Through "Foreign" Eyes: The Guardian's Coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Science

Jared D. Hargis

June 2009

© 2009 Jared D. Hargis. All Rights Reserved

This thesis titled

Through "Foreign" Eyes: The Guardian's Coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre

by

JARED D. HARGIS

has been approved for

the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism

and the Scripps College of Communication by

Bill Reader

Assistant Professor of Journalism

Gregory J. Shepherd

Dean, Scripps College of Communication

ii ABSTRACT

HARGIS, JARED D., M.S., June 2009, Journalism

Through "Foreign" Eyes: The Guardian's Coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre

(125 pp.)

Director of Thesis: Bill Reader

This thesis presents a textual analysis and a descriptive content analysis of how

the British newspaper The Guardian covered the Virginia Tech school shootings that

took place on 16 April 2007. Analysis of the first eight days of coverage, totaling 61

articles, added to the existing research on media coverage of school shootings by

understanding how the media lens of an influential British newspaper viewed the “gun

culture” of the United States. The results of this study indicate that The Guardian’s coverage suggests that the “gun culture” of the United States may be directly responsible for the Virginia Tech school shootings, and that the newspaper and its readers (via their feedback) have constructed a collective argument that such events are inevitable when guns are so readily accessible as they are in the United States.

Approved: ______

Bill Reader

Assistant Professor of Journalism

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT ...... iii

LIST OF TABLES ...... vi

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii

PURPOSE STATEMENT ...... 1

BACKGROUND OF THE ISSUE ...... 3

LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 10

Guns and Gun Control ...... 10

School Violence ...... 13

Media Coverage of School Violence ...... 24

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 41

Content Analysis Using Agenda Setting Theory ...... 41

Textual Analysis Focused on Community, Nationality, and Media ...... 47

RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... 54

METHOD ...... 56

Justification for the Content and Texts Analyzed ...... 56

Method Overview ...... 57

RESULTS ...... 68

Quantitative ...... 68

Qualitative ...... 73

DISCUSSION ...... 99

REFERENCES ...... 110

iv APPENDIX I ...... 115

Coding Sheet: The Guardian Covers Virginia Tech Tragedy ...... 115

APPENDIX II ...... 117

Codebook ...... 117

v LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1 Frequency of types of sources in the coverage ...... 69

Table 2 Frequency of topics in the coverage ...... 71

Table 3 Frequency between topics and types of sources in the coverage ...... 72

vi LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1: Frequency of stories from April 16 to 23 ...... 68

vii PURPOSE STATEMENT

This thesis provided quantitative and qualitative analysis of how a British newspaper covered the Virginia Tech school shootings that took place on 16 April 2007.

The first eight days of coverage by The Guardian, totaling 61 articles, were analyzed in

order to understand how an influential British newspaper covered an American school

shooting, with the goal to examine how the gun culture of the United States was viewed through a British media lens. This thesis added to the existing research of media coverage of school shootings by providing an international perspective of gun-related violence in schools in the United States.

A two-method study was utilized to provide both quantitative data (with regard to content frequencies) and qualitative analysis (with regard to the rhetoric of the texts).

First, a content analysis provided a descriptive overview of potential agenda-setting frames in the British newspaper. That analysis answered research questions about sources cited by The Guardian, the different topics of the school shooting reported by

The Guardian, and how certain topics are related to cited sources. The same articles were then examined further through critical textual analysis. That process provided a more descriptive analysis of the broader ideological themes that emerged from the newspaper’s coverage of the tragedy. The textual analysis addressed research questions

about implied messages, reasons for school violence, cultural differences between the

United States and Britain regarding gun ownership, different interpretations of the

tragedy by U.S. and British audiences, and prominent themes about the shootings in The

Guardian articles. By mixing those two methods, this thesis provided a well-rounded

1 case study of how a major British newspaper covered one of the most prolific school shootings in history.

2 BACKGROUND OF THE ISSUE

On 16 April 2007, a Virginia Tech student named Cho Seung-Hui committed the

deadliest school-based rampage in modern U.S. history when he killed 32 students and faculty members before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. Cho began his massacre at about 7:15 a.m. in one of the university dorms, and two hours later went to a building housing the engineering school to continue his rampage. After the smoke had cleared, the media went to work. Reports of the massacre quickly spread around the globe, and details about the killer, his victims, Virginia Tech’s security protocols, how he obtained a gun, and many other issues were in high demand. The media firestorm continued to be fueled with growing concerns about gun laws in the U.S., Cho’s South

Korean heritage, and the airing by NBC Nightly News of a video manifesto that Cho had created between his shooting sprees and sent to the network.

Previous instances of school-based violence attracted a substantial amount of media coverage, both in the United States and abroad. A number of different aspects of how those tragedies were covered have been the focus of communication research. For example, researchers have found that concerns about school safety are present in the coverage, even though schools remain some of the safest places for students. With 295

recorded deaths in elementary and secondary schools between 1992 and 2001, statistics show that a student would have a one in two million chance of getting killed on school

grounds (Hancock, 2001). However, the past several decades have shown a rise in

coverage by the media regarding school shootings (Hancock, 2001). More important to

this thesis is how the coverage is evolving with each new incident. Journalist Ginger

3 Casey suggested that the media become “totally immersed” in an event such as a school shooting, and coverage follows “story lines” involving reporting of raw facts, searches for meaning, assignment of blame, and conclusions (Casey, 1999, pp. 30-33). Some researchers believe that such coverage is “sensationalized” in order to promote newspaper sales (Daniels et al., 2007). However, nearly all of the previously published research on the topic has focused on U.S. media coverage. This thesis utilized quantitative and qualitative methods to examine The Guardian’s coverage of the Virginia

Tech school shootings to better understand media coverage of school-related violence by a non-U.S. news outlet.

Background on School Violence

Before the Virginia Tech tragedy, the most prominent school shooting was the

Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado. U.S. President Bill Clinton offered this response to the impact Columbine had on the gun policy debate: “The aftermath of that shooting…has had an even more profound impact on the country than all the school shootings last year did. And you can see it by what is happening in

Congress now” (Haider-Markel & Joslyn, 2001, p. 520). Haider-Markel and Joslyn

(2001) suggested that focused events such as Columbine help frame issues involving

guns. The researchers demonstrated how alternative presentations of issues involving

guns may influence opinion about related policy proposals and casual attributions

associated with tragic events. Their empirical findings showed that alternative gun frames do in fact influence opinion about gun policy and attributions of blame for the

Columbine tragedy.

4 Lawrence and Birkland’s (2004) content analysis of media coverage,

congressional debate, and legislation surrounding the issue of school shootings found that the issue of guns was the most predominant in media coverage and congressional debate

and also gained considerable legislative action as well. The problem of guns was shown

to be a more significant issue than school programs and security, criminal justice, parents

and adults and community, pop culture, mental health, illicit drugs, social breakdown,

secularism, teen life, and individual character.

A Gallup Poll following the Columbine shootings asked respondents why the

shootings at Columbine happened. The results showed that 20 percent of respondents

blamed the parents and family of the assailants, 6 percent blamed teasing from other kids,

2 percent blamed violence in the entertainment industry, 2 percent cited lack of morality

in the country, and only 1 percent blamed guns (Gillespie, 1999; Haider-Markel &

Joslyn, 2001). Although respondents indicated they felt the parents and family of the

killers were mostly to blame, elected officials chose to focus their attention on the

portrayal of gun violence in the entertainment industry (Haider-Markel & Joslyn, 2001).

One of the reasons gun control received heavy coverage was its preexistence in

the realm of U.S. politics. The Columbine shooting may have provided an opportunity

for previous debates to be brought back into the spotlight. Several gun control bills from

the Clinton Administration were reconsidered shortly after the Columbine shootings

(Lawrence & Birkland, 2004). Lawrence and Birkland’s (2004) content analysis found

that more than 85 percent of newspaper stories focusing on the “guns” theme were

straight from beat accounts of the latest developments in the Washington gun control

debate.

5 Commentaries about guns in schools shared a common feature in pinpointing

individuals or discrete groups to blame not only for individual instances of violence, but

also for what was perceived as a large-scale social breakdown (Buell, 2001). Buell

(2001) agreed that parents have more responsibility for crime and guns in schools than do

their children. He stated that by any of the usual standards employed to prioritize public

health threats, guns in schools and even much of what passes as youth crime are far less

prevalent and serious than other issues. Although school violence was on the decline

during the time of Columbine, media and political leaders continued to dwell on the

problem. A Wall Street Journal poll demonstrated that seven in ten respondents believed

it is likely there would be a shooting in their neighborhood school, while a USA Today

poll showed 49 percent perceived it more likely for a school shooting to occur in 1999

than in 1998 (Buell, 2001).

Although some reports indicated that school violence had been on the decline

during the time of Columbine, the U.S. Department of Education reported the number of

multiple-victim homicides at schools increased from two in the 1992-93 school year to

eight in the 1997-98 school year (Redding & Shalf, 2001). In the 1990s it was estimated

that 135,000 U.S. students carried guns to school each day, but the U.S. Department of

Education in 1998 suggested that only a fraction of that number was being detected, with

only about 6,000 students being expelled per school year for such offenses (Redding &

Shalf, 2001). That statistic is surprising if one takes into account the amount of attention school-related violence received after the Columbine shootings.

6 Gun Acquisition

Differences in the acquisition of guns to commit school violence became an

important aspect of the gun-control debate. In 1997, a school shooting took place at a

high school in Pearl, Mississippi. Luke Woodham killed two fellow students and injured five others with a legally owned hunting rifle. Woodham also killed his mother with a kitchen knife at his home before going to school that day. Reports indicated that

Woodham was mentally disturbed and that he blamed his violence on such claims as

being “taunted by demons” (Redding & Shalf, 2001, p. 300). The same year, Michael

Carneal committed school violence in West Paducah, Kentucky. Carneal had stolen a .22

caliber handgun, two rifles, and two shotguns in order to kill three fellow students and

injure five others (Redding & Shalf, 2001). Media reports indicated that Carneal’s

principal said the shooter’s writings revealed he felt weak and picked on. After the

shooting, Carneal was diagnosed with paranoia and a schizophrenia-like personality

disorder (Redding & Shalf, 2001). In 1998, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson killed

five fellow students and injured seven others at their school in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Golden and Johnson stole seven guns from Golden’s house and attempted to acquire

more from Johnson’s home (Redding & Shalf, 2001). In the case of Columbine, Dylan

Klebold and Eric Harris acquired an arsenal of homemade explosives, two sawed-off

shotguns, a rifle, and a handgun. The rifle and shotguns were purchased legally at a gun

show by Klebold’s girlfriend while the handgun was purchased by another friend of the

killers’ (Redding & Shalf, 2001).

Redding and Shalf (2001) stated that reducing gun violence in the schools

depends partly upon limiting juveniles’ access to guns, and that the extent to which

7 various gun control laws would be effective depends not only on the reasons why different populations of juveniles carry guns, but also on their different patterns of gun acquisition and possession. The researchers suggest that increasing the regulation of sales of new guns is less likely to have an effect in suburban and rural communities.

School security, such as metal detectors, may help prevent guns from being brought into schools but may be unlikely to prevent school violence that is planned out by the assailants. Some things that might help prevent school violence include outlets for acquiring guns being more regulated and programs at schools dealing with anger management, social problem-solving, and anti-bullying. If assailants of previous shootings have been bullied or victimized, then reducing the levels of those behaviors may help provide safety in the schools and less need for students to carry weapons to school.

Redding and Shalf (2001) concluded that efforts to reduce school and gun violence would be most effective if aimed at the local level. For example, while a number of approaches to gun control in schools may be useful in urban as well as suburban and rural communities, street-level enforcement of crime dealing with possession or sale of guns would be most beneficial to an urban community. A high level of cooperation between federal, state, and local levels is important, but Redding and Shalf argued that a fair amount of discretion would need to be given to local officials who have a better understanding of what works best in their jurisdictions.

Though more attention is given to federal gun control measures, most federal gun control restrictions do not trump less restrictive state laws as to the possession of guns by juveniles (Redding & Shalf, 2001). For example, federal legislation was proposed in

8 1999 that added semiautomatic assault weapons and automatic ammunition-feeding

devices as items forbidden to juveniles. However, that restriction would not take effect in

states that permitted such possession. Redding and Shalf stated that complaints about the

lack of enforcement of existing gun laws usually cite federal statistics on the prosecution

of gun sales to juveniles or juvenile gun possession. This is due to the fact that most

federal prosecutions are targeting high-level traffickers. The researchers stated that the

number of federal prosecutions of juveniles is low because federal law expresses a preference for state prosecution of juvenile offenders unless there is a “substantial federal

interest” (p. 309). Many federal criminal laws, particularly gun control laws, duplicate states laws and therefore make federal prosecution unnecessary in those cases.

Redding and Shalf (2001) stated that federal-state partnerships are the more efficient and desirable way of involving the federal government in reducing juvenile gun violence. For example, the city of Boston has formed partnerships with federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, that have the resources and expertise to help local authorities investigate the illegal gun market. With combined efforts, the federal government can handle the high end of the illegal gun market while local authorities can handle the more routine cases. The researchers suggested that the continuation and expansion of these partnerships can help to reduce juvenile gun violence. Federal and local information sharing, such as mental health service agencies, law enforcement, and school resources, will help to reduce school violence.

9 LITERATURE REVIEW

Guns and Gun Control

State of Virginia Gun Laws

In the state of Virginia, a person must be at least 18 years of age to purchase a rifle or shotgun (Virginia State Police Website, 2008). In order to purchase a handgun, a

person must be at least 21 years of age in accordance to federal law. According to the

Virginia State Police, Virginia law does not address age requirements for the purchase of

ammunition; federal law requires an individual to be at least 21 years of age to purchase

handgun ammunition and at least 18 years old to purchase rifle or shotgun ammunition.

In 1993, the Virginia General Assembly amended and reenacted the Code of

Virginia to make it unlawful for any person who is not a licensed firearms dealer to

purchase more than one handgun within any 30-day period (Virginia State Police

Website, 2008). Those who apply for multiple handgun purchases must be approved by

the Virginia State Police. However, there is no restriction on the number of rifles and

shotguns that a person may purchase during any period of time.

Firearms are not registered in the state of Virginia (with the exception of machine

guns) (Virginia State Police Website, 2008). According to the Virginia State Police

(2008), the state’s approach to firearms records checks does not infringe on an

individual’s ability to purchase or possess a firearm, while those individuals who are

prohibited by State or Federal law are denied legal access to firearms. The Virginia

Firearms Transaction Program, developed and administered by the Virginia Department

10 of State Police, became operational on November 1, 1989, to provide a timely, point-of- sale approval or disapproval decision regarding the sale or transfer of all firearms (except

antiques) based upon the results of a criminal history record information check.

Guns and Virginia Tech

One of the key issues to be debated immediately after the Virginia Tech shootings

was gun control. As reports of Cho’s mental instability surfaced, the question arose of

how he could acquire the firearms to carry out the massacre. The same question had

arisen previously after other school shootings such as the Columbine High School

incident. According to Scharrer, Weidman, and Bissell (2003), one of the most frequent

targets of criticism, among others, is the prevalence and accessibility of guns in the

United States. Since the Columbine shootings, there have been numerous debates over

the issue of guns and school violence in the form of political action, non-fiction

documentaries (such as Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine), fictional movies

(Elephant and Home Room), and news reports. The Virginia Tech shootings and Cho’s

success in acquiring firearms brought the issue back into the media spotlight.

In the three months following the Virginia Tech shootings, politicians in at least

25 states considered new laws or policies designed to protect college students from gun

violence (Lewis, 2007). According to Lewis (2007), some politicians went straight to the

gun-control debate by either proposing bans on guns on campuses or drafting measures to

ensure the presence of gun-carrying individuals who could stop armed killers. Jeffrey D.

Duncan, a state representative in South Carolina, argued that an armed person could

probably stop a murderer such as Cho. Duncan offered a measure that would have

cleared the way for people 21 and older to carry concealed guns on campuses providing

11 they had a permit. With similar ideology to Duncan, a Nevada System of Higher

Education’s Board of Regents member, Stavros S. Anthony, proposed allowing some

faculty and staff members to carry concealed guns on campuses. That proposal suggested

faculty and staff members on campuses could volunteer to become reserve police officers after undergoing 21 weeks of training.

Lewis (2007) stated that several states have taken the stance to make it more difficult for certain individuals to have access to guns. Sean Faircloth, a state representative in Maine, proposed giving information to the FBI concerning mentally ill people who are hospitalized involuntarily after a court hearing; Faircloth argued the measure would prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands. To demonstrate the urgency of setting restrictions on mentally ill people like Cho from gaining access to guns, Bruce Shephard, a chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, said the rates of mentally ill students on college campuses are “skyrocketing.” Elected officials in several other states have proposed specialized task forces to increase security instead of legislation to allow more people to have access to guns. However, despite the legislative action and attention brought on by the Virginia Tech shootings, a poll by the Pew

Research Center found that the incident did little to alter most Americans’ views about gun control.

Summary

Guns and gun control has developed into a prominent issue for the United States.

The issue has been addressed through substantial political action and media coverage, and shown to be a more substantial issue than social communities, mental health, teen life, and numerous aspects of popular culture such as music, movies, and video games

12 (Lawrence & Birkland, 2004). Alarming figures have shown there is a significant presence of guns in school and many instances of students carrying firearms have gone overlooked (Lawrence & Birkland, 2004). Legislative and social debate continues over ways to prevent gun acquisition and school violence, and the Virginia Tech massacre has only added to the discussion.

School Violence

History and Research

It is important to first understand what exactly qualifies as “school violence” and the attributes associated with the term. An act of school violence provides the media with multiple angles to pursue in their investigations and reporting. The initial reports of the

Virginia Tech shootings are especially important to understanding what aspects of

“school violence” were the default reporting angles and topics of discussion regarding the term in 2007.

As the subject of school violence has grown more prominent in society, it has generally gone unnoticed that the use and the meaning of the term “school violence” have evolved over time (Furlong & Morrison, 2000). Furlong and Morrison (2000) stated that it was not until 1992 that the label “school violence” was used widely as a term to describe violent and aggressive acts on school campuses. Prior to 1992, citations in the

University of California computer databases of news reports showed only 179 articles listed under the keyword “school violence.” From 1992 to the time of Furlong and

Morrison’s research, 601 citations were listed in the same search.

13 Furlong and Morrison (2000) stated that professional interest about youth

violence increased in the 1980s with the substantial rise of extreme acts of juvenile crime and homicide. Misinterpretation of the prevalence of weapons in school came from a

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey that reported more than 20 percent of high school students had carried weapons in the previous month; reports of that statement were interpreted to mean that those students were carrying weapons in school. That misinterpreted fact was reported to Congress and was a pretext for the school-crime supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which established the link between youth violence/crime and school violence.

Furlong and Morrison (2000) suggested that “school violence” can be understood as a catchall term that has little precision from an empirical-scientific point of view and has come to reflect broad community concern about youth violence and how that violence affects schools. At the time of their research, Furlong and Morrison stated there was no definitive statement of specific dimensions to the term “school violence.”

Therefore, the task of researchers of school violence was to study the many complex precursors of violent-aggressive behavior in schools, how to prevent it, and how to reduce its impact when it does occur. Researchers in this area need to be concerned about any differences in such terms as “school violence” and “violence in the schools.”

Furlong and Morrison suggested it is important to distinguish between “school” as a physical location for violence that is tied to a community and “school” as a system that causes or exacerbates problems individuals experience within that system. Therefore if a researcher accepts a “school violence” definition rather than a “violence that happens in schools” definition, attention may be focused on the role that a school has as a physical,

14 educational, and social environment in which students experience violence and develop violent tendencies.

Furlong and Morrison (2000) stated that initial research in the area of school violence may not have reached out to educators because studies were not often empirically based and were published in journals that educators were less likely to be familiar with, such as medical journals. Moreover, school educators often were not involved in reports that dealt with the evaluation of school violence. The Indicators of

School Crime and Safety report became the first annual report to indicate the amounts of nonfatal student victimization, violence and crime at schools, violent deaths at school, teacher victimization at school, and school environment conditions. Furlong and

Morrison stated that basic information of school violence was mostly gained from studies that did not report using any response reliability or validity checks; hence it is likely that the various rates of school violence were, and possibly still are, overestimates of their true rates.

It should be stated this study focuses on “school violence” in the broadest definition. High schools are different educational settings than colleges and universities, just as there are differences between high school students and college students. There are many instances of “school violence” referred to in this study from both educational settings in order to present the issue in a larger scope. The researcher also believes there may be more similarities than differences. The Columbine High School and Virginia

Tech shootings shared numerous characteristics such as intense media coverage,

“troubled” shooters, and raised public debate on the issue of gun-control. Lesser-known instances of school violence also share similarities. Gang Lu, a graduate student in

15 physics from China, opened fire in two buildings on the University of Iowa campus in

Iowa City on 1 November 1991 after being passed over for an academic honor (Stuckey,

2007). Jeff Weise, a student at Red Lake High School on the Red Lake Indian

Reservation in Minnesota, opened fire at his high school on 21 March 2005 (Stuckey,

2007). Both Lu and Weise committed suicide after the shootings, just as Harris and

Klebold at Columbine and Cho at Virginia Tech.

School Violence Statistics

Hancock (2001) brought into question whether the public’s heightened fear of school violence is based on reality or if it is exaggerated because of saturated media coverage that is painting a distorted picture. Furlong, Morrison, Austin, Huh-Kim, and

Skager (2001) suggested that if individuals are asked to evaluate the intensity and trend of violence in schools, they tend to draw upon the easily accessible deluge of mass media reports that follow school shootings. The National School Safety Center indicates the number of people shot and killed annually in elementary or secondary schools declined from 43 to 14 from 1992 to 2001 (Hancock, 2001). With the exception of the year of the

Columbine shooting, 1999, the trend showed a steady decline. Hancock (2001) put that in perspective by stating the 295 deaths recorded in those years means that an individual student had one chance in two million of getting killed on school grounds. Odds show that a student has a greater chance of being killed by a stray comet destroying the planet.

U.S. students are in far more danger outside the school walls than within.

According to Hancock (2001), during the 1997-98 school year, statistics showed that, at most, 35 children were murdered in U.S. schools compared to the 2,752 that were killed outside of school. Yet the intensity of media coverage has focused attention on efforts to

16 prevent violence within school boundaries. With schools adopting “zero tolerance”

policies, the rules for school expulsion or suspension have increased and become extremely strict. A first-grader in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where a highly publicized shooting occurred in 1998, was suspended for making a shooting motion with a chicken nugget. Hancock stated that the Harvard Civil Rights project found school suspensions increased from 1.7 to 3.1 million from 1974 to 1997. That project also found that black and Hispanic children were punished at a far greater rate than their white peers.

Reasons for School Violence and Pre-Planning

Research began to explore how the perceived “epidemic” of school violence could be prevented. Aronson (2004) concluded that “high school cultures are made up of a hierarchy of cliques, with athletes, class officers, cheerleaders, and ‘preppies’ at the top, and nerds, Goths, geeks, loners, homosexuals, and kids who are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, (or who simply don’t fit in) at the bottom (p. 355).” At the time of

Aronson’s research, he concluded that rejection and accompanying humiliation were the dominant issue underlying every one of the school rampage killings in the United States, especially Harris and Klebold at Columbine. Consalvo (2003) stated that the killers were not part of the “in” crowd and were either ignored or despised by other kids. Columbine

High glorified sports and athletes, and in the hierarchy of school relations, “jocks” could revel in their position and gain status within the school, while the “geeks” received only scorn. If Harris and Klebold had rebelled against this social structure, the result could have been even more dislike and scorn from others. Aronson’s (2004) answer to help prevent those symptoms that can lead to rampage killing is a technique called the “jigsaw classroom.” That process essentially makes a wide variety of students rely on each other

17 in order to fully understand the classroom lesson being taught. The “jigsaw” technique is

assumed to eliminate rejection by encouraging students to cooperate in the classroom

instead of compete. The “jigsaw” technique is grounded in the contact theory (also referred to as the intergroup contact hypothesis) formulated by Gordon Allport in his

1954 book The Nature of Prejudice. In his book Allport suggested that the reduction of prejudice can occur with equal-status contact between groups cooperating in the pursuit of common goals (Allport, 1954; Smith, 1994). That equal-status and shared responsibility is necessary for resulting in positive attitudes, and the different groups must be cooperatively interdependent with the support of those in authority (Damico &

Sparks, 1986). The notion that “all behavior is the result of person-environment interaction” can be related to those theories (Jessor, Donovan, & Costa, 1991, p. 20).

According to Redding and Shalf (2001), analysis of targeted school violence has found that attackers have felt bullied or threatened by others. In addition, a history of mental health problems has been evident in many attackers, though most were not officially diagnosed with mental disorders. Descriptions of the assailants classified them as social outcasts and emotionally troubled. Those symptoms may indicate there was a chance for shootings to be avoided had parents, teachers, and fellow students been able to identify and mitigate a potential threat.

The Columbine massacre was followed by an intense period of legislative activity on school violence for the U.S. Congress (Lawrence & Birkland, 2004). In 1999, 35 percent of the bills introduced in the 106th Congress dealing with school violence were

introduced in April and May; therefore, a condition of shared attention emerged between

the media and Congress from the Columbine shooting (Lawrence & Birkland, 2004).

18 Congress focused on school programs and security measures as well as juvenile crime, which the media had given less attention to throughout its coverage (Lawrence &

Birkland, 2004).

Seeger, Heyart, Barton, and Bultnyck (2001) stated that the Columbine massacre called into question the adequacy of school warning systems and pre-planned responses to crises. For instance, the Michigan State Legislature in 1999 required the statewide standard school code to include provisions regarding risk reduction and crisis management, including requiring certain types of incidents to qualify for automatic expulsion and tightening requirements for reporting incidents. Crisis response plans also were required to be developed by each school district in Michigan. In order to be effective in planning for such events, Seeger et al., stated that establishing and maintaining functional communication networks and relationships with important constituency groups, developing crisis teams, specifying spokespersons, and establishing pre-set responses are critical for crisis avoidance. Although approaches to school crisis may have been in place prior to certain school shootings, those procedures were focused on natural disasters and events such as fires or transportation accidents, not on student- initiated violence. Crisis response programs and procedures have continued to be a point of concern after incidents of school violence. However, who bears the ultimate responsibility of preventing those events is still debated.

With the institution of zero-tolerance policies in U.S. schools, pre-crisis planning, and considerable media coverage of school violence incidents, the question has been asked by some how students themselves view the potential threat of violence (Chapin,

2002). Some researchers have tried to understand if students are concerned with their

19 own well-being at school. Although common sense would assume that any number of

polls could be taken at different times in different places with different results, there is

the possibility that students who believe they are safe from violence in school may fail to

take precautions. Consider this example: more than 20 students and one teacher all heard

a student threaten to shoot up the school only days before the threat became a reality in

California in 2001 (Chapin, 2002). That would suggest the students and teacher may not

have taken the threat seriously, hence believing they were in no danger. Perhaps, as

referenced previously, this is because school violence has decreased and schools remain some of the safest places for students.

Campus Responsibility

Lake (2007) observed that up through the 1970s, college campus security forces were mainly charged with the protection of college property and to defend against intruders, burglars, and vandals. However, the groundbreaking case of Mullins v. Pine

Manor College in 1983 established that colleges can be held responsible for neglecting to provide protection to its students. The case involved a rape of a student by an unidentified assailant. The student filed a personal injury action against the college and its vice president. Therefore, that court ruling suggested that the college campus was negligent, and that such negligence was a substantial cause of the attack.

The case of Bradshaw v. Rawlings in 1979 involved the plaintiff, Donald

Bradshaw, who was very seriously injured in an automobile accident after attending a college-sponsored picnic. The court ruled that the college was responsible since it had advertised the picnic and beer to its students, and a faculty member helped organize the picnic and disbursed funds to the beer yet failed to attend. A similar case, 1986’s Beach

20 v. University of Utah, concerned an intoxicated student who fell off a cliff on a university

field trip. However, the court ruled the university was not responsible for the death of the

voluntarily intoxicated student.

In 2000, Nova Southeastern University, Inc. v. Gross concerned a situation in which a graduate student was placed in a required internship at a hospital in a neighborhood known to be dangerous and was assaulted in the parking lot. Even though the university did warn students of urban dangers, the court ruled it was held to be responsible. Lake (2007) suggested that after the Virginia Tech shootings, colleges should be asking themselves what is foreseeable, and what efforts are needed to provide a safe campus environment. Lake suggested that it would be helpful for colleges to distinguish situations in which general risk exists from those in which specific people present risks.

Cho and Virginia Tech

This section cites several non-scholarly sources (such as the Chronicle of Higher

Education and popular magazines) in order to present recent observations on the events at

Virginia Tech. Since this thesis was conducted recently following the Virginia Tech shootings, there was a lack of established, peer-reviewed literature on the subject.

However, these observations helped the researcher look for possible research angles to reinforce with quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The shootings at Virginia Tech have received attention in regards to what role the

university itself played in the massacre. Lake (2007) suggested that what happened at

Virginia Tech would change higher-education policy significantly and permanently,

similar to what happened after the 1970 shootings at Kent State. The roles of business-

21 liability law are being applied to colleges, and the massacre at Virginia Tech may

accelerate this trend, according to Lake.

Cho’s massacre at Virginia Tech took place in two different areas of campus, one

a dormitory and one a building housing classrooms. That may seem inconsequential to a

casual viewer of school violence in general, but Lake (2007) suggested that dormitory

policies must work in tandem with regulations dealing with open areas on campus. If that is not achieved, then the results could mimic Cho’s actions in which a dormitory risk matures into a broader campus issue.

Lake (2007) acknowledged the importance for pre-crisis awareness. He stated that dangerous people rarely show all of their symptoms to just one department or group on campus. For example, a professor may see a problem in a student’s writings; campus

police may become aware of belligerent statements; a resident assistant or roommate may

notice the lack of an individual’s social acceptance; and a counselor may notice other

symptoms. One example is Cho’s roommate, who took him along to a party and afterward to a girl’s room where the festivities ended when Cho pulled out a knife and repeatedly stabbed the carpet (Hewitt, 2007). Therefore, the community aspect of a college must work together in order to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together and evaluate a potential threat. Lake (2007) suggested a college must recognize that managing an educational environment is a team effort and that calling for collaboration and multilateral solutions is essential in preventing a potential threat. This is only further reinforced by Ramirez (2007), who suggested that fewer lives might have been lost if university and local agencies had “connected all the dots” sooner and determined Cho was a danger to himself as well as the campus community.

22 Lake (2007) suggested that colleges need to evaluate how information is shared, evaluated, and acted upon within their infrastructure in order to improve the processes in which students are protected. Such an issue is relevant concerning Cho’s questionable mental condition. Lake observed that the case of Tarasoff v. Regents of University of

California in 1976 established that college mental-health professionals may have the duty to warn other people about their patients when they present a risk of serious violence. He suggested that becomes a grey area when one presents the possibility of infringing privacy laws. However, in the court hearing it was pointed out that privacy ends when safety begins. That suggestion is immediately applied to the threat Cho may have

exhibited to mental-health professionals previous to his massacre. However, Lake

suggested that the events at Virginia Tech were suicide-related and that a situation where

a student only poses a danger to oneself, the law is less clear.

The mental health of Cho was questioned long before the day he carried out the

killings at Virginia Tech. Cho’s parents took him for art therapy before the seventh grade

because of his lack of social skills (Hewitt, 2007). Cho created a clay house with no

windows or doors. His parents intervened yet again in 1999 after he wrote a disturbing

paper in English class expressing how he wanted to repeat the Columbine killings

(Hewitt, 2007). A psychiatrist diagnosed Cho with social anxiety, depression, and

selective mutism. According to Hewitt (2007), Cho’s high-school guidance counselor suggested he go to a more individualized college to better fit his condition. Instead, Cho decided to attend the large institution Virginia Tech, where his isolation deepened. After attending Virginia Tech, Cho threatened to commit suicide and was involuntarily committed to a hospital where he was deemed not dangerous (Hewitt, 2007). After a

23 judge ordered him to receive outpatient treatment, Cho skipped out after the first session and his absence was not followed up by the counseling center (Hewitt, 2007).

Summary

This section has shown that the term “school violence” can encompass several elements and has evolved over time. Though many statistics have shown schools are some of the safest places for students, the data are alarming enough for researchers, school administrators, and others to concentrate on pre-planning strategies to avoid potential incidents and to determine reasons for acts of school violence. The role that educational institutions play in the protection over their students has also been the subject of numerous court decisions. Assuming school violence is a national epidemic, this thesis was familiar with the specifics regarding public grade schools as well as colleges and universities. All of these factors and discussions were considered in the analysis of

The Guardian’s coverage of Cho’s shootings at Virginia Tech.

Media Coverage of School Violence

Rising Coverage

According to Hancock (2001), media coverage of school violence increased significantly over the past decades. Newsweek carried a 700-word story well inside the magazine regarding a 1974 school shooting in upstate New York resulting in three deaths and 11 injuries. A fifteen-year-old in Lansing, Michigan, killed one fellow student and wounded a second in 1978. The story was front-page news in a local paper, but 90 miles away, the Detroit Free Press ran a smaller story on its inside pages. A sixteen-year-old

24 in Virginia Beach killed a teacher and wounded another at his Baptist school in 1988; the

Associated Press sent a brief story over the wires but was picked up by only a few papers

around the nation. Unlike more recent scenes of school violence, the national and

international media did not descend upon those towns or use terms such as “epidemic” or

“rash of killings” (pp. 76-77).

Consalvo (2003) stated that ABC’s Nightly News filled more than 40 percent of its time to Columbine on the day of the shooting, and CBS’s Evening News devoted more than 70 percent of its time on the following day. The Columbine shootings continued to be the lead story on all networks until the following Monday, when CNN bumped the story to second in the lineup. The Denver Rocky Mountain News published two editorials, 26 letters to the editor, and 22 articles and columns addressing the Columbine shooting on the Sunday following the shootings. On the same day, the New York Times published one editorial and eight articles and columns of substantial length, ranging from

401 to 1,704 words each. Many of the news outlets offered timelines that chronicled in detail how the killings unfolded, and stories concerning how students could fight back in order to prevent a similar tragedy occurring in their own schools.

Routine of Reporting School Violence

Media coverage of school violence has been an issue preceding the events that unfolded at Virginia Tech. Pompilio and Robertson (1999) stated that when key information is unavailable in the first confused days of a tragedy, journalists rush to fill the news hole, which can lead to rash judgments or give legitimacy to crackpot theories.

Though it may still have been problematic, many experts agree that the overall coverage of the Littleton shooting was better than in previous instances. Clearly previous coverage

25 of school violence made an impact, being that one killer’s parents of the Columbine

shooting actually retained a lawyer before SWAT teams entered the school to recover

bodies.

Casey (1999) pointed out that the media audience no longer just hears about a

tragedy but becomes totally immersed in it. Casey continued by stating the media push to

immediately find meaning to the madness; therefore, adding a skewed form of journalism that is becoming more prevalent. Journalism has turned catastrophic events into news

reports complete with predictable story lines including raw facts, the search for meaning, the assignment of blame, and then a conclusion. Casey, an Emmy-winning journalist,

feels that journalists become insensitive when going out to report these stories of human suffering and their goal to show reality in an objective way separates themselves from their own feelings as well as the feelings of others. Casey also suggested that by constantly referring to the shootings as the “worst massacres” in “school history,” other disturbed individuals may become inspired to take their level of carnage to a higher level

(Casey, 1999, pp. 30-33).

Scharrer et al. (2003) stated that in news coverage of school shootings such as

Columbine, the mainstream media seemed to lead the charge by unabashedly reporting on, if not initiating, the finger-pointing. Apart from reporting on blame, coverage focused on the grieving processes, connections made in communities around the country with those involved, and decisions to cancel sporting and other events in light of the tragedy. Students at Columbine and other area schools, professors, counselors, attorneys,

police officers, and the media were most responsible for pointing the finger of blame.

26 Though products of popular-culture were blamed, most blamers did not accuse the producers of those products.

Portrayal of Assailants

A study by Consalvo (2003) explored how news media constructed Harris and

Klebold, including the details of their past that were considered relevant to their actions of killing. The study argues that in their initial coverage the media emphasized certain factors while ignoring others, functioning to let certain hegemonic systems as masculinity and school culture mostly off the hook. The media demonized video games and the

Internet as dangerous risk factors without any real proof of such danger. Consalvo stated that initial news coverage set the tone for singling out and harassing “different” kids who looked or acted in ways that suddenly seemed “dangerous.” It was not until later coverage by media that concerned more complicated angles of Harris and Klebold relationship with different high school cliques and their harassment as “nerds” (p. 28).

Consalvo (2003) stated the media noted Harris and Klebold avidly played the video game “Doom,” which is a first-person shooter in which the main character kills everything in sight in order to succeed. In addition, reports of Harris constructing Web pages that detailed a list of things he hated were contributed as indicators of future violence. That was further fueled by the U.S. Congress attacking the makers of violent media and stating how research showed beyond a doubt that media violence is linked to youth violence. Violent video games and the Internet were characterized as sites where kids learn how to kill and enjoy it. Both print and broadcast media initially classified

Harris and Klebold as “monsters” (p. 39). However, investigation into what had turned them into “monsters” also provided an alternate portrayal of “high school geeks.”

27 Amidst all of the media coverage, Consalvo (2003) found there was an encircling portrayal of Harris and Klebold as “monsters.” Coverage by the media in all mediums used terms such as “massacre,” “horror,” “war zone,” “bloodbath,” “siege,” “nightmare,”

“mayhem,” and “murderous rampage” in their descriptions of the Columbine tragedy (p.

33). Some of those terms, such as “war zone”, are normally associated with war reporting and accounts of terrorism (p. 33). Consalvo indicated that those descriptors serve to cast the events of Columbine as so deviant that they go beyond understanding or comprehension.

The news reports spent a good deal of time exploring the racism and hatred of

Harris and Klebold. However, at the time of the shooting, the town of Littleton was 98 percent white (Consalvo, 2003). Consalvo (2003) stated that the news media consistently failed to explore how structural racism was present in the community and how it might have been at work. Instead, it was far easier for the media to suggest the killers’ deviancy was to blame for their racism. Fear of similar hatred brewing in any “safe” community in the nation arose in people’s minds. Initial reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings conjured up similar concerns regarding racism. The following directive from the Asian American Journalists Association exemplifies the concern in reference to media coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre:

As coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting continues to unfold, AAJA urges all media to avoid using racial identifiers unless there is a compelling or germane reason. There is no evidence at this early point that the race or ethnicity of the suspected gunman has anything to do with the incident, and to include such mention serves only to unfairly portray an entire people. – (16 April 2007)

28 Critiques of Media Coverage

There has been considerable criticism of coverage of school shootings. Dick

Weissman, the chair of the music and entertainment studies department at the University

of Colorado at Boulder, stated that the first thing he noticed about the media coverage of

Columbine was that even though the killers were obsessed with Hitler, reporters treated

that as a symbolic thing apart from any specific references (Weissman, 1999). Weissman continued by saying the media never made the connection between the shooters’ racism

in shooting the black student Isaiah Shoels and their obsession.

Such connections may have simply been overlooked as a part of the news-

gathering process. Rushing to get a report out can be problematic for journalists covering

a tragedy such as a school shooting. Joel Patenaude, a reporter for the Illinois’ Aurora

Beacon News during Columbine, covered a story of about a man named Greg Williams

(Dorroh, 2001). Williams claimed he had counseled students in Littleton during the wake

of the Columbine shootings, toured the school library a few days before the murder,

spoke to more than 850 parents, and related a story about a student who pulled his

murdered friend’s body over his and played dead, later showing him the bloody shirt he

had worn that day. Patenaude later found there was no evidence to support Williams’

claims, and the Columbine school district’s spokesman called him “an imposter.” In the

wake of the tragedy, reporter Patenaude confessed he did not complete any background

checks to verify Williams’ claims before reporting his story.

The media reporting on school violence is felt by some to make the tragedy even

worse. Mengelkoch (2006) noticed local citizens were disgusted how the national and

international media descended upon Red Lake community in Minnesota following a

29 shooting that left 10 people dead at a local high school in 2005. Mengelkoch (2006)

recalls how the situation became dramatized in excess when the media demanded access

and others demanded for secrecy and control.

Virginia Tech Coverage

A faculty member of Virginia Tech summed up these concerns about the media

coverage of the shootings there:

The coverage from here has been relentless – some of it obnoxious, some of it silly, some of it simply wrong, some of it important. I hope as you watched that coverage, however, you picked up on a theme that at first was implicit, but became obtrusive as reporters learned more about Virginia Tech and what it is to be a Hokie. I think they came to learn what we have always known: Virginia Tech is a very special place. And one madman will not change that. – (Name Withheld, 2007)

The Virginia Tech tragedy in Blacksburg, Virginia, resulted in a scrambling of

outside reporters to reach the area. However, the local student-run Collegiate Times was

already on the scene. In the first 24 hours news cycle, the paper had already talked to

eyewitnesses, survivors, and students at Virginia Tech (Ricchiardi, 2007). The college

paper was the first to interview those who knew Cho and the names of the victims. That

resulted in national television networks and newspapers such as the New York Times

linking to the Collegiate Times Web site and crediting information to the paper

(Ricchiardi, 2007). The campus paper’s Web site crashed due to the amount of response

to their online postings. The students used the unique method of searching for specific

terms such as “I miss you already” and “RIP” on online social networking sites such as

Facebook and MySpace in order to gather information (Ricchiardi, 2007, pp. 12-13).

Requests for information came from New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, Japan, France, Ireland,

30 even the Arab news network Al Jazeera (Ricchiardi, 2007). Substantial amounts of national and international coverage from all major news outlets followed.

Britain

Hunter (2006) stated there is compelling evidence of a growing weapons-carrying mentality among young people in the United Kingdom. He continued to state that the

Metropolitan Police estimates that in London, 52 teenagers are victims of knife crime every week. According to Hunter, a survey by The Guardian found that 50 percent of head teachers had caught a pupil carrying a knife in the previous 12 months, and another by the Daily Mirror found that during the first 20 days of an autumn term in September,

83 serious incidents involving knives were reported in secondary schools and 28 in primaries.

Hunter (2006) stated that gun-carrying in the United Kingdom also seems to be rising with an increase in the number of overall offences involving firearms reported each year since 1997-1998. However, he continued to state that the actual use of these weapons does not seem to be increasing at all and that if anything, it has gone into decline. Hunter stated that the Home Office figures for gun crime show a similar decline.

According to their figures, handguns were used in 4,326 offence in 2004-2005, down 16 percent from 2003-2004, shotguns were used in 18 percent fewer offences than the previous year, and armed robberies had fallen by 9 percent. Hunter stated that there has been a corresponding increase in the casual possession of weapons by people with no criminal record. Government initiatives have been introduced to combat the trend of young people carrying weapons. Hunter mentioned the Violent Crime Reduction Bill

31 which restricts the sale of replica guns, tightens the law on air guns, raises the age limit for buying knives to 18, and gives head teachers the right to search pupils for weapons.

Cookie and Puddifoot (2000) stated that in the United Kingdom, the highly publicized shooting of school children in Dunblane, Scotland, led directly and

uncompromisingly to a total ban on the possession of handguns. They continued by

stating that contemporaneously, the state of South Carolina in the United States continued

to reinforce its citizens’ freedom to purchase, own, and carry guns and other weapons in

the street through the enactment of The Law-Abiding Citizen: Self Defense Act in 1996.

Cookie and Puddifoot observed that one would not expect the aforementioned event in

the United Kingdom to directly influence legislation in the U.S. South. However, they argued that it is useful to inquire why events of such wide media coverage appeared to

have such relatively small impact on the general attitudes toward guns and gun control in

the United States especially in light of the observation that the number of lives lost at

Dunblane was actually smaller than the number of children’s lives lost to guns in any

typical 2-day period in the United States.

According to Cookie and Puddifoot (2000), gun ownership is considered

somewhat deviant and undesirable in the United Kingdom and that there is no equivalent

in law of the right to bear arms as there is in the United States. Cookie and Puddifoot

stated that weapon ownership in the United Kingdom is subject to very strict scrutiny and

licensing by the police within the framework of national laws, which impose the duty on

the police to regulate the carrying of weapons in public places. Cookie and Puddifoot

stated that following popular legislation, it is actually illegal to possess or carry any

handgun in the United Kingdom.

32 In a study of attitudes toward guns, Cookie and Puddifoot (2000) randomly

recruited female and male students from two U.K. universities in Teesside and Swansea

and one U.S. university in South Carolina. The researchers found that 8.8% of women in

the U.S. had ever carried weapons compared to 0.9% of women in the U.K. Of U.S.

women, 53.8% compared with 4.6% of the U.K. women, reported that they had access to

guns and 5.5% of U.S. women reported owning a gun compared to 1.9% of U.K. women.

The researchers found that more than half of the U.S. women had used guns at some time and 11% had used handguns. Of the U.K. women, only 16.7% had used guns and none had used handguns.

As for the male sample, Cookie and Puddifoot (2000) found that 51.2% of U.S. men and 8.9% of U.K. men had carried weapons, and 80.5% of the U.S. men and 51.1% of the U.K. men had used guns at some time. Finally, the researchers found that 82.9%

of the U.S. men, compared with 17.8% of the U.K. men, had access to guns; and 53.7%

of the U.S. men, compared with 8.9% of the U.K. men, owned guns. Though these

statistics show a difference between the United States and the United Kingdom, Cookie

and Puddifoot stated that the view of an essentially masculine “gun culture” is supported

by readily perceived regional differences in gun ownership, even within the boundaries of

one nation.

Smith (2006) stated that those who argue against gun control often talk in

passionate terms of a citizen’s “right” to bear arms as enshrined in the American

Constitution, while those in favor see this “right” as a dangerous myth, contradicted by a

plethora of local controls (p. 718). Smith continued by suggesting there are important

differences as well as similarities in the character of the public debate over gun control

33 between Britain and the United States. In Britain, there are few groups who articulate arguments against further restrictions in terms of citizens’ rights. Smith stated that insofar as a “pro-gun” lobby exists in Britain it is really a lobby seeking the preservation of shooting sports, rather than a general “right” to gun ownership. Although some may campaign for the reintroduction of the sport of target pistol shooting, most do not.

Unlike the United States, there are few organizations in Britain solely seeking prohibitions of particular classes of firearms since prohibitions already exist (Smith,

2006). Smith (2006) stated that even though the number and size of organizations involved on both sides of the gun debate are much larger in the U.S., when the issue has risen up in Britain the debate has proved to be no less polarized or partisan. Smith stated that unlike the U.S., where academics regularly write on aspects of gun control, fewer contributions from this source are to be found in Britain.

According to Smith (2006), the level of public interest in the issue of gun control varies over time, but on occasions it has had a powerful influence upon the development of legislation in Britain. Smith stated that given the events in Dunblane, especially as the victims were predominantly from a socially valued group (children), the resultant intensity of public and media reaction is hardly surprising and those events may have intensified the feeling for many that “guns equal violence” in Britain (p. 727). He continued to state that an argument that is deployed quite often in America is that a government unable to protect its citizens from violent crime, ought not to be in the business of disarming them. However, Smith said that it should be remembered that “self defense” has long ceased to be accepted as a good reason to own a firearm in Britain (p.

730).

34 Soothill, Peelo, Pearson, and Francis (2004) conducted a study that focused on

British coverage of 13 homicide cases over a period of 23 years. The researchers examined the media process of covering these ‘mega-cases’ in five stages: initial investigation, search for offender, arrest, court, and aftermath. One of the cases was the

Dunblane massacre in which most of the press coverage by The Times occurred in the

first month. However, the secondary peak in the eighth month suggested that the tragedy, mainly involving young children, could not be so readily forgotten as other homicides with adult victims. In addition, allegations of pedophilia in the coverage may have tuned in with more general and widespread concerns about the issue. Soothill et al. suggest that media coverage from ‘incidents’ needs to be contrasted with media coverage from

“process” (p. 9). “Incidents” are unexpected; but once killers are caught, then “process” takes over and coverage has elements that are predictable (p. 9). The researchers also suggest that such stories may link to wider concerns such as gun culture, errant youth or

stranger danger. In doing so, “trajectories” of the coverage may chart the development of

specific “moral panics” (p.9).

Winfield, Friedman, and Trisnadi (2002) researched coverage by two British

newspapers and two U.S. newspapers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The researchers found

that all four newspapers deployed similar historical references to place the event on a

time line. In addition, personal recollections from individuals who were in the World

Trade Center in 1993 explained their experiences in the latest attack. The researchers

also found that all four papers included ‘lessons learned’ from the attack and that the

event had transformed the nation of the United States (p. 295).

35 Wardle’s (2003) study focused on the newspaper coverage of two murder trials

from different countries, that of the ‘Unabomber’ in the United States and the ‘Nail

bomber’ in the United Kingdom. Wardle found that approximately 80 percent of the U.S.

stories and 70 percent of British articles used on of three thematic narratives: the story of

the crime (a retelling of the crimes themselves or describing the impact on the victims);

the story of the trial (the legal strategy of the defense and prosecution, the impact of the

family of the defendant on the trial, and discussions about whether the defendants’

actions in court demonstrated mental illness); and the story of the defendant (describing

their childhood and background) (p. 243). The researcher found that just over half of the

U.S. coverage was centered on the trial itself, while only 2 percent of the British coverage had a similar focus. In addition, 40 percent of the British coverage concentrated on retelling the story of the crimes, with roughly half of those articles rehashing the events themselves and the other half focusing on the victims, either during the crimes or the subsequent impact on their lives. Comparatively, only 8 percent of the U.S. coverage concentrated on those themes. The British coverage was more substantial in exploring reasons for the crimes.

Wardle (2003) stated the British papers grounded their coverage in a focus on human interest by repeatedly retelling the story of the crimes and focusing on the experiences of the victims. In comparison, the U.S. coverage focused on the story of the trial, emphasizing bureaucracy, institutions, and the legal system. The two families of the defendants also received coverage in both Britain and the United States. Wardle stated that in Britain, an aspect of the crime that received significant coverage was the idea that the defendant’s parents had played a role in shaping a future killer. With no expert

36 analysis in the newspapers, these stories were carried as part of the continuous retelling

of the events, resulting in subsequent stories about public arguments between the parents about what was being alleged in the newspapers. Wardle stated the British coverage became obsessed with the idea that the parents had played a role in the crime, but rather than couching it within a wider discussion of the responsibilities of parents, it was reduced to coverage of public family confrontations.

Wardle (2003) found that as well as the reliance on the terms “Unabomber” and

“Nail Bomber” the two men were repeatedly described in the headline or lead paragraph

as a “mountain hermit” or “Nazi” (p. 246). However, these stereotypical categorizations

were used more frequently and consistently in the British newspapers than in the U.S.

newspapers.

Wardle (2003) stated that in both countries, the overwhelming pattern was that

even if mental illness was mentioned, very few attempts were made to explain it.

Wardle’s analysis showed that very few articles offered an explanation of paranoid

schizophrenia as a condition, with only 15 percent of the U.S. articles and 4 percent in the

British. The researcher suggested that these results demonstrated that the underlying

pattern was to avoid the subject of mental illness altogether. The most important

questions about how mental illness sits within society’s concept of right and wrongful

action were never explained.

Coverage of a School Shooting in Britain

Jemphrey and Berrington (2000) stated that disaster reporting, particularly in the

aftermath, seeks to establish the number of causalities, the apparent cause and the identity of those to who blame can be apportioned. In addition, reporting supplies information

37 such as the ages and backgrounds of victims and survivors, expert comment, psychiatric profiling of perpetrators and statements, and relatives and friends of those involved. The tragedy at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, in 1989 and the school shootings in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996 are two examples of British massacres that have become reference points in reporting subsequent, unrelated disasters. The

Hillsborough incident involved the collapse of a stand during a soccer game which resulted in fans getting crushed to death. The Dunblane school shooting is similar to

United States events such as Columbine and Jonesboro, the latter being characterized as

“Clinton’s Dunblane” by the Times in 1998 (pp. 470-471).

Jemphrey and Berrington (2000) examined the case that occurred on March 13,

1996, when a man named Thomas Hamilton drove to Dunblane and opened fire in the

Dunblane Primary School gymnasium, killing 16 children and their teacher and injuring another 16 children and adults before committing suicide. The media quickly picked up the story and arrived at the scene. Although initially the reporters were mostly Scottish and English, media from overseas eventually arrived. Officials quickly inquired about the circumstances leading up to the shooting and focused attention on public protection from the misuse of firearms and other dangers. There was a general press agreement not to interview bereaved families immediately. However, by the second day, reporters were seeking out interviews, and criticisms of the press concerning the behavior of overseas journalists and the overwhelming presence of world media arose.

Overall, the media was shown to have executed an exceptional level of restraint and sensitivity shown toward the bereaved, the survivors, and the community (Jemphrey

& Berrington, 2000). The police unusually issued a strong warning to news editors

38 against continued press invasion of victims’ privacy and a consensus among broadsheet

editors that their staff would not “doorstep” bereaved people during the immediate

aftermath (p. 478). Jemphrey and Berrington (2000) stated an interview with a journalist

mentioned that early interviews with the bereaved families would have led to “the kind of

stock grief-stricken clichéd responses you would expect,” therefore the effort would not

have been worth the anguish caused (p. 478). The majority of the press agreed to leave

before the funerals took place and not to cover these events.

Media demonized the killer in Dunblane and referred to him with such terms as

“monster” (p. 478). The focus remained on Hamilton and his relation to issues such as bullying, although some later reports considered relating issues such as gun control and

school security (Jemphrey & Berrington, 2000). Hamilton was portrayed as a sexual

deviant with a dysfunctional family background. Although investigative reporting was

being pursued, the Lord Advocate issued a statement limiting media inquiries and

therefore maintaining official accounts of the causation in the Dunblane shooting

(Jemphrey & Berrington, 2000).

Jemphrey and Berrington (2000) stated that media coverage included background

information regarding the high proportion of middle-class residents in Dunblane, and that

the community was thought of as safe. In other words, Dunblane was a small rural town

that shared many similarities with communities in the United States that have endured

school violence. Overall there were few complaints on the coverage of the Dunblane

shooting. The shooting was a disaster involving school children, and this facilitated a

level of restraint and sensitivity that was maintained by the media to protect the privacy

39 of those involved. The journalists for the most part simply observed and reported on the quiet rural community where nobody thought such a terrible act could occur.

Summary

Media coverage of school violence has increased significantly over the past decades (Hancock, 2001). The portrayals of the assailants and past influences that may have lead to their motivation to commit violence are significant reporting attributes amongst many other issues and reporting angles (Consalvo, 2003). The media coverage itself has received criticism from some observers for becoming totally immersed in the stories surrounding a shooting, leading to predictable reports that follow story lines

including the raw facts, search for meaning, assignment of blame, and conclusions

(Casey, 1999). Unfortunately there have been instances of false reports that may be due

to the fact of rushing to get out a news report. For those who are personally affected by

an act of school violence, it seems the overwhelming amount of media involvement can

be troublesome. However, in the case of the school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland, the

British media handled their domestic tragedy differently with less intrusive and rushed

coverage (Jemphrey & Berrington, 2000).

40 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A two-method study was utilized as a means to address the inherent limitations of

the two methods from different paradigms.

Content Analysis Using Agenda Setting Theory

The quantitative portion of this thesis was guided by the agenda-setting tradition

of theoretical media research. Agenda setting and second-level agenda setting have been

viewed as functional processes by which organizations effectively emphasize what should be important to the public (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Agenda setting is one of

the most prominent theories used and referenced by mass communication researchers

(Bryant & Miron, 2004). Covering a vast array of issues and subject matter, researchers

have found interest in how media emphasize the most important topics and topic

attributes for audience consumption. In essence, the “gatekeeping” practices of news

media filter out information deemed less important, and thus elevate what is reported to a

high level of cultural exposure and importance (White, 1950; Shoemaker, 1991). In other

words, not only do media “gate keep” what issues are presented, but also “gate keep”

information related to those issues.

The concept of “agenda setting” in mass media was first introduced by McCombs

and Shaw in 1972. They described the term as a process through which journalists select

and highlight certain issues and make them salient to the media audience. Kim,

Scheufele, and Shanahan (2002) further described the process of agenda setting as media

41 emphasizing certain issues with greater coverage and more prominent placement in

newspapers. They described agenda-setting as a process that relies on an individual’s

memory, as some pieces of information are more accessible in a person’s mind than

others. That accessibility depends on “how much” or “how recently” a person has been

exposed to the information or issues (p. 9). The more salient an issue is made by media,

the more likely the audience will recognize the issue.

Of course the agenda of the mass media is not created by a single person, agency,

or journalistic outlet. McCombs and Reynolds (2002) stated that the metaphor of

“peeling an onion” is often used for understanding the relationships between those factors

and the agenda of the mass media (p. 12). The outer surfaces such as politicians, public

officials, public relations practitioners, and any individual who influences media content

are key external news sources. Deeper within the onion are the interactions and influence

of various mass media on one another; those interactions and influences validate the social norms and traditions of journalism to a considerable degree. McCombs and

Reynolds continued to state that those professional values and practices are the layer of

the onion surrounding the core, which is the layer that defines the ground rules ultimately

shaping the media agenda.

The media can therefore influence the views and perceptions of society.

McCombs and Reynolds (2002) suggested that agenda setting is responsible for

substantial portions of our pictures about the larger environment and that it contributes to

social consensus and transmission of the social culture. The researchers stated that the

agenda setting process extends to defining a society’s collective memory of the past to the contemporary definitions of the idea physical appearance of young women and men.

42 McCombs and Reynolds stated that “the imprint of the mass media that begins with its

agenda-setting influence is found on many aspects of public opinion and behavior” (p.

16).

Another aspect of agenda setting is the theory of second-level agenda setting, or

attribute agenda setting. Attribute agenda setting is the process by which media address

how an audience should think about an issue, as opposed to simply dictating to an

audience what to think about (Hester & Gibson, 2003). The news media decide which issues to report through the process of agenda setting and also decide what aspects of these issues are reported through the process of attribute agenda setting (Hester &

Gibson, 2003). Ghanem (1997) stated that a number of investigators claim that agenda

setting is such a robust theoretical structure that it can encompass, in addition to issue or

object salience, the specific attributes of a topic and how those attributes influence public

opinion.

The journalistic process of agenda setting is dynamic and can occur over the

lifetime of coverage for a news event. Researchers have increasingly begun to examine

the process through which the mass media highlight varying aspects of topics in order to

build and maintain issue salience over time (Muschert & Carr, 2006). Kim et al. (2002)

conducted a study involving public awareness of a commercial development plan in

Ithaca, New York, from November 1999 to February 2000. Although their time frame

consisted of four months, they took into account findings of Winter and Eyal (1981), who

suggested four to six weeks as the optimal time span of agenda-setting effects, and also

the findings of Stone and McCombs (1981), who suggested it took two to six months of

coverage for the transfer of agenda setting from the media to the public. Kim et al.

43 (2002) found the by covering certain aspects of an issue prominently through attribute agenda setting, mass media influence how salient those aspects are among audience members over a period of time.

The process of agenda setting takes a period of time before it can affect the thought process of the audience. However, one of the goals of this study was not to measure whether the coverage of The Guardian affected how its readers think about the issue of school violence, its related topics, or its topic attributes over an extended period of time; this study is concerned with the topics of school violence that were initially covered by The Guardian and the frequency of coverage they received over an eight-day period. A census of articles was empirically analyzed to discover which topics of school violence were on The Guardian’s agenda and if there was any evidence of a changing pattern over the sampled period. There are already established attributes (topics) of school violence, such as “gun violence” and “media coverage of school violence,” which have been the focus of previous research of media coverage of school shootings; therefore, this study employed previous explications of research concepts. However, as those studies focused on U.S. media, one of the research questions of this study revolved around what attributes (topics) of school violence The Guardian initially reported to see if there are any additional concepts introduced by a British news medium.

Agenda Setting and the Process of Framing

The concept of framing and how it differs from agenda setting and attribute agenda setting are debated among communication researchers. This study does not define framing as a theoretical foundation, but rather as a communication process that facilitates agenda setting. For the purposes of this thesis, framing is discussed as a

44 process, the analysis of which can help us better understand agenda setting and employ agenda setting theory in this empirical study. However, it was analyzed using critical analysis techniques (specifically, textual analysis).

Frames are important to the study of media effects, as they can influence how audiences understand issues in a news report (McLeod, Kosicki & McLeod, 2002).

Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007) described framing as being based on this assumption: how an issue is characterized in news reports can have an influence on how it is understood by audiences (p. 11). Audience exposure to and familiarity with a certain issue (and its attributes) may be sufficient for an agenda setting effect (influencing

“what” issue or issue attribute a person thinks about), but it is less likely to be so for framing effects (influencing “how” a person thinks about an issue). Audience attention to messages may be more necessary for a framing effect to occur than for an agenda setting effect. Entman (1993) described framing as the selection of some aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described.

Price and Tewksbury (1997) summarized the distinction between framing and agenda setting. The researchers described agenda setting as selecting certain stories as a determinant of public perceptions of issue importance, while framing focuses not on which topics or issues are selected for coverage by the news media, but instead on the particular ways those issues are presented. Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007) stated that framing can be traced back to examinations on how different presentations of essentially

45 identical decision-making scenarios influence people’s choices and their evaluation of the various options presented to them.

Take for example Hester and Gibson’s study (2003) on the relationship between economic news and public opinion about the economy. The researchers found that certain economic issues were established by agenda setting and attribute agenda setting.

However, those issues were framed in both a positive way and a negative way. The media emphasized negative news, and that was the more significant predictor of consumer expectations about the future of the economy.

In another framing study, Chyi and McCombs (2002) stated that the news media often reframe an event by emphasizing different attributes of the event in order to keep the story alive and fresh. That aspect of framing was utilized by Chyi and McCombs for their study of media salience and the process of framing regarding coverage of the

Columbine school shootings on 20 April 1999. The researchers described their study as a

“scrutinization” of the process of frame-changing by which media organizations build up the salience of objects on the media agenda. Chyi and McCombs stated that, when covering a news event, journalists decide which elements to include or exclude in a story; therefore, a single news event can be framed in various ways, producing different versions containing different attributes.

Previous studies have conceptualized frames in very different ways so that almost every characteristic found in news coverage can be identified as a certain kind of frame

(Chyi & McCombs, 2002). There are variations in news format, and the reports of an event are not necessarily uniform or simple. Variations in news format can refer to the parameters of story length and size, length of sound bites or quotes within stories, labels

46 or other means of identifying the genre of the story, or congruency of audio and visual tracks (Chyi & McCombs, 2002). Some scholars have tried to codify framing to help researchers better categorize content into frame areas; for example, Ghanem (1997) identified four dimensions of media frames: the topic of a news item (what content is included in the frame), presentation (size and placement), cognitive attributes (details of what is included in the frame), and affective attributes (tone).

For the purposes of this thesis, agenda setting was classified as “what topics” were covered by The Guardian, and attribute agenda setting was classified as “what attributes of those topics” were covered. Framing was classified as “how” those topics and topic attributes were presented by The Guardian. Descriptive content analysis provided the frequencies of topics related to the issue of the Virginia Tech shootings.

The presence of topic attributes, and how they were presented (framed) and may have been interpreted by The Guardian’s audience, emerged through textual analysis. For example: the topic of guns was addressed through content analysis; the attribute of guns being acquired by those suffering from mental illness and whether or not that scenario was framed in a positive or negative light was explored through textual analysis.

Textual Analysis Focused on Community, Nationality, and Media

McKee (2003) defines textual analysis as a research method by which researchers can “make an educated guess at some of the most likely interpretations that might be made of that text. ... We interpret texts ... to try and obtain a sense of the ways in which, in particular cultures at particular times, people make sense of the world around them”

47 (p.1). Although this thesis could have studied many different aspects of how readers of

The Guardian might interpret the frames in its coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, this study focused on how those frames were used to describe the culture of the United

States to a mostly British audience.

In the book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Anderson (1991) stated that a nation is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their commonality (p. 6).

One of the ways in which a nation or community can be established is through news media. Anderson stated, for example, that newspaper readers imagine a community of fellow readers, and that producing mass texts such as newspapers is a crucial vehicle by which the community can be imagined by its constituents.

Several media researchers have applied Anderson’s theory of imagined community to the study of news coverage. For example, Silberstein (2003) investigated coverage of the 1995 murder trial of the famous athlete/actor O.J. Simpson, and found that at stake in the case was the very unity of the nation, an imagined community created through the cultural influence of the U.S. media. Silberstein stated that the U.S. media recognized Simpson as “an American hero,” one of “us” to Americans, an “old friend,” and that “it was as though a member of the family has been charged with murder” (p.

324). However, soon after Simpson was criminalized, the national idealization of

Simpson changed from that of a sports hero to a black man charged with a violent crime, and he was contextually distanced from the majority of Americans by the media.

48 Silberstein’s research argued that imagined communities are dynamic national identities that are constantly in flux.

In another study, Rosie, Petersoo, MacInnes, Condor, and Kennedy (2006)

examined the relationship between citizenship and media and the way in which media

establish, define, or reinforce the boundaries of such a community. The researchers

stated that accounts of nationalism routinely assert or assume that mass media encourage

audiences to see the world in national terms and to think “nationally” about their own

citizenship (p. 328). They suggested that the model of a British national press is

simplistic and that the press of the United Kingdom is in fact a complex mosaic of

explicit and implicit “national” titles (p. 328). Therefore, they argued, the use of media

in imagined communities is too simplistic to define the United Kingdom. Their research

found that news agendas and deictic language (“here,” “there,” etc.) is used in different

ways for different audiences in different parts of the United Kingdom (pp. 341-342).

The theories of Stuart Hall are also important to approaching textual analysis.

Hall (1973) stated that “of the millions of events which occur every day in the world,

only a tiny portion ever become visible as ‘potential news stories,’ and of this proportion,

only a small fraction are actually produced as the day’s news in the news media (p. 181).”

Hall continued to state that the news selection process is a “deep structure” whose

function as a selective device is un-transparent even to the professionals who are

supposed to know how to operate it. Hall then investigates these selected news stories

further. He suggested that themes are rearticulated and reinterpreted over time and that

they are derived from culture and then fed back into it (Hall, 1984; Bird & Dardenne,

1997). Those stories are not reinvented every time the need arises, but instead, the media

49 constantly draw on the inventory of discourse which has been established over time (Hall,

1984; Bird & Dardenne, 1997).

Hall’s (1975) theories on news writing can be viewed as a “social transaction”

(Bird & Dardenne, 1997, p. 345). The news process contributes to social understanding; those taking part in the communication process from different and unequal or conflicting

positions are involved in attempts to formulate, substantiate, and distribute definitions of

reality and perspectives for social action that are shared and endorsed by others

(Schedler, Glastra, & Kats, 1998). That encoding and decoding theory of Hall continues

by suggesting the consumers of information are actively engaged in interpreting the information and can agree on the given reality, but may also have personal or situational

differences (Schedler, Glastra, & Kats, 1998). The Virginia Tech shootings could be

viewed by readers as a crime. Hall stated that “crime is understood as a permanent and

recurrent phenomenon and hence much of it is surveyed in the media in an equally routinized manner” (Hall et al., 1981, p. 352; Bird & Dardenne, 1997, p. 343).

Journalists then can feel the need to “humanize” events as a need to write the story (Bird

& Dardenne, 1997, p. 343). It was important to keep those theories in mind when analyzing coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Now would be a good time to discuss some key differences between pure “critical

theory” (Frankfurt school) and pure “cultural theory” (British cultural studies).

According to Kellner (2002), the Frankfurt school developed a critical and

transdisciplinary approach to cultural and communications studies that combined critique of the political economy of the media, analysis of texts, and audience reception studies of the effects of mass culture and communications. The term “culture industries” was

50 coined to describe industrialization of mass-produced culture. Kellner continued to state that those “industries” were considered institutions of contemporary societies and served as agents of socialization and mediators of political reality. That eventually led to the belief that individual thought and action were no longer the motor of social and cultural progress. Kellner stated that British cultural studies (closely linked with the aforementioned Hall) focused on how audiences interpreted and used media culture and analyzed how audiences would respond in contrasting ways to media texts. He believed a major difference between the two approaches was that British cultural studies valorized resistant moments in media culture and audience interpretations while the Frankfurt school believed mass culture to be a homogenous form of ideological domination. Many scholars in the United States have combined the two approaches to create cultural/critical studies and take a critical approach to studying media to make arguments regarding cultural theory.

A good example in regards to this thesis is a study by Meyers (1997) in which the researcher conducted textual analysis on two articles in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the murder of Wanda Walters by her husband, Dennis, in 1990. Meyers utilized textual analysis as a methodology to disclose underlying meanings while acknowledging both the polysemia of the text (inability to close off meanings) and the researcher’s individual decoding strategies relating to her own understandings, background, and experiences. Through textual analysis, Meyers uncovered different rhetors and frames in coverage that disclosed underlying assumptions, myths, and stereotypes (such as race and class) that shaped the coverage.

51 Meyers (1997) continued to state that the findings suggested that previous studies

of crime news, by ignoring the gendered nature of violence, may not apply to the

victimization of women. Also, Meyers stated that crime-as-deviance research conducted

by Hall and others may be flawed in its conclusion that the news portrays criminals as

deviants who are deserving of society’s censure because the coverage did not condemn

Dennis Walters; it presented him as a victim of provocation and obsession. Instead, it

was Wanda Walters who appeared deserving of condemnation. The researcher’s findings

could have only been reached through textual analysis.

Textual analysis was also used for the previously mentioned Consalvo (2003) study on how the news media initially constructed the Columbine killers, Harris and

Klebold. Through analyzing a week of news broadcasts, news magazines, articles and

editorials, Consalvo scrutinized how masculinity, whiteness, and school and sport culture

were treated in media reports. Her method of textual analysis was an avenue to discover

the evolution of portraying Harris and Klebold as “monsters” to “high school geeks” (p.

40).

The manner in which nationality and community are imagined and transacted via

media messages are important to this thesis, as it enhanced the findings of the content analysis. The Virginia Tech tragedy was an event that not only affected different local communities in the United States but also the nation as a whole. How U.S. media covered the tragedy may influence how Americans imagine their national community, but how the incident was covered in the national media of other countries may influence how

people in those countries perceive American culture.

52 In order to provide a textual analysis, the researcher suggested interpretations of

The Guardian texts through a process of conjecture and verification, correction and modification, and suggestion and defense (McKee, 2003). Formulation of theory was established through initial analysis of the 61 articles with the assumption there could be errors. That conjecture was then be verified at that point in the analysis. Further analysis was conducted resulting in the correction and modification of the incorrect aspects of initial interpretations and theory. At this point in the process the researcher obtained reasonable suggestions discovered through textual analysis and formulated a reliable defense for all aspects in the final conjecture, resulting in several credible findings.

53 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

As stated earlier, the research portion of this thesis was conducted in two parts.

The first, a content analysis, utilized a methodology outlined by Riffe, Lacy, and Fico

(1998) and gathered descriptive data using research questions one to three.

Researchers (e.g., Redding & Shalf, 2001; Scharrer et al., 2003; Jemphrey &

Berrington, 2000) have indicated a variety of sources and commentators have driven the

discussion on school violence and even initiated finger-pointing of blame.

1. What was the frequency of the types of sources in coverage of the incident over

an eight-day period?

Researchers (e.g., Lawrence & Birkland, 2004; Lewis, 2007; Consalvo, 2003),

journalists (e.g., Casey, 1999), and several other examples in this thesis have shown the

wide range of topics related to the issue of school violence in areas of media coverage, government, and popular culture.

2. What was the frequency of the topics related to the Virginia Tech shootings over

the eight-day period?

Certain sources are often connected to certain topics, such as government officials and the issue of gun control (e.g., Smith, 2006).

3. What was the frequency between topics and types of sources cited in that

coverage?

The findings of those RQs guided the textual analysis, which employed a process of critical reading and reductionist typification suggested by McKee. Although such a

54 method of textual analysis is necessarily open-ended, it used research questions four to six as parameters for analysis.

The reasons for school violence have been a substantial topic of discussion (e.g.,

Consalvo, 2003; Furlong & Morrison, 2000; Aronson, 2004) and are a standard part of the journalistic process of reporting school violence (e.g., Casey, 1999; Jemphrey &

Berrington, 2000).

4. What were the implied messages regarding the reasons for school violence?

Though relatively similar (e.g., Hofstede, 2001), the cultures of the United States

and Britain do have differences regarding gun control (e.g., Cookie & Puddifoot, 2000;

Smith, 2006) and media coverage (e.g., Wardle, 2003).

5. What were the implied messages regarding cultural differences between the

United States and Britain?

Textual analysis has proven to be a valuable tool in analyzing underlying

meanings and discovering less obvious themes (e.g., Meyers, 1997; Consalvo, 2003).

6. What topic attributes and frames of the texts were prevalent throughout the

coverage by The Guardian?

55 METHOD

Justification for the Content and Texts Analyzed

The reason for choosing the time frame of 16 to 23 April 2007 is that 16 April

was the day of the Virginia Tech shootings by Cho and 23 April was the first day the

university resumed classes, arguably the end of the “hot news” aspects of the story when

the agenda-setting frames are established.

Britain serves as the international perspective for this study being there are many

cultural similarities between the United States and Britain, but also some key differences

in regard to gun ownership and gun violence. History has shown the two countries have

developed similarly in regard to many social issues and will most likely continue to have

close cultural ties. For example, Hofstede (2001) found that the United States and Britain

are not separated by more than five ranking values for uncertainty avoidance, power

distance, masculinity, or individualism indexes. Hofstede’s findings suggest then that the cultures of the United States and Britain are relatively similar.

The British periodical that was analyzed in this study is The Guardian/Observer and its online edition The Guardian Unlimited. Merrill (1968) listed The Guardian as one of the top ten elite daily newspapers in the world. Over the years, The Guardian has won several prestigious awards in numerous categories including honors for its print edition and website. On 8 April 2008, the British Press Awards awarded The Guardian the following: Digital Journalist of the Year (Sean Smith), Foreign Reporter of the Year

(Ghaith Abdul-Ahad), and Website of the Year. In 2007, the International Center for

56 Media and the Public Agenda ranked The Guardian’s website first in a study on

transparency with a score of 3.8 out of 4.0.

For its coverage of the events on 9/11, the British Press Awards gave The

Guardian widespread acclaim for its reporting on the tragedy that took place on U.S. soil.

According to a 2007 article by Emma Hall, the liberal newspaper’s website had 16

million users, with one-third from the United Kingdom, one-third from the United States, and one-third from the rest of the world (Hall, 2007). Quantitative and qualitative studies have used The Guardian as a research sample due to being one of Britain’s elite and agenda-setting newspapers (Haller & Ralph, 2001).

Method Overview

To answer the first three research questions, a coding scheme was developed and content variables were operationalized. The coding sheet and explanation of each coding variable are attached to this thesis as an appendix. Variables were then cross-tabulated to answer the RQs. RQ1 tested for the frequency of types of sources cited in coverage.

RQ2 concerned how The Guardian covered various topics of the shootings over the eight day period. RQ3 looked at the frequency between the types of sources and the various topics.

The last four research questions were answered through textual analysis of the entire sampling of The Guardian articles. RQ4 provided a critical analysis of implied messages regarding the reasons for school violence in the United States. RQ5 looked to the texts for the construction of cultural differences between the United States and

57 Britain, with particular attention paid to the issues of gun ownership and gun violence.

Those research questions were vital to understanding how The Guardian covers (to them) a “foreign” event. That analysis also helped explain how the issue of school violence and the United States are viewed from the perspective of a major British news outlet. RQ6 combined all aspects of the textual analysis in order to find topic attributes and frames that are prevalent throughout The Guardian’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Following is a more detailed explanation of the two methodologies employed in this study.

Content Analysis

The analysis was of a census of articles about the Virginia Tech shootings from

The Guardian (hard copy), The Guardian Unlimited (online), and The Observer (the

Sunday print edition) published between 16 April through 23 April. The articles were retrieved through the newspaper’s website utilizing its search engine, and the Lexis-Nexis database also was used to gather articles as they appeared in print (as articles on The

Guardian website may have been modified after print publication). All retrieved articles from the time period that included the term “Virginia Tech” were printed for the researcher to analyze. The collection of articles included both hard-copy and online versions, and was obtained by the researcher on a single day, 27 April 2007, to avoid any duplications or online articles that may have been updated as new information was received. It should be noted that the researcher was concerned about non-related articles containing the term “Virginia Tech”; however, there were only a small number of such articles and they are included in the study in order to retain a census of articles that mention “Virginia Tech.” For coding purposes, each article was first assigned an article

58 ID number in chronological order of The Guardian Unlimited search engine results. The article ID numbers were marked on the physical copies as well as a corresponding number of coding sheets.

An intercoder reliability test of 10 percent of the collection was conducted with the primary researcher and two other coders (fellow students) to “hammer out conceptual and operational definitions that are clearer and more explicit.” Though the percentage agreement was higher than 95 percent, any ambiguities that may have affected reliability were corrected after that test. Then the primary researcher completely coded each individual article one at a time in numerical order.

The following paragraphs describe each coding category in the same order the researcher coded each article. Coding variables appear in italics.

Each article was categorized as either hard copy or online. An article classified as hard copy was sourced by the website and/or Lexis-Nexis as “Guardian” or “Observer.”

An article classified as online was sourced by the website as “Guardian Unlimited.”

There are no cases in which an article was classified with two different sources.

The next coding concerns the date the article was published according to the two databases. Each article was coded in the range of “16-23,” referring to the dates in April analyzed in this study. Although it can not be confirmed in this study, there was no evidence unearthed by the researcher to suggest a published date for online articles was changed because of factual updates during or after the sampled period.

The length of each article was coded as short, medium, or long. For this study, a short article consisted of 250 words or less, a medium article between 250 and 500 words, and a long article 500 words or more. If length was not obvious to the researcher’s eye

59 and could not be discerned accurately from the article databases themselves, the articles

were counted word by word by the researcher to ensure correct coding of length.

Because this study is a census of all The Guardian articles containing the words

“Virginia Tech” in an eight-day period, many different types of articles were coded.

Articles containing basic facts and information regarding specific topics of the Virginia

Tech shootings were coded as news articles. If the article focuses on the cultural,

political, or social aspects of the Virginia Tech shooting, then the article was coded as a feature. Editorials and opinionated articles were coded as editorial/commentary. Those

articles were often identified by The Guardian with a label of “editorial,” “comment,” or

“diary.” By reading all articles, the researcher identified other articles clearly expressing

opinion that does not carry one of these labels. If an article did not meet the criteria for

news, feature, or editorial/commentary, then the article was coded as other.

In order to identify whether The Guardian was comparing/contrasting U.S. culture with U.K. culture, the national focus of the articles was coded. Articles reporting on the shooting or relating to issues or events in the United States were coded as U.S.

Angle. Any articles that related events before, during, or after the Virginia Tech shooting to issues or events taking place in the United Kingdom were coded as U.K. Angle.

Finally, the researcher coded the two most important variables in the content analysis: types of sources and issue topics. The researcher first coded for the sources cited by The Guardian in each article. As the researcher read an article, he coded each

cited information source as it appears in an article until the article was completely coded

for sources. A source was only be coded once per article, therefore no source was given

more representation even if several quotes by that source were used throughout an article.

60 For example, the researcher could have coded for five Virginia Tech students, as long as the coded sources were from five different students. When the source was a member of government in the United Kingdom or held a title indicating he or she was a government official, the source was coded as UK Government. Similarly, when the source was a member of the United States’ government or held the title of U.S. government official, then the source was coded as US Government. When a source held the title of a Virginia

Tech University official or spokesman, then the source was coded as VT campus officials.

When the source held the title of a Virginia Tech faculty or staff member, such as a professor or university psychologist, the source was coded as VT faculty/staff. When the source was a member of the Virginia Tech campus police or a campus police spokesman, then the source was coded as VT campus police. When the source was a member or spokesman for a police or SWAT force other than the Virginia Tech campus police, such as the Virginia State Police, the source was coded as local/state police. When the source was cited as a psychologist or other kind of mental health expert, not employed by

Virginia Tech University, the source was coded as Psychologist/Expert. When the source was cited as a Virginia Tech student or alumni, or relatives of students/alumni, then the source was coded as VT students/families. When sources were cited as students, faculty members, or staff from a university other than Virginia Tech University, then they were coded as other students/faculty/staff. When any students, faculty, or staff sources were not specified to a particular university or educational institution, it was assumed by the researcher the sources were affiliated with Virginia Tech University and therefore were coded as that type of source. When a source did not meet the criteria for any of the source variables in this study, was cited as anonymous, or held some other title, the

61 source was coded as Other. If no sources were cited in an article, the researcher coded once for No Sources.

The researcher coded for the issue topics of the articles. The researcher first read each article in order to determine the main focus or focuses of the article. The researcher then coded for the primary focus of the article, and if necessary, a second focus and a third focus. The researcher had a maximum allotment of three topics for each article.

When the prominence of a topic was questionable, the researcher re-read the article until a conclusion was made. A single sentence or mention of a particular topic may not have qualified as one of the three main topics of an article. If a certain topic was still in question after re-reading the article several times, the researcher did not include it in the coding. When several different topics were discussed throughout the article with equal coverage, the researcher coded each topic as it appeared in the article. For example, if an article gave equal coverage to five different topics, the first three topics were coded. If an article jumped back and forth on more than three different topics throughout the article, the researcher determined which three were the most prominent overall by counting the number of total words devoted to each topic.

When an article focused on safety at Virginia Tech or other educational institutions, the topic was coded as School Safety. That topic encompassed such things as violence reduction measures, zero-tolerance policies, school violence statistics, and measures to prevent school violence and ensure safety at educational institutions.

Generally speaking, that topic included information not falling into the more specific topics coded in this study such as guns and gun control and specific information about the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui. For example, an article explaining that guns need to be kept out

62 of schools fell into the more specific topic of Guns/Gun Control (a topic that is defined in

the next paragraph). However, if the article went on to talk about other factors of school safety such as the expenses of installing metal detectors, then another article topic may have been School Safety.

Articles focusing on the topic of gun ownership and gun violence were coded as

Gun Culture. That topic included accessibility of guns, guns at educational institutions,

state and federal gun laws, gun-ownership traditions, and other variables relating to the

past, present, and future of guns and gun violence.

Articles focusing on the topic of media coverage were coded as Media Coverage.

That topic included articles about the media coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, past school shootings, and post-shooting coverage. Any article praising, critiquing, or simply covering other media coverage routines was included in that topic. The coverage by the coded article itself obviously did not qualify for that topic.

Articles focusing on the killer were coded as Cho Seung-Hui. That topic included coverage of Cho’s actions as he proceeded to commit the shootings, his past, his family, and his mental health. Any article about the shooting could have been viewed as concerning Cho to some degree, and nearly all likely mentioned him by name, but for this study, only articles almost completely devoted to Cho were coded as such.

Articles focusing on the victims and students of Virginia Tech were coded as

Victims/Students. That topic included articles that focus on the victims of the shootings who were killed or injured, other Virginia Tech students who experienced the day of the shootings, past students, and students who personally knew or knew of Cho Seung-Hui.

Any article focusing on the life and experiences of students at Virginia Tech or the lives

63 and experiences of students at other educational institutions were included in that topic.

However, just because a student was sourced does not mean the article fits that topic. For example, a Virginia Tech student sourced by stating what his or her experience was like in the classroom at the time of Cho’s shooting spree fell into the topic of

Victims/Students. A Virginia Tech student sourced by stating his or her opinion on gun access did not fall into the topic of Victims/Students, but more likely Guns/Gun Control if that was one of the focuses of the article.

An article that focused on the police response to the shootings or some other aspect regarding the campus, city, or state police or SWAT team was coded as

Police/SWAT. An article that described the timeline of the shootings and when the police arrived on the scene did not qualify for that topic. An article chronicling the events of the tragedy from a public-safety or police-preparedness viewpoint or discussing campus police measures to improve security at educational institutions did qualify for that topic.

An article that focused on the aftermath of the tragedy—resuming classes, mourning sessions, Virginia Tech warning e-mails to students, and other related news of the Virginia Tech campus and community—was coded as Virginia Tech. That topic consisted of how the campus handled the situation and the campus culture. That topic was also coded when the focus of the article was on how Virginia Tech officials responded to the violence initially and after it ended. In general, any article focusing on

Virginia Tech as an institution and also as a community was coded as Virginia Tech.

An article that focused on violence in society or relating the Virginia Tech shootings to a national epidemic of violence was coded as Violence in Society. Articles that featured government comments on violence in the United States or commentaries

64 comparing violence in the United States to violence in the United Kingdom were coded as that topic. Any article that used the shootings at Virginia Tech to discuss the larger issue of violence in society were coded as Violence in Society.

Any article that did not meet the criteria of the coding variables for topics was coded as Other. Some articles could have been coded for two of this study’s coding variables as well as Other. For example, an article that focused on guns and gun control, violence in churches and malls across the United States, and life in Cho’s native South

Korea were coded as Guns/Gun Control, Violence in Society, and Other.

Textual Analysis

The qualitative method of textual analysis is defined as a method that communication researchers use to describe, interpret, and evaluate the characteristics of a media message (Frey et al., 1991). Morris (2004) stated that textual analysis focuses on a particular text to determine its characteristics and place it in a category shared by other similar texts for comparison and contrast purposes. Researchers analyzing texts start by asking the overarching question, “What are the qualities of this particular text, and how does this text compare and contrast to other texts?” That initial question serves as an umbrella that covers the more specific research questions of a study.

In textual analysis, a “text” can be defined as any work of art in any medium

(Morris & Iorio, 2004). Examples of texts include company contracts, newspapers, government documents, street signs, television advertisements, and tattoos (Morris &

Iorio, 2004). For this study, the same articles coded for the content analysis were studied using textual analysis. This study used an open-ended, reductionist approach, as outlined by McKee (McKee, 2003).

65 The researcher first read all 61 of The Guardian articles chronologically in order to become more familiar with the overall coverage. That brief analysis brought any obvious, over-arching focus of the coverage to the researcher’s attention before proceeding with more in-depth analysis. Assuming no new research questions needed to be added, the researcher then began reading and re-reading the first article published by

The Guardian on 16 April and progressed in a systematic fashion to read all 61 articles, recording notes and observations.

The researcher suggested interpretations of the texts through a process of conjecture and verification, correction and modification, and suggestion and defense, as suggested by McKee (2003). That process was on-going in order to begin organizing data so an analytical scheme began to appear more obvious. Through that initial reading, the researcher was parsing significant information from insignificant information without discarding any possibilities of themes yet to be uncovered. The researcher was making numerous notes and jotting down possible connections, but still had the main purpose of becoming more familiar with the body of text.

Once the researcher felt comfortable with the entire body of texts, he took a closer look at the underlying themes identified in the first rounds of textual analysis. As the researcher continued to re-read all the articles, he began to tag and label themes that emerged. Frequent notes were still made as new information and possible discoveries became evident, or previously identified themes were compromised or rejected.

The researcher then grouped similar concepts together in order to reduce the number of working concepts and categories into usable typifications. While that categorization took place, the researcher was noting new questions and comparisons that

66 came to mind. When the typifications took form into a workable number of distinct categories, the researcher then looked to define different properties and dimensions of each category. Those different properties and dimensions further emerged as the researcher began line-by-line analysis in portions of the text that make up each category.

At that time the research questions began to be matched with corresponding categories and their attributes.

Coding and categorization up to this point resulted in implied messages regarding the reasons for school violence (RQ 4), identified cultural differences and similarities between the United States and Britain (RQ 5), and prevalent topic attributes and frames of the texts (RQ 6). Although each research question was looked at separately, the researcher investigated these consecutively being there were overlapping findings that were applicable to answering both questions.

The researcher then re-evaluated his findings and looked for any “gaps” or unanswered questions. Depending on the results up to this point, the researcher may have needed to re-examine some or all of the text. When the results were satisfactory, the researcher gathered all the information from the textual analysis in order to present findings and discuss problems and limitations.

67 RESULTS

Quantitative

The eight day period analyzed in this study shows the topics covered by The

Guardian in a short amount of time. All at once, coverage was given to multiple topics

relating to the Virginia Tech shootings. The following figures and tables will describe

some of the media coverage. In terms of descriptive results, Figure 1 shows the tapering

off of the story after three days of coverage.

14

12

10

8

6 # of Articles

4

2

0 4/16/2007 4/23/2007

Figure 1: Frequency of stories from April 16 to 23.

Figure 1 shows the frequency of stories on the Virginia Tech shootings from April

16 to 23. There was only one story reported by The Guardian on the day of the

68 shootings, but that was likely because of the time zone difference and the diffusion of

knowledge and facts. The figure shows that the following day, April 17, received the

most coverage in regards to the number of published articles. With the exception of April

22, there is a steady decrease in coverage as time moved forward. As for the leap in

articles on April 22, that is likely due to the fact it was a Sunday. Six of the nine coded

articles on that day were commentary/editorial based articles. The Sunday edition is also

typically larger than other days’ editions, and can also serve partly as a re-cap for the

week.

Research Question 1

UK US VT VT VT Reg VT NonVT Psych/ Other No gov gov off fac/staff police police students stud/fac/staff expert source 1 14 10 7 5 8 19 2 1 26 19

Table 1 Frequency of types of sources in the coverage.

RQ 1 asked about sources cited in The Guardian’s articles. Table 1 describes the

frequency of the 112 source types coded in the 61 articles. The sources coded were

highest the day following the Virginia Tech tragedy, with a somewhat steady decrease as

time elapsed. The highest source type coded consisted of those labeled as other (Other).

It should be mentioned that a significant amount of those other sources consisted of

Cho’s family members, which the researcher failed to take into account during the construction of this study. The articles consisting of no sources (No source) are shown to

69 be a large number, but that was likely due to the fact the researcher included editorials and commentary, which often do not feature cited sources.

The majority of the sources included students at Virginia Tech, alumni, and

family members (VT students). That is not surprising being that students who witnessed

the shootings first-hand provided the best insight. Students were also the majority of the victims in the shootings, which also contributes to the majority of the identifiable sources as fellow students of the victims or their family members. Following the students at

Virginia Tech, there was also a notable amount of United States government sources (US

GOV). That is also not surprising in that the shootings were related to issues of national

importance (such as gun control) and gained a large amount of attention in coverage.

The two remaining sources of note included Virginia Tech officials (VT off) and

Virginia Tech faculty and staff members (VT fac/staff). The presence of cited sources by

Virginia Tech faculty and staff share similar reasoning as the students. Several faculty and staff members were involved in the shootings, and therefore provided desirable first- hand accounts of the events. The officials of Virginia Tech were also involved, but in addition they also gave some of the official statements regarding the events that occurred on the campus. Surprisingly, sources such as psychologists and related experts

(Psych/expert) were cited very seldom. With the amount of coverage relating to Cho’s

“disturbing” past, it would seem there should have been more sources cited in that area.

70 Research Question 2

School Guns/ Media Cho S-H Victims/ Virginia Violence/ Police/ Other safety control cover. students Tech society SWAT 4 17 12 19 13 13 7 2 8

Table 2 Frequency of topics in the coverage.

RQ2 asked about topics covered by The Guardian. Table 2 describes the

frequency of topics in the coverage. The day of the tragedy received little attention, but

again that is likely due to the diffusion of reliable information and the time difference

between Britain and the United States. For the most part, the three days following the tragedy received the most topic coverage, only to taper off in the following days.

Given the broad categorization of topics that could have been coded as relating to

Virginia Tech (Virginia Tech), it was surprising to find the most prominent topic related

to Cho (Cho S-H). Table 2 concludes that Cho was the most prominent topic covered by

The Guardian in relation to the Virginia Tech shootings. The table also indicates strong

coverage of the topic of guns and gun control (Guns/control). That finding indicates the

controversial issue is still highly related to such events as Virginia Tech and Columbine.

The topics of media coverage (Media cover.), victims and students

(Victims/students), and Virginia Tech (Virginia Tech) were also given substantial

coverage. That is not surprising if one were to assume that the top five topics are closely

related. Police response (Police/SWAT) was not represented as much as Virginia Tech,

but it may be that the majority of the criticism of how the situation was handled was directed more towards the university itself as opposed to law enforcement. Many of the

71 students and other sources complained that the email warning given by the university was

the main fault in alerting the campus of the events taking place on the morning of April

16th.

Research Question 3

US GOV VT campus VT faculty/ VT campus VT students officials staff police School Safety 1 2 0 2 3 Guns/Gun Control 6 2 0 2 3 Media Coverage 2 2 1 1 4 Cho Seung-Hui 6 5 5 2 8 Victims/ Students 3 4 3 1 8 Virginia Tech 6 7 3 4 6 Violence In Society 1 0 0 0 0 Police/ SWAT 1 1 0 0 1

Table 3 Frequency between topics and types of sources in the coverage.

RQ3 asked about frequency between topics and types of sources. Table 3 is an

abbreviated representation of topics and sources. The most abundant topics cited by

United States government officials (US GOV) are those relating to Cho (Cho Seung-Hui),

Virginia Tech (Virginia Tech), and guns and gun control (Guns/Gun Control). That is not surprising considering the issue of gun control is subject to government policy. The shootings were covered immensely and received national and international attention, hence the sourcing of government on the topics of Cho, guns and gun control, and the 72 university at which the shootings took place. The same logic can be applied to the

relevance of the Virginia Tech community at large commenting on those same issues.

Lastly it is not surprising the number of Virginia Tech students (VT students)

commenting on the victims and “potential victims” such as themselves

(Victims/Students), not to mention their insight into fellow student Cho. One surprising statistic is the lack of sourcing regarding the police response to the incident

(Police/SWAT). As mentioned previously, that could be the result of the university itself receiving most of the criticism regarding the handling of the shootings.

Qualitative

In the analysis to follow, words in quotations are exact rhetors published in The

Guardian reports, and quotations are used exclusively to denote those rhetors. The author uses italics to denote his own emphasis.

Cho

The overall coverage of Cho painted a vivid, negative picture of a person who had been troubled his entire life. Clearly the seriousness of the shootings would not call for positive treatment of the assailant, but the media seemed to create a “monster” out of him, and he was characterized as having a “dangerous” and “disturbing” past. Nearly all of the descriptive coverage did not objectively explain why Cho committed these acts of

“horror.” Instead of creating an image of a classic villain, complete with motivations and a clear sense of direction, readers were left with the image of a generic, slasher-movie- like “madman.” As the story developed over many days, every new bit of information

73 reported about Cho seemed to further emphasize his “insanity” and possibly left the

readers with no ability to see Cho as a fellow human being who was extremely ill and whose illness was not addressed.

Initially, reporting identified Cho only as the “gunman,” and as The Guardian compiled more information about the shootings, characterization of the “criminal” emerged. The “gunman” was turned into a three-dimensional character allowing the readers to further develop unsympathetic conceptualization of the “assailant.” For example, coverage on the second day led the readers into the “black.” The “killer” was described as wearing a “black vest” and hat along with carrying a “black gun.” (Later reports of Cho’s presence in the classroom as a student would be similarly characterized as dark and menacing, with phrases such as “wearing dark glasses” and having his “hat pulled down over his face.”) The “shooter’s rampage” was conducted in “chillingly regular order” as he “roamed from room to room” while “avoiding detection.” His

“execution-style massacre” finally ended with Cho “turning the gun on himself” and

“committing suicide.” The depiction of Cho and his actions provided readers with an image of Cho as a ruthless villain rather than a mentally ill person.

Although these rhetors could have made readers believe this “killer” was sinister,

initial coverage of Cho also described him as a “normal looking kid,” suggesting that he

was somehow a kind of wolf in sheep's clothing. Coverage locked onto the fact that the

“gunman on the loose” was a “fellow student” of the victims and that the “English major”

was also “one of their own.” However, later reports on Cho’s past quickly separated him

from being “normal,” as was initially reported. Teachers were reported to have had been

“concerned about his creative writings” (which were characterized as having menacing

74 and violent themes) and said Cho exhibited “violent, aberrant behavior.” Interviewees stated Cho had been accused of “stalking” women, “setting a fire in a dorm room,” and had been “referred to counseling” in the past. The fact he was “South Korean” and

“Asian” also played an important part of in Cho’s characterization, as he was positioned as a foreigner in a largely white, American community. Within days, a dark and negative portrait of Cho as a sinister outsider was created through the coverage.

Coverage delved deeper into Cho’s “troubled past” and stated he had “entered the

record books” with the shootings. Starting from birth, Cho “disturbed his family” and

“unnerved them by his sullenness.” Reports indicated that his “grandfather feared Cho”

and even thought that he “might be deaf and dumb.” Cho’s mother “would spend most of

her time in church praying for him” because he “rarely spoke and never got along with

other youths.” Perhaps one of the first subtle connections to the Columbine shootings,

Cho was described as being “lost in a world of video games” (video-game playing was also connected to the perpetrators of the Columbine shootings). His “too quiet” demeanor and being “so different from his super-intelligent older sister” lead his family to fear Cho might have “mental problems.” Coverage referred to Cho’s “brooding silence” and “troubled past” in such a foreboding manner as to be prominent in the texts and, as such, likely prominent in the minds of The Guardian's readers.

Descriptions of Cho’s mental state were common in the dramatic narratives The

Guardian presented to describe the “face of a campus killer,” who on the day of the shootings “set off for the heart of the campus, stopping only to reload.” Reports continued to remind the readers that Cho had been a “solitary figure” who “spoke rarely and shunned human contact.” Commentary of “Cho’s warped rage” stated that he was

75 “severely mentally ill” and “was in great pain, great brokenness.” As a “phantom presence” at Virginia Tech, Cho’s “only visitors were his parents.” After being questioned by police, Cho said he “might kill himself” after they spoke to him about his alleged pestering of female students. Some suggested that “his stalking, though disturbing, was at least an attempt to reach out to other human beings.” The helpless Cho

“seemed to have been born in a personal mental prison from which he either could not escape or chose not to.” Whether or not Cho’s past behavior could have signaled an impending danger, coverage indicated there was agreement that attending Virginia Tech led to the “moment that Cho’s deep resentment came to fruition” via his “plotting mass murder.”

Cho was described as a troubled individual with “a brutal mind.” The “troubled loner of South Korean descent” reportedly “rarely engaged in conversation” and as one witness stated, “pretty much never looked me in the eye.” Reports of Cho’s past continued to characterize him as a “troubled boy” and a “loner” whose roommates

“hardly knew him” and classified him as “weird.” Although mentions of “mental health problems” came up, coverage was much more focused on Cho's production of “morbid and grotesque plays,” “obscene and violent poetry,” and his “murderous imagination.”

The writings of Cho became an avenue to understanding his “troubled mind.”

The first example of Cho’s writing to be mentioned in The Guardian was a note found on his dorm room desk after the shootings. That note and past writings of Cho, such as an essay “brimming with rage,” added to his “darkness.” The troubled past of

Cho and his hatefulness seemed to fuel the “massacre” as he described his victims as

“rich kids” and “deceitful charlatans” full of “debauchery” in his “disturbing note of

76 grievances.” It was suggested that the “loner” viewed himself as a “victim” and wrote the words “you caused me to do this.” As reports continued to explain how professors were “disturbed by his work” and how one in particular thought “he might be dangerous so she set up a code with her assistant to call for help,” it became apparent Cho was considered dangerous by Virginia Tech personnel long before the shootings. After the shootings, the “23-year-old South Korean” became a “puzzle” that needed to be put together in order for the world to better “understand” his motivations and actions.

Much attention was brought to two stage scripts Cho had written as class assignments, “Richard McBeef” and “Mr. Brownstone.” His scripts were described by some as “adolescently violent, with a lot of high school angst and anger” and “evidence of someone really disturbed.” In one of his plays that “ends in death,” Cho wrote the line

“He ass-rapes us all. Isn’t that what high school teachers do?” One article stated that it is

“alarming to think that majoring in English might have contributed to Cho’s problems or even inspired him to become a mass murderer.” It was stated that “reading the plays is not easy; they are violent, profane and obsessed with scatological sex” and “they are not like reading the mind of a deranged 23-year-old, they are like reading the mind of a deranged 13-year-old.” It was mentioned that “Shakespeare was arguably a key influence,” and Cho reportedly “quoted ‘Romeo and Juliet’, picked out the words about forbidden love and turned them against his own identity.” One contributor to The

Guardian argued that Cho’s plays were no more violent than Shakespeare’s. In the midst of all this coverage appeared the important statement referring to Cho’s classmates in a playwriting course that on the basis of the “one-act dramas he wrote, they considered him a possible school shooter even then.” A professor of criminal justice at Northeastern

77 University in Boston, Massachusetts, stated that “in virtually every regard, Cho is

prototypical of mass killers” the scholar had studied in the past 25 years, but then the

scholar stated “that doesn’t mean, however, that one could have predicted his rampage.”

Coverage indicated there was considerable debate upon whether the violent writings of

Cho should have signaled an impending danger.

Rhetors describing Cho and his actions became even more descriptive and morbid

as coverage progressed over days. “Gunman” and other familiar terms paved the way to

more descriptive rhetors such as “the killer of room 2121,” “psychopath, determined to

kill” and the definitive “icon of infamy.” Cho was described as a “murderous madman”

and, most interestingly, a “Web 2.0 category of a killer.” Reports indicated he “shot the

victims methodically” and “without any outward show of emotion.” He had “wandered”

around campus to “select his first target” and “simply walked in and started shooting.”

Cho was “aiming his two guns methodically” as he “shot people repeatedly, wordlessly”

and “fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded.” As he “marched out last Monday across-

campus,” Cho “rampaged through a lecture building” “leaving a trail of bloody footprints

down a hall” while “trying to find more people to shoot.” The ultimate fate of Cho also became more graphic and detailed. The following phrases were used to describe his suicide: “put one of his guns to his head and pulled the trigger,” “the shot almost tore off his face” and “the last act was to blast off his own face.” Coverage continued to remind readers that the story of Cho was relevant to the entire world and that his “striking murderous poses crosses all cultures.”

In the end there seemed to be no definitive answer to whether Cho’s “bloodbath” could have been prevented. The coverage conveyed the fact that Cho himself was known

78 to be mentally ill, but the question remained if those around him could or should have

intervened. Having “spent the night in a mental hospital in 2005” and all the statements

regarding his “bizarre” and “disturbing” behavior, it seems possible that someone should

have done something to prevent his final actions. The coverage never took the stance on

whether Cho’s actions constituted an isolated, tragic incident or another example of a

widespread, social problem. Instead, focus on a variety of issues appeared and

disappeared in a quick manner while the “brutal mind” and “bizarre behavior” of Cho

remained constant and grew more complex throughout the day-to-day coverage. The

stories ventured further into that “deeper place” in Cho where all the “carnage”

originated.

Coverage stated that Shakespeare may have been a key influence, although no

evidence was provided to explain how that conclusion was reached. One article claimed

that Cho modeled the following conversation of his characters on an exchange between

Hamlet and Claudius:

“JOHN: Why am I so angry at you? Because you murdered my father so you can get into my mom’s pant [sic].

RICHARD: Now hold on right there mister. It was a boating accident. I did everything I could to try to save your father.

JOHN: Bullshit!”

Those statements are hard to take when the coverage reveals other excerpts of his plays such as “I hate him. Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick.

Richard McBeef.” Such coverage may have been reaching too far in its attempt to add more layers to present Cho as a monster.

79 Event, Eyewitnesses and UK/US Reaction

Another narrative of The Guardian’s coverage was how the event fit into the myths of American culture. In that context, the shootings were described as catastrophic

and historic right from the beginning of coverage. To put the severity of the situation

into the context of America’s past, the following phrases were just a few used to describe

the shootings: “America’s deadliest mass shootings,” “America’s deadliest shooting

spree,” “deadliest mass shooting in American history,” “deadliest mass shooting in the

U.S.,” “worst day of violence in American college history,” “worst gun massacre in U.S.

history” and “worst mass shooting in U.S. history.” Coverage stated that the “impact was

felt in every American classroom and community” and the country was “shocked and

saddened” by the events that occurred in “places of safety, sanctuary and learning.”

British reaction in early coverage was limited to government response that indicated

“profound sadness” and offered “sympathies.” Those descriptions established a certain

magnitude of the shootings that may have been intended to justify the immense coverage

to follow.

The Guardian’s coverage attempted to make the situation seem even more

“horrific” through description of the bucolic setting of the incident, and not just the body

count. Blacksburg was described as a “modest town” that is “nestled in the foothills of

the Appalachian mountains” in a “remote corner of south-western Virginia” and was

voted as one of “America’s top-10 places to live.” A “strong community” with

“spectacular scenery,” the Blacksburg area is “rural and sparsely populated” and is a

“bastion of hunting” that “attracts ramblers, climbers, horse-riders and skiers.” The town

is a “haven for outdoor sports enthusiasts” decorated by “red-brick buildings and leafy

80 avenues.” Blacksburg is “85% white,” and a poll taken before the shootings indicated that “91% of residents felt safe in their homes.” Though coverage indicated that violent crime in the community is a “rarity,” there have been “concerns of binge-drinking” and

“race relations have occasionally been an issue.” An unusual fact mentioned in the

coverage is that Blacksburg was the “birthplace of Henry Lee Lucas, a serial killer.”

Lucas is estimated to have confessed to more than 600 murders in the early 1980s,

although many of those are believed to be false confessions. Lucas was 46 years old

when he was arrested by Texas law-enforcement officers in June of 1983. In April of

1984, Lucas was convicted of the murder of an unidentified female in Williamson

County, Texas, in 1979 and sentenced to death row (Gudjonsson, 1999).

Detailed descriptions of the day of the shootings were commonplace throughout

the coverage. It was an “unseasonable cold day” with “flurries of snow swirling around

the campus” before the “day took a dark turn.” The “massacre” lead everyone to the

“gruesome calculus of these events” after the “deadly shootings” had ended and police

“discovered the killer’s body among his victims.” Eyewitnesses stated there was “blood in the hallways” and “blood everywhere” as the “gunman said nothing” and brought about “utter chaos.” The generally peaceful Virginia Tech campus was turned into a

“war zone” after students stated they heard what “sounded like an enormous hammer”

before the “scream told us it was something else” and “panic began to set in.” Some

witnesses claimed they thought the “university had blood on their hands” after seeing

“everyone shot, killed and on the ground.” Many were “outraged” that the university did

not respond to previous concerns about Cho in a manner by which “more lives could

have been saved.” Several students summed up the events as “ridiculous.” The scene of

81 the shootings was characterized as a “dominion of death” with “sketchy details” regarding the “terror inflicted by the 23-year-old Korean student.” The “massacre” that

“left 33 dead” was described in gory details about “the most bloody single location” and

the “scene of the greatest carnage.” Clearly the bucolic descriptions of Blacksburg’s

community, demographics and scenic rural setting differed greatly from the day of the

shootings.

The Guardian used eyewitness accounts to flesh out the scene of the crime.

Headlines such as “As they slept he killed” explored first-hand accounts of the “spate of

killings.” Eyewitnesses stated that the “Asian,” “normal-looking kid” was “eerily silent”

while “firing with no specific target.” Students “woke in a panic” and “did not

understand what the siren was for” as the university attempted to warn the campus.

Many questioned why they were allowed to go to class and stated that “the police could

have warned us.” The debate continued with some defending the university while others

claimed the institution “has blood on its hands.” One student recalled how he “pretended

to be dead” while “people died on top of me.” One student was deeply disturbed and

stated “I keep seeing gross images of blood and gunshots in the face” as a result from

when he “watched my fucking classmates get mauled.” Some simply stated, “I have no

idea why I lived.”

The Guardian’s coverage also suggested that the Virginia Tech shootings were

just another in a rash of school shootings in the United States, mentioning that “random

acts of gun violence erupt in seemingly everyday circumstances” in the United States and

that the nation is “collectively unwilling and politically incapable of stopping this

violence.” An author stated that “campus shootings are now a genre” and “part of the

82 cultural vocabulary.” The Virginia Tech shootings and others “are all copycat crimes”

with a predictable end that results in the “staging of an ‘extroverted suicide’.” However,

the author suggested that “Virginia Tech” does not have the “same ring as the punchier

‘Columbine’.”

Overall, The Guardian’s coverage painted a picture of a horrific event in an

unsuspecting small town that immediately entered the history books as one of the worst

tragedies to occur in the United States. Americans were described as being in total shock

and anguish over the shootings and seemed to hint they were fearful for their own lives

after such a terrible tragedy occurred in a place generally regarded as a sanctuary and of

learning in a bucolic mountain town.

The descriptive coverage constantly reminded the readers that everyone was still

“in the wake” of the shootings. It’s possible that the term “in the wake” was an excuse to

keep all the gory details relevant as the coverage stretched out over the days. Students were interviewed in order to provide first-hand accounts of the sense of terror and confusion on the campus. Many were obviously still very shaken by the events and expressed that they had no idea why they were “allowed” to live. One student stated that he kept “seeing gross images of blood and gunshots in the face” from seeing his “fucking classmates get mauled.” Those sound bites may have seemed sensational and unnecessary at times to readers. One comment from a British reader complained that The

Guardian's “near-pornographic fascination with the gory details of a meaningless madman’s murders in Virginia was just grisly.” Whatever the intentions of the descriptive coverage were, it seems unlikely that readers would think of the term

83 “bucolic” to describe Blacksburg, Virginia, after reading the extensive, gruesome accounts of Cho’s shootings.

America’s Gun Culture

Coverage indicated that Cho’s actions sprang from “the gun-drenched culture of

America” where “buying a rifle can be as easy as buying groceries.” America was described as a “highly armed society” where it is “easy for deranged people to obtain powerful firearms.” Statistics such as there being “200 million privately held guns in

America” and guns causing “30,000 deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults” each year were used to back up these views of the United States. Coverage stated that with “the dark heart of an American society at home with firearms” it seems certain that “another such massacre will happen again” in a “post-Cho America.” The future attack may

“possibly be worse” as “each perpetrator attempts to beat the last.”

The coverage explored the notion of the United States being a “gun culture” with

“relaxed gun laws” where gun ownership is regarded as a “fiercely defended right.” The

“Second Amendment” and its protection for citizens to keep a “well-regulated militia and right of the people to keep and bear arms” was also a topic of discussion. Coverage indicated Virginia is the “second easiest state in the country in which to buy guns” and there is an “unbending adherence of many Virginians to the right to bear arms.”

Coverage was given to Cho’s purchase of firearms. The man who sold weapons to Cho stated it was a “routine purchase” and was a “very unremarkable sale.” The owner of the gun shop, who claimed he had “received hate mail and threats to his life” after the shootings, stated “how terrible (he) felt about the way the guns had been used” and would never had sold to Cho if he had “alcohol on his breath” or given him “funny

84 feelings.” The store owner stated that Cho “appeared completely normal” and, therefore,

the gun shop had “no reason not to oblige.” A separate article stated that “gun control” would allow innocent people to “no longer have to depend on the intuition of some wretched shopkeeper.” Coverage indicated the window of Roanoke Firearms (where Cho

made his purchases) “carries a large portrait of Osama bin Laden flanked by two guns.”

That image may serve as a reminder of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade

Center in New York City in 2001, for which bin Laden is blamed. Perhaps the image

speaks to Americans that purchasing guns is a necessary precaution in protecting

themselves from future terrorist attacks. However, non-Americans may view such an

image as an arrogant message that attempts to justify the “love affair” of guns in the

United States. Whatever the interpretation, it was stated that sales of weapons to

someone like Cho will “continue to be unremarkable in America.”

A focus of any discussion of America’s gun culture would include the activities of

the National Rifle Association, a powerful special-interest group in American politics.

The Guardian’s texts largely presented the NRA in a negative light and as complicit in

gun-related violence in the U.S. Some Guardian articles included statements such as the

“National Rifle Association is too potent a foe for any party to take on” and the “world

will look on in amazement as America proves itself unable to defend its ordinary citizens

from armed maniacs.” The NRA was described as an entity that “bankrolls politicians”

and has “donated overwhelmingly to Republican candidates” who oppose most regulations regarding the gun industry and gun ownership. Regarding when legislation

was introduced that “renewed the effort to tighten regulation, particularly on assault

weapons,” The Guardian stated that “Republicans allowed the ban to expire.” Coverage

85 stated that new gun control laws are “unlikely to be imposed” because the right to bear

arms is “sacrosanct in America.” One example indicated that 2000 presidential candidate

Al Gore had to prove he was a “regular guy” by “talking affectionately about his guns” in his 2006 documentary about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth. Some quotes in

coverage stated that “you can’t take the guns out of American life and you can never

really stop another Virginia Tech,” while others took a different stance stating that

“tighter gun control would have prevented the Virginia Tech shootings.” One remarkable

quote stated that “death lies waiting around the corner for us all and no public policy can

rescue us from that grim human fact” and that “no policy can outwit the Grim Reaper.”

One article stated that “(President George W.) Bush refused to answer question on the

gun control issue in an interview.” However, Bush continued to state that “now is not the

time. I’m more interested in helping people heal right now.” Overall, the coverage

indicated that even though there may be debate over gun control in the United States,

there is unlikely to be a resolution anytime soon, if ever. Guns and their advocates are

too deeply embedded in American culture and politics and will continue to be a source of

unnecessary violence in the future.

Another theme was guns being inseparable from the history and evolution of the

United States. A Virginia gun-store employee defended gun rights with interesting

comparisons in one article. The employee stated about the 9/11 attacks that “they flew

airplanes into the World Trade Center but nobody is saying we should stop flying” and

about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that “they drove a truck into the building in

Oklahoma with a bomb made of fertilizer but we’re not going to do away with trucks and

fertilizer.” He also stated that if “one person who’s mad enough and determined enough

86 can kill 30 people; you can’t blame that on guns.” The reporter who interviewed the gun- store employee revealed in the article that the parking lot of the store had two cars with

“Confederate registration plates” with one saying “Secede” and the other “Lee.CSA.”

The implications of such rhetoric refer to the American Civil War, specifically the

Southern Confederacy and its attempts to secede from the Union. The “Lee.CSA” refers to General Robert E. Lee who was the beloved commander of the Confederate Army and the "Confederate States of America" that the Civil War "rebels" hoped to establish.

Those observations may have implied the stereotype of Southerners who love guns, hate the "Yankees" from the American North and still believe one day the “South will rise again” to finally separate from the United States. In short, the implication was likely that the people around the store have great affection for guns, violent rebellion, and may even be considered “rednecks.” The reporter described the interior of the gun store by stating

“amid the hunting gear, rifles, ammunition and handguns, are Civil War relics, Southern memorabilia and Confederate bumper stickers.” The reporter also noted that there was a pro-Confederacy book in the gun store titled “The Real Lincoln: A new look at Abraham

Lincoln, his agenda and an unnecessary war.” Cleary the interior of the gun store exalted Civil War sympathies for the South as much as the exterior. It was clear the reporter did not share those same sympathies when referring to the store and its patrons in the coverage.

Coverage continued to debate the issue of guns in America. A student-teacher at

Hunter College of the City University of New York, referring to Cho, stated that “when they wrote the constitution I don’t think they really had this crazy kid in mind.” Other commentators stated things such as “everyone wants to have one (gun) so they feel like

87 they’re tougher than the next person” and “Martin Luther King couldn’t sort this shit out back in the day.” One pro-gun lobbyist suggested that if all the students at Virginia Tech had been armed then “the massacre would never have happened,” suggesting that an armed citizenry might deter such violence or allow citizens to stop such attacks quickly.

Finally, one National Review writer defended guns and asked, “Didn’t the heroes of

Flight 93 teach us anything?” That comment regarding Flight 93 apparently suggested if the passengers of that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 had been armed, then the terrorist attack could have been more successfully thwarted. All those comments indicated adamant opinions on both sides of the gun issue. However, there appeared to be a lack of constructive logic in resolving the differences of opinion regarding gun control in the coverage. Some believed that more guns can prevent tragedies, while others wanted to eliminate guns completely. The issue of gun ownership was often conveyed as one that hopelessly defies consensus in the United States.

Comments and opinions from readers and other sources were the dominant sources of social criticism against the United States and its gun culture. An American society “rife with guns” was described as “madness” and the Virginia Tech “massacre is the inevitable price to pay for asserting their ‘freedoms’.” One British citizen stated with irony that maybe Americans should reflect upon whether their “constitutional rights are worth such a price.” The United States and its citizens were described as suffering from a “frontier hangover” that fuels mistrust of government and the popularity of such violence-laden entertainment media as the television show 24. The United States was portrayed as an outsider to the rest of the democratic nations of the world in that subject matter, and at times the coverage seemed to hint at the United States being a metaphorical

88 violent television show itself for the rest of the world to “look on in amazement.” One

particularly stinging comment showed no sympathy for the United States when it stated

that the gun control issue is an “enduring civic failure” and “one reason why Virginia

families are weeping over the graves of their dead children.”

The coverage and commentary seemed to suggest a wide cultural difference

between the United States and Britain whenever mentioning the issue of gun control and

appeared to convey a message that the United Kingdom is more culturally sophisticated when it comes to that issue. It was stated that “Blacksburg cannot be read across to the

situation in the UK” and that the British have a “completely different culture and attitude

to firearms.” One letter stated we should hope to “learn from this tragedy” and that we

“shouldn’t sell guns to people with a history of mental illness, and hopefully that couldn’t happen in the UK.” One opinion mentioned that the reasons for guns in American culture are “complex, historical, and probably not wholly rational.” Apart from letters from readers, one journalist commented on a T-shirt Web site with pro-gun slogans by stating,

“Boy, what a country!”

The “innocence” to gun-ownership concerns in America was described as being

“one of its few eternally renewable resources” and that “America’s ability to shock itself with the predictable is itself predictable.” Cho was described as being “made in

America” and that his actions “tell us how total the disconnection of those who disconnect from American society can be.” One comment stated that “it serves the

Yanks right for not outlawing guns” and “to European ears America’s political response was inexcusable” and “President Bush seems to blame God.” Opinions attacked the

American government for having “never mentioned unrestricted gun ownership as a

89 factor in this carnage” and demonstrated disapproval when “Bush suggested prayer as a

remedy.” In the end the coverage seemed to convey Britain balking at the idea they

should be sympathetic to the United States for this “historical” tragedy; most conveyed a

view similar to “what do Americans expect to happen when they act so irresponsibly”

and even a “serves them right” response.

Overall, the coverage may also have provided some subtle messages to readers

regarding the “gun culture” of the United States. Blacksburg was initially described in a

very positive light; it may have seemed like a perfect place to live if one believed the facts and descriptions evident in early coverage. However, there may have been morbid foreshadowing evident in those seemingly complimentary reports. The area was described as a “bastion of hunting,” which goes hand-in-hand with gun-ownership and the concept of violently killing prey, possibly linking to descriptions of Cho's “hunting” fellow students on the day of the shootings. It was stated that race-relations have been an issue in the Blacksburg area, which may also foreshadow descriptions of mistrust in

Cho’s Korean (i.e., foreign) ethnicity. One blatant fact mentioned that Blacksburg was the birthplace of the famous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. Those descriptions could have made the reader believe Blacksburg was an ideal breeding ground for a gun-related event such as Cho’s “massacre.”

Opinion pieces commentated on the two sides of the gun-control issue and the

“modern-day relevance or not of the Second Amendment.” It was mentioned that the

“Constitution was written centuries ago, in a different world with different values.”

Comments stated that although there are “strong views on the rights of people to own guns,” there are also “many others” who “do not share that view.” American government

90 was stated as being at fault for supporting via policy a gun culture that “allows further

acts of terror” and “threatens to stifle calls for reform.” It was stated that “if you permit

people to buy firearms, they will buy firearms” and that guns are “designed to shoot and

to kill.” Other opinions stated that “personal ownership of lethal weapons has no place in a civilized society,” and that the “insane pioneer attitude” of many U.S. citizens can be blamed for the recent war in Iraq. The rhetoric suggested that Americans are

“uncivilized” in regard to their view on guns. That idea of an un-evolved United States is

further reinforced in the aforementioned article that described a Virginia gun store.

References to the Confederate Army, General Lee and other Southern propaganda

recalling the Civil War may have been presented in order to tie America’s love affair

with guns to its violent, tumultuous past.

The political landscape of the United States regarding the issue of gun control was

mostly presented as a lost cause. Coverage and commentary suggested the gun lobby is

too powerful in American politics to allow reform and that there is no way to prevent

more school shootings from occurring in the future. One article stated that President

Bush refused to answer questions regarding the gun control issue. However, that

statement may have been misleading to readers, being that Bush had actually stated that it

was not an "appropriate time" for such discussions and that he was more interested in

"helping people heal" at the moment. There were many instances that coverage seemed

to infer that citizens of the United States actually “worship guns” as if their Second

Amendment rights had religious connotations. In the end, the central theme of The

Guardian's coverage regarding gun control seemed to be that Americans will always

have an unbreakable bond with their guns.

91 Technology, Cho’s Video and the Media

The manner in which the event was covered by news media also became a topic

of coverage for The Guardian, as did the role of interpersonal and online communication

media in the dissemination of information about the incident and its aftermath. Coverage

stated that the Virginia Tech shootings “marked a watershed moment for old and new

media.” The role of “citizen journalism” was raised with the simple fact of people

getting pictures and videos and giving it to news organizations to run having “now been institutionalized.” One comment stated that journalists no longer write the first draft of

history and that “the people on the ground at these events write the first draft.” It was

mentioned how some reporters created a “Facebook identity just to get student’s contact

information” or invented an “online memorial to get a story.” Those actions raised

concerns about questionable journalistic ethics as “students were evidently uncomfortable

with the online attention.” That debate seemed to have been answered by some at

Virginia Tech with a banner put up on campus that stated, “VT stay strong – media stay

away.”

One aspect of that coverage was the use of online communication to impart and

convey information. Coverage repeatedly mentioned Facebook as an “online community”

that contained “online tributes” to the victims of the shootings. Coverage described how

students were “trawling through pages” to see if their friends were safe and leaving

“messages of condolence and confusion.” Reports also indicated that there was an

“unsavory side of the internet” with speculators picking up “gruesome website names”

for sale such as “BlacksburgTheMovie.com.” Videos shot by students were “broadcast

within minutes of events unfolding,” and the Virginia Tech “massacre story” was the

92 “focus for the world’s media.” The coverage included aspects of “citizen and amateur reporting” and attracted “high-profile news journalists” as the media mobilized “hundreds of anchors.” As some Web sites “attracted 1.8 million unique users,” the media requested everyone to “send their pictures and video.” It seemed as though every media outlet was trying to promote their “exclusive video footage.”

Reports described Cho as a “cyber celebrity” with his video becoming an instant

“internet hit.” The extensive use of “digital media” resulted in the labeling of Cho’s actions as the “first YouTube killing spree.” Cho’s “complete electronic press kit” and video received a large amount of coverage. The self-made video he sent to NBC was described as a “rambling rant” in which he “railed against other students” and “compared himself to Jesus.” The “disturbing” content of the package was delivered by Cho in a

“staccato monotone” with a “gun-toting posture.” The media appeared to be responsible for Cho’s promotion of “gunman” to “celebrity.”

Of course, the coverage of Cho’s video by the established news media was also a source of criticism. Numerous sound bites from Cho in the video were presented in the coverage and focused on his insults to fellow students and “martyrdom.” The decision by some broadcast stations to air Cho’s video “rant” lead to “big differences of opinion” on whether it was appropriate material to broadcast. The police “heavily criticized NBC” and expressed “disappointment” in the network’s decision to broadcast the “rather disturbing package.” Some suggested it was not a video that needed to run in “some kind of endless loop” and that it “represents the sinister side of user generated content.”

Others stated the situation raised “ethical issues” for news organizations that chose to

“rebroadcast the material.” One reporter stated that all news organizations in the U.K.

93 have “followed suit” and “did not have much choice about showing the material.” As coverage focused on the debate about the decision to air Cho’s video, one Guardian

article provided a link that stated “click here to watch Cho Seung-hui’s video

‘confession’ (NBC News).”

As some reports indicated that Cho’s video “tirade” was used to “amplify his notoriety,” some in the professional news media continued to defend their decisions to

broadcast Cho’s video “rant” and stated that the tape was “crucial insight” into his

motivation. That side of the debate expressed the decision to broadcast the footage as

“journalistic responsibility” to get the “fullest picture of why those killings happened.”

The video was described as a “crucial bit of building up the jigsaw” of Cho’s motivation

and was “editorially relevant” for “audience understanding” of the story. The president

of NBC stated that broadcasting the video was “appropriate” and was “as close as we will

ever come to being in the mind of a killer.”

It was stated that some students “expressed revulsion” over the broadcasting of

the video, while others had “mixed feelings.” One student stated that it “puts a face to

him” and his “mindset,” while another couldn’t “believe how angry and out of his mind

he was” in the video. Other comments stated how the video “satisfies Cho’s apparent

desire for posthumous notoriety” and that repeated airings had become “practically

pornographic.” It was stated that the video “adds absolutely nothing to the obvious fact

that the gunman was exceptionally disturbed” and “adds precisely nothing to the sum of human understanding.” Other attacks criticized that the media “beeped out” expletives

“as though the swearing was the most offensive thing about (the video's) content.” It was stated that “like hot air, the week’s coverage expanded to fill the space,” and by Thursday

94 the media was “reduced to gleaning insight from the woman who drives the student shuttle.”

Overall, The Guardian's reporting and commentary regarding the broader media's coverage of the event demonstrated an emphasis on new technology as well as the debate over media ethics as to what was covered and to what extent. Citizen and amateur reporting played an important role in the coverage through the use of online videos and other online reports from Virginia Tech students. It appeared that such use of online communication technology was a useful thing for mainstream media as it increased Web traffic to many journalistic Web sites, such as CNN’s, but many people writing to or for

The Guardian were repulsed by the substantial amount of coverage. One comment stated that of the “harbingers of disaster” in the modern age, there are “few more chilling” than the media coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. However, those criticisms did not have much effect on the media’s position in defending their coverage.

Although several commentators had previously stated there was an excessive amount of coverage, the exposure of Cho’s video was the turning point that significantly fueled the debate over the media’s appropriateness. One question seemed to concern the evolution of madmen and killers and their notoriety and impact through the use of advancing technology. There was never an answer to that question, although there was significant evidence that Cho’s use of technology was effective. The fascination with

Cho continued as media stated that his video was an important piece of the “puzzle” to understanding the “killer.” However, the puzzle of whether the Virginia Tech shootings were part of a social epidemic of violence in the United States took a back seat to information about Cho himself.

95 Victims and Other

The final theme that emerged from this analysis was that involving the victims of the shootings. The victims’ tragic fates were emphasized, but the background of the victims was more positive and concentrated on the wonderful lives they had lived as a means to emphasize the tragedy of their deaths. The coverage of the victims also discussed calls for people to not exploit the situation for political or ideological purposes, out of respect for the victims. The Virginia governor stated that he had “nothing but loathing” for those who took the tragedy to use for political grandstanding on issues such as gun control.

The victims were often described as being “beautiful” and “very outgoing, friendly and helpful.” The remarkable “smile” of many victims was often addressed in that coverage of “remembrance.” One was described as being “one of the greatest people you could possibly know” and another as a “most outstanding young individual.” The martyrdom of many victims was evident in recollections of how one person “died saving students” while another demonstrated an “individual act of bravery.” One professor, who was killed while blocking a door, had survived the Holocaust (a fact that would be repeated numerous times throughout coverage). Coverage indicated the “shock and disbelief” of the victims’ families and the “terrible tragedy” each was facing. President

Bush stated that the victims were “simply in the wrong place in the wrong time.”

The depth of the victims' innocence and vulnerability was covered as well as more specific passions, such as one victim's love for “salsa dancing” and participating in

“Christian mission trips.” One victim was described as having a “small frame” that led to her nickname “Pixie.” One article, summing up one message of these rhetors, stated that

96 the victims “spanned a vast spectrum of life” and were “young, middle-aged, elderly; students and professors; men and women; biologists, engineers, and linguists; black, white, Middle Eastern, Jewish, and Asian; Chinese, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim; and were American and foreign-born. A “collective day of mourning” included a “moment of silence for the dead” and the chiming of church bells, “one for each of Cho’s victims.”

Coverage indicated that the “somberness” of the day was “deepened” because of the

Columbine anniversary. One stated that the mourning atmosphere was “heavy, like a

Glock” (a make of handgun). Coverage described a memorial at Virginia Tech with 33 stones that represented the dead, including Cho. A reporter suggested that “Cho, whose lonely life turned his mind in a way one can hardly imagine, finally has company.”

The Guardian also discussed tangential victims of the tragedy. For example, the

South Korean foreign ministry expressed to The Guardian hope that the shootings would not “stir up racial prejudice,” and the South Korean president expressed “shock and

anguish” that one of his countrymen had committed such an act. Coverage indicated that

South Korean students at Virginia Tech were leaving the campus to “seek temporary

refuge.” One student vowed to be “going to stay away for a while” because of feeling

“nervous.” It was stated that “Koreans kept a low profile and braced themselves” for a backlash that had yet to materialize. Others drew comparisons to a “violent Korean film”

that depicts a character with a “similar pose” to Cho in his video and photographs.

Cho was also portrayed as a kind of victim in some of the in-depth coverage of

Cho’s past. The hardships Cho had to endure while growing up seemed to suggest a

controversial sub-theme of how he was pushed to commit acts of violence. Reports

indicated that Cho was “a target of bullies in high school” and that “students laughed at

97 his strange voice” and told him to “go back to China” when he spoke. Cho was teased as being “the trombone kid” for his habit of walking to school alone and carrying his musical instrument. In one “notorious incident,” Cho refused to write his name and “put a question mark” instead. That incident lead Cho to being called “the question-mark kid.” Coverage indicated that “one of the girls he stalked awoke one morning to find a large question mark” written on her message board. Cho apparently had an “imaginary girlfriend” named “Jelly” who was a model that called him “Spanky.” Coverage suggested that his imaginary girlfriend was a “brief and bizarre glimpse into Cho’s inner world.” It was stated that Cho’s “stone-like façade hid a mind in deep distress” and that some students “joked about him being a possible college shooter.” Experts stated that

Cho was a “walking void” and that his “rampage was a form of suicide.” The experts suggested that a “future Cho” may already be thinking about “loneliness, victim hood, revenge and suicide.” Yet again the notion that similar events will continue to occur in the United States was evident in the coverage of the aftermath of the shooting and in recounting the lives of the victims, including, at times, Cho.

98 DISCUSSION

Quantitative research established the foundation of this study and provided an overall understanding of the extent of The Guardian's coverage; it also served as a guide to establish a more thorough approach to the critical textual analysis. For the purposes of achieving maximum credibility, the researcher decided to use a mixed-method approach.

The quantitative findings alone would have shown little, other than how much attention

The Guardian gave to the issue, what sources were used, and what topics were covered relating to the shootings. In short, the researcher believed that an event of this magnitude deserved more than just a report on frequencies of topics and sources. The textual analysis allowed the researcher to identify implied messages, topic attributes, and frames in attempt to uncover a social commentary presented by British media on the United

States through the event of the Virginia Tech school shootings. The researcher understood that textual analysis is inevitably his own perception on how the coverage would most likely have been interpreted by The Guardian’s audience. Therefore the precautions of discussing theoretical concepts such as imagined communities and an in- depth literature review of school violence and related issues were presented to aid the researcher’s grounding in the key issues prior to undertaking the textual analysis. The findings of the textual analysis are not necessarily fact; hence, some may consider that a limitation to this thesis. But the methods used in this study are sound enough to provide insight into how a British newspaper and its readers might have perceived the United

States through coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. Clearly another limitation of this

99 thesis would be that only the first eight days of coverage were analyzed, but those eight days rendered adequate information and text for a legitimate study.

Virginia Tech and Columbine

It would have been interesting to discover how many times Columbine was mentioned in the coverage. Similarities to previous school shootings such as Columbine were evident during this study, though the details and storyline were altered in many instances. The shootings at Virginia Tech attracted a substantial amount of media coverage, both in the United States and abroad, just as Columbine had received. Previous coverage of the Columbine killers, Harris and Klebold, desperately searched for reasons why the shootings occurred. By the end, public opinion polls attached most of the blame to the parents and family of the two high school shooters. The coverage of Cho also gave a significant amount of attention to his parents and family. Cho reportedly “disturbed his family” and “unnerved them by his sullenness.” He was often described as “troubled” and suffered “mental health problems.” Although information of a troubled upbringing was conveyed, the blame was never directly placed on his family members in coverage.

One of the reasons for that difference may have been because Harris and Klebold were high school students as opposed to college students. The Columbine killers were still living at home with family at the time of their shootings, whereas Cho was by himself attending Virginia Tech. Therefore the parents of the Columbine shooters were in immediate proximity to their children and perhaps were more responsible for letting their children turn into school shooters right before their own eyes. Cho was left alone to evolve into a school shooter at college.

100 The hatred and racism of Harris and Klebold were common themes in the coverage of the Columbine shootings. The town of Littleton, Colorado, was reported to be 98 percent white at the time of those shootings, similar to the demographics of

Blacksburg, Virginia. Consalvo (2003) stated that the news media consistently failed to explore how structural racism was present in the Littleton community and how it might have been at work; it was far easier for the media to suggest the killers’ deviancy was to blame for their racism. She also noted that fear of similar hatred brewing in any “safe” community in the nation arose in people’s minds. Initial reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings conjured up similar concerns of racism; however, Cho being a racist was never a major theme in The Guardian’s coverage. In fact, Cho was portrayed in an opposite light by being a victim of racism while growing up in American schools. Coverage indicated Cho had plenty of rage and hatred against his fellow students at Virginia Tech, but that was not rooted in any conventional form of racism on his part.

After the Columbine shootings, elected officials chose to focus the majority of their attention on the portrayal of gun violence in the entertainment industry such as the video game “Doom” and movies such as “The Basketball Diaries.” A mentally disturbed student in Pearl, Mississippi, blamed his violence on such claims of video-game use, and of being “taunted by demons.” Although Cho was described as being “lost in a world of video games,” there were no specific game titles being discussed as possible motivations for Cho to commit acts of violence. Instead Cho seemed to create his own “demons” by writing. His “murderous imagination” appeared to fuel literary works of “morbid and grotesque plays” and “obscene and violent poetry.” It appeared coverage was implying that there were no popular-culture artifacts such as movies or video games that influenced

101 Cho’s actions. Instead it was only his mentally unstable mind that paved the way to a violent end.

British Interpretation

The textual analysis resulted in an educated critique as to some of the most likely interpretations that might have been made by writers for The Guardian and, by extension, that newspaper's readers. Those interpretations crafted a sense of the ways in which the

British audience may have made sense of the issues relating to the Virginia Tech shootings. Previous instances of school violence in the United States have resulted in discussions of federal and state laws within U.S. media. Suggestions such as better information-sharing between local agencies and national organizations have been made in order to reduce the chances of future acts of violence, particularly in schools. Coverage by The Guardian and reader responses offered little commentary on specific laws or practices in the United States. Instead it seemed a whole revamping of America's gun culture was necessary in order to put an end to acts of violence such as the Virginia Tech shootings.

Banning firearms across the country came across as just one component in solving the perceived problem of school shootings in the U.S. Coverage and comments on the

“violent-laden entertainment,” corrupt politics, and civic failure of U.S. citizens seemed to add to the perception of the U.S. as a sick society in which something such as the

Virginia Tech shootings were inevitable. If these critiques are truly prevalent in the

British perception of the United States, then it brings into question the findings of

Hofstede (2001) that suggest high cultural similarities between the United States and

102 Britain. Are his suggestions of cultural similarity not as applicable when focusing on gun culture and the issues relating to gun control?

The Virginia Tech shootings were framed to be more than just a single incident of school violence. Instead the shootings were perceived to be part of a trend of workplace/institution-based gun violence in America. The criticisms of U.S. society seem to suggest “school violence” equals “national violence.” Consider: statistics have shown schools to be one of the safest places for young children and adults (Hancock,

2001); however the single event of the Virginia Tech shootings transcended into a question of whether there may be a social epidemic of “gun worship” evident in the “dark heart of an American society at home with firearms.” There were many examples in the coverage of British reaction seeming to indicate that school violence is a real threat in the everyday life of Americans. Apparently the “enduring civic failure” of the United States will certainly lead to another (or possibly worse) massacre in post-Virginia Tech

America. However the question remains of how common an event like the Virginia Tech shootings really is in the United States? Are the students of U.S. schools in grave danger if nothing is done to change the country’s stance on guns? The use of the words “jigsaw” and “puzzle” are often used in relation to explaining the issue of school violence. Those terms were evident in the coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings as well, although it is unclear whether any new "pieces” were put together as a result of the coverage.

One issue glaringly absent from a majority of The Guardian's coverage was

America's relative lack of attention to the serious problems of untreated mental illness.

Heather Stuart (2006) stated that “news media, particularly newspapers, are among the most frequently identified sources of mental health information. Stuart continued to state

103 that the media produce some of the most sensitive, education and award-winning material

on mental illness, but they also provide overwhelmingly dramatic and distorted images of

mental illness. Krislov (2009) stated in the USA Today that the number of college

students suffering from mental illness is rapidly rising, but the silence surround that issue

is not surprising. Krislov continued to state that mental illnesses are stigmatized in our

society, despite the fact that most mental maladies can be treated; however, most

Americans with mental disorders receive no treatment, and the silence only perpetuates

the situation. Substantial information was given to demonstrate that Cho suffered from

some sort of mental illness, and it seems that could have been an interesting avenue for

The Guardian to further explore. Instead, only a few quotes by readers commented on the issue, namely one that stated Americans “shouldn’t sell guns to people with a history of mental illness, and hopefully that couldn’t happen in the UK.” Clearly regulation is in order regarding the purchase of firearms and mental illness, but if Cho were mentally ill, is it fair to state that he was “made in America” and somehow is a representation of what is wrong with the United States? Obviously the researcher is not implying Cho’s mental illness was the one and only factor that lead to the shootings, but it likely played a prominent factor and seems as though it deserved more attention. Were there reasons why that issue was “gate kept” by the Guardian to a certain degree?

The Journalistic Process

Content analysis provided a frequency description of the topics covered by The

Guardian and, therefore, deemed the most important. The content analysis also provided what types of sources were often used (or neglected) and in relation to what topics. The

Guardian did many things well in its process of covering the Virginia Tech shootings.

104 Pompilio and Robertson (1999) stated that when key information is unavailable in the

first confused days of a tragedy, journalists rush to fill the new hole, which can lead to

rash judgments or give legitimacy to crackpot theories. Weissman (1999) stated that the

first thing he noticed about the media coverage of Columbine was that even though the

killers were obsessed with Adolf Hitler, reporters treated that as a symbolic thing apart from any specific references. Weissman continued to state that the media never made the connection between the shooters’ racism in shooting the black student Isaiah Shoels and their obsession. The Guardian avoided any crackpot theories relating to the shootings at

Virginia Tech during the initial coverage when information was scarce.

However, The Guardian may have fallen into other pitfalls of covering school shootings. Casey (1999) stated that journalism has turned catastrophic events into news reports, complete with predictable story lines including raw facts, then the search for meaning, then the assignment of blame, and then a conclusion. The Guardian appeared

to follow that formula in their coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. Casey also

suggested that by constantly referring to the shootings as the “worst massacres” in

“school history,” other disturbed individuals may become inspired to take their level of

carnage to a higher level (Casey, 1999, pp. 30-33). If there is truth to those statements,

then Cho clearly succeeded in raising the bar. The Guardian proclaimed Cho’s actions as

the “deadliest mass shooting in American history” and the “worst day of violence in

American college history,” among numerous other similar titles. If those descriptions are

correct then it is frightening to imagine the amount of carnage the next disturbed

individual will have to enact in order to replace Cho as the macabre record holder.

105 The Guardian’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings resulted in social

criticism of the United States and its culture. It would be interesting for this researcher to

similarly analyze British coverage of the school shootings that took place in Dunblane,

Scotland, in 1996. The demographics of Dunblane, with a high proportion of middle-

class residents and a community that was thought of as safe, are somewhat similar to

Littleton, Colorado, and Blacksburg, Virginia. The Dunblane shooter, Thomas Hamilton,

was portrayed as a sexual deviant with a dysfunctional family, and one focus of coverage

centered on issues he had dealt with such as bullying (Jemphrey & Berrington, 2000).

The media described Hamilton as a “monster” (Jemphrey & Berrington, 2000), a title

also used to describe Cho. Apart from those similarities, did the coverage of the

Dunblane shootings conjure similar criticisms of the United Kingdom that were made against the United States in The Guardian’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings?

Theoretical Considerations

The journalistic process of agenda setting is dynamic and can occur over the

lifetime of coverage for a news event. The mass media highlight varying aspects of

topics in order to build and maintain issue salience over time. The findings of Stone and

McCombs (1981) suggest is takes two to six months of coverage for the transfer of agenda setting from the media to the public. This thesis examined the first eight days of coverage by The Guardian, a much shorter amount of time than recommended by researchers to discover the full process of agenda setting. Therefore, as this study did not cover an extended period of time, is it possible that the judgment and criticisms of the

United States and its culture were already in the British conscience? Or perhaps the eight

106 days of initial coverage only provided enough information for a “gut reaction” by the

newspaper and its readers?

It is likely that many reporters and readers were already somewhat familiar with

the issue of school violence, previous events such as Columbine, and related issues such as gun control. Entman (1993) described framing as the selection of some aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation,

and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. Perhaps the first eight days of

coverage framed the issue in such a way that invoked “casual interpretations” or “moral

evaluations” of school violence and its related issues. It is possible that the researcher

may have found different viewpoints if the sample coverage extended past the first eight

days.

Several media researchers have applied Anderson’s theory of imagined

community (Anderson, 1991) to the study of news coverage. For example, Silberstein

(2003) investigated coverage of the 1995 murder trial of the famous athlete/actor O.J.

Simpson and found that at stake in the case was the very unity of the United States, an

imagined community created through the cultural influence of the U.S. media.

Silberstein stated that the U.S. media recognized Simpson as “an American hero,” one of

“us” to Americans, an “old friend,” and that “it was as though a member of the family had been charged with murder” (Silberstein, 2003, p. 324). However, soon after Simpson

was criminalized, the national idealization of Simpson changed from that of a sports hero to a black man charged with a violent crime, and he was contextually distanced from the

107 majority of Americans by the media. Therefore, Silberstein argued that imagined

communities are dynamic national identities that are constantly in flux.

Though the case of Cho was very different from the O.J. Simpson case, an interesting dynamic was discovered by this researcher in The Guardian’s coverage.

Initial coverage included a few descriptions of Cho as being a “fellow student” of the

victims and that the “English major” was also “one of their own.” However, those few instances were overwhelmed by the constant demonization of Cho found throughout the

coverage. While it appeared the United States culture was separating itself from the

"outsider" Cho, instances of British reaction appeared to attach Cho to the United States.

In other words, the U.S. was excluding Cho from its imagined community while the

British saw Cho as a “product” of that imagined community. Another interesting concept

to further explore is the description of Cho as a “Web 2.0 killer.” What exactly does this

classification imply, and could that mean that Cho is a representative of some new

imagined community or reality?

It may have been a challenge for the researcher, an American college student, to

fully understand how the British readers of The Guardian may have interpreted the text

of the coverage. There may be a cultural similarity between the United States and

Britain, but there are still differences. As an American who has never been to the United

Kingdom and has spent the majority of his life within U.S. borders, this researcher has a

certain bias, and his inherent perceptions may have hindered the findings and

interpretations of this study to a degree. However, the precautions were made to look at

The Guardian’s coverage with as clear and objective a mind as possible. The method

guided the researcher to the results; the researcher did not guide the method to meet any

108 preconceived notions. As with any study, further research and analysis will be necessary, as outlined above, to get a better sense of how the broader British news media may have participated in painting the "face of a killer" and perhaps reinforced established negative perceptions of American culture in the minds of the British public.

109 REFERENCES

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114 APPENDIX I

Coding Sheet: The Guardian Covers Virginia Tech Tragedy

Article ID: _____

The Guardian: ___ 01 = Hard Copy 02 = Online

Date: ____ (16th-23rd)

Number of Words: ___ 01 = Short 02 = Medium 03 = Long

Type of article: ___ 01 = News 02 = Feature 03 = Editorial/Commentary 04 = Other

Focus: ___ 01 = US Angle 02 = UK Angle

Sources: ______01 = UK government 02 = US government 03 = Virginia Tech campus officials 04 = Virginia Tech faculty/staff 05 = Virginia Tech campus police 06 = Police 07 = Virginia Tech students 08 = Psychologist/Expert 09 = Non-Virginia Tech students/faculty/staff 10 = Other 11 = No Sources

115 Topics: ______01 = School Safety 02 = Guns/Gun Control 03 = Media Coverage 04 = Cho Seung-Hui 05 = Victims/Students 06 = Police/SWAT 07 = Virginia Tech 08 = Violence in Society 09 = Other

116 APPENDIX II

Codebook

Article ID = the numeric label of the article being coded

The Guardian Hard Copy = the article was published in the hard copy edition of the Guardian Online = the article was published purely for the online edition, Guardian Unlimited

Date: the date the article was published, April 16th - April 23rd

Number of Words Short = 250 words or less Medium = between 250 and 500 words Long = longer than 500 words

Type of Article News = an informative event-based article of facts Feature = a thematic or overview article relating to the Virginia Tech tragedy Editorial/Commentary = the article was written under the label of editorial, comment, or diary. The article is clearly opinionated. Other = any other form of Guardian or Guardian Unlimited article.

Focus US angle = the article relates to issues or events in the United States UK angle = the article relates aspects of the Virginia Tech tragedy to issues or events in the United Kingdom

Sources UK government = United Kingdom government official US government = United States government official Virginia Tech campus officials = any official employed at Virginia Tech Virginia Tech faculty/staff = any professor, faculty, or staff member employed at Virginia Tech Virginia Tech campus police = any campus police officer/official at employed at Virginia Tech Police = any police officer, SWAT member, or similar official not employed by Virginia Tech Virginia Tech students = any past or current student attending Virginia Tech Psychologist/Expert = any psychologist or mental health expert

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Non-Virginia Tech students/faculty/staff = students, faculty, or staff that does not attend Virginia Tech or is not employed by the university Other = some other quoted source in the article No Sources = no sources were cited in the article

Topics (up to three topics; if more than three, then the first three identified in the article) School Safety = the article’s main focus is on safety at any educational institutions Guns/Gun Control = the article’s main focus is about guns, gun control, gun availability, gun violence, or other similar topic relating to guns Media Coverage = the article’s main focus is about media coverage of the event. (e.g. NBC airing Seung-Hui’s video) Cho Seung-Hui = the article’s main focus is on the killer, Cho Seung-Hui Victims/Students = the article focuses on the victims or students who were potential Victims Police/SWAT = the article focuses on the police response to the incident Virginia Tech = the article focuses on the campus, which could be the initial coverage of the tragedy, resuming classes, mourning sessions, Virginia Tech warning emails to students, etc… Other = the article focuses on some other frame

118