Abstract
School shootings, committed mostly by White individuals, happen at a higher rate each year (GVA 2021), and Black and Brown individuals are disproportionately killed by, or are victims of, gun violence (Heitzeg 2015). While media conversations surrounding school shootings do occur, what remains relatively absent is a specific focus on how the social construct of race in media may impact society’s perception of criminality, fault, and victimhood. There is a gap in knowledge that exists in current research on race, mass shootings, and media, namely media in the form of podcasts, which have the potential to shape and reshape stereotypes, beliefs, values, and norms. More specifically, there is a lack of studies involving a content analysis of podcast episodes that deal directly with school shootings and thematic portrayals of race, gender, sex, identity, and class. My broad research question is: How is race, sex/gender, sexuality, and class portrayed in podcast discussions about school shootings? In this thesis, I aim to underscore a more nuanced perspective of school shooters and confront inconsistent understandings of school shooters in the current research. Using Berger and Luckman’s (1966) social constructionist theory of reality, knowledge and language, and Omi and Winant’s (2015; 1994) social constructionist theory of race, racial projects, and knowledge, this thesis seeks to explore how: (1) the social constructionist perspective can assist with research on racialized media and school shootings, (2) to identify thematic portrayals of race, gender, and class, and (3) to understand socially constructed public perceptions of school shootings. The purpose of my thesis is to examine how media portray school shooters. A content analysis was conducted on 20 episodes of the Active Shooter podcast (Hosack 2021), which discusses school shootings. These episodes were examined to understand how themes of race, class, gender/sex, and identity are portrayed in podcasts. My data outcomes regarding race and gender were analogous to existing literature (Duxbury et al. 2018; Heitzeg 2015; Mingus and Zopf 2010; Leonard 2017), while outcomes regarding class and sexual identity were not. Research implications, strengths and limitations, and future research are discussed.