Münch, 2016; Earl & Kimport, 2011; Flanagin, Stohl, & Bimber, 2006), are particularly relevant in this regard. A hybrid media system is interconnected with the political system, and activists look for “opportunities” in both to mobilize support and change public debate around political issues (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012; McCarthy & Zald, 1977; D. Meyer, 2004). For example, activists can use digital media to quickly activate supporters, coordinate their campaign efforts with likeminded groups, and use social media to connect with journalists – all of which can increase the coverage of their ideas and influence
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