Frame-Changing: The Role Of Violence In The Media

Columbine. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. All names of places that now strike fear in the heart of many due to acts perpetrated by a few disturbed individuals. Sadly, there are a dozen more locations that could be listed, places that in the last few decades have become the setting for horrible acts of violence committed in the name of some futile cause. These mass murders have become so commonplace that the country almost expects to see or hear about one in the news weekly. Over the last thirty years, this country has experienced more and more horror as mass shootings seem to multiply in number and the body count rises. Despite all the studies and research done on the events and the people who commit these heinous crimes, no good solution has
So much so that the profession as a whole has developed several techniques to deliver this material in a manner that informs the viewer while holding the public’s interest for as long as possible. Frame-changing is one of these processes and refers to the journalistic practice of presenting news coverage through different topic frames over the life span of a news event (Schildkraut, 2013, p.25). This process allows the media to highlight different facts about a news story all while changing the manner in which the story itself is presented. It provides a fresh look at content to keep viewers interested in an older story, but still disseminates the same facts repeatedly. “Agenda setting” is another technique the news uses in broadcasting data. This method refers to the process by which certain issues or events are selected and highlighted by journalists or others groups and singled out to define and shape issues and events the public watches (Schildkraut, 2013, p. 27). When mass shootings occur the event garners tons of media attention because of the subject matter and the interest of the public in the event. Due to the marathon of coverage aimed at these occurrences, intentionally or not, the media is shaping how this violence is defined by American
Her team examines databases containing information on high-profile mass killings and school shootings in the United States and attempt to determine if these tragedies inspire similar events in the near future. Her group has determined that these events have in fact shown a pattern they call “contagion”, which is when patterns of many events are bunched in time, rather than occurring randomly in time. The period of contagion Tower’s research has uncovered spans the thirteen days after the initial event, providing data that twenty to thirty percent of copycat killings occur during this time period (Long, 2015, p. 11). A similar phenomenon has shown itself in research about highly publicized suicides and copycat events. While suicides and mass shootings are not technically the same event, people’s response to them seems to be similar, providing a starting point for scientists trying to find a copycat link with mass murderers and the media. A total of 293 findings from 42 studies showed that the effect of a highly broadcasted entertainment or celebrity suicide showed results where a copycat was 14.3 times more likely to occur. Often the greatest reduction in copycats from these studies came from simply reducing the sheer quantity of the news on the suicide as opposed to reducing the perceived quality of the news