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21 Criminology, Crim. Just. L & Soc'y 1 (2020)
The News Media's Framing of Mass Shootings: Gun Access, Mental Illness, Violent Entertainment, and Terrorism

handle is hein.journals/wescrim21 and id is 175 raw text is: VOLUME 21, ISSUE 2, PAGES 76 - 98 (2020) Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society E-ISSN 2332-886X Available online at https://scholasticahg .com/criminology-criminal-justice-law-societv/ The News Media's Framing of Mass Shootings: Gun Access, Mental Illness, Violent Entertainment, and Terrorism Jason R. Silva William Paterson University ABSTRACT AND ARTICLE INFORMATION The present study uses a media distortion analysis to examine the news media's framing of gun access, mental illness, violent entertainment, and terrorism in New York Times coverage of mass shootings in America between 2000 and 2016. Specifically, this work examines these four frames to identify the news media's framing of the overall mass shooting problem, changes in framing over time, mass shooting characteristics influencing coverage including each of the four frames, and potential news media distortions of the phenomenon. Findings illustrate gun access frames were the most commonly used of the four frames and increased the most over time. Mental illness frames were slightly more common than terrorism frames, although terrorism frames increased more over time. Violent entertainment frames were the least common overall. The most significant predictors of the four frames, across three comparative analyses, include Arab- descent perpetrators (terrorism), jihadist-inspired motivations (terrorism), mental illness (mental illness), school targets (gun access, mental illness, violent entertainment), and government targets (gun access, terrorism). A discussion of findings identifies news media distortions in mass shooting framing and provides implications for scholars, media outlets, and the public. Article History: Keywords: Received April 23rd, 2020 mass shootings, news media framing, media distortion, gun access, mental illness, Received in revised form July 20th, 2020 violent entertainment, terrorism Accepted July 23rd 2020 © 2020 Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society and The Western Society of Criminology Hosting by Scholastica. All rights reserved. Corresponding author: Jason R. Silva, William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, NJ, 07470, USA. Email: silvaj18@wpunj.edu CRIMINOLOGY, CRIMINAL JUSTICE, LAW & SOCIETY

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