Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time

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Human Nature and the Social Order.

THE PRESS AND FOREIGN POLICY' IT IS a defect of some of the studies of the diplomatic background of the Great War that they tend to ignore the influence on pre-war diplomacy of public opinion in general and of the press in particular. Based primarily on official documents such studies unconsciously tend to overemphasize the parts played by the leaders with whose activities the documents are so largely concerned and to neglect some of the less obvious forces that affected the course of events. The influence of the press, it is true, can never be measured accurately. \"No diviniiig rod can locate it,\" says Miss Salmon, \"no plummet sound its depth, no instrument of precision measure it, no astronomer compute its orbit.\"2 And yet that influence in pre-war Europe was very real and very considerable. Professor Fay goes so far as to list \"the poisoning of public opinion by the newspaper press in all the great countries\"3 as one of the chief underlying causes of the war. If the influence of the press cannot be exactly determined, however, it can at least be roughly estimated; and even where no attempt is made to estimate influence, a kniowledge of newspaper views on questions of foreign policy is of assistance in clarifying the atmosphere out of which the Great WYar came.

The Press and Foreign Policy

A pioneering attempt to relate the theory of literary fiction to a more general theory of fiction, using fictions of apocalypse as a model. This pioneering exploration of the relationship of fiction to age-old conceptions of chaos and crisis offers many new insights into some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of a wide range of writers from Plato to William Burroughs, Kermode demonstrates how writers have persistently imposed their \"fictions\" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit.

Frank Kermode and the Invented World@@@The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction

The Latino threat: constructing immigrants, citizens, and the nation : Leo R. Chavez, Stanford University Press 2008. 272 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0804759342 ()

Studies of school shootings have been conducted in a variety of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, and media studies. However, to date there is no unified body of knowledge about such events. In an effort to synthesize past studies, and to orient future studies in school shootings, this article (i) offers a typology for understanding the varieties of school shooting incidents, including rampages, mass murders, terrorist attacks, targeted attacks, and government shootings; (ii) examines the mass media dynamic of school shootings; and (iii) presents a synthesis of the multilevel causes suggested in the research, including those on the individual, community, and social levels. Suggestions for future studies in school shootings are explored.

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Research in School Shootings

This study applies the two-dimensional analytical framework suggested by Chyi and McCombs to assess its utility in studying frame-changing across similar events and between more and less salient ev

Media Salience and Frame Changing across Events: Coverage of Nine School Shootings, 1997-2001

This study examines the news media coverage of the 1999 Columbine school shootings, as a component of a noted crime myth of the juvenile superpredator. Thematic content analysis was conducted on 683 articles selected from print and broadcast media, revealing four themes of coverage, including the identification and description of the victims, details of victims' deaths, coverage of memorial services, and other special social issues such as race, religion, and gun control. Chronological analysis of article distribution revealed four spikes in volume of coverage, which is associated with media reframing of the victims coverage to maintain the salience of the story. The Columbine victim coverage reaffirms the crime myth of the juvenile superpredator and reifies the punitive juvenile justice solutions suggested in alarmist responses to erroneous fears about growing rates and severity of youth violence. The impact of the superpredator myth on public discourse about Columbine and similar cases is explored.

The Columbine Victims and the Myth of the Juvenile Superpredator

This book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of inequality and the stratification of the digital sphere Grounded in classical sociological theories of inequality, as well as empirical evidence, this book defines the digital divide as the unequal access and utility of internet communications technologies and explores how it has the potential to replicate existing social inequalities, as well as create new forms of stratification The Digital Divide examines how various demographic and socio-economic factors including income, education, age and gender, as well as infrastructure, products and services affect how the internet is used and accessed Comprised of six parts, the first section examines theories of the digital divide, and then looks in turn at: Highly developed nations and regions (including the USA, the EU and Japan); Emerging large powers (Brazil, China, India, Russia); Eastern European countries (Estonia, Romania, Serbia); Arab and Middle Eastern nations (Egypt, Iran, Israel); Under-studied areas (East and Central Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa) Providing an interwoven analysis of the international inequalities in internet usage and access, this important work offers a comprehensive approach to studying the digital divide around the globe It is an important resource for academic and students in sociology, social policy, communication studies, media studies and all those interested in the questions and issues around social inequality

The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective

Purpose – This chapter explores the problem of school shootings as a source of anxiety and fear in schools. Such fear has generated calls for security in schools and has been a catalyst for the development and deployment of antiviolence policies in schools.

Methodology/approach – The chapter begins by examining the development of the Columbine Effect, which is a set of emotions surrounding youth social problems, particularly violence in schools. This Columbine Effect is then explored in relation to its role in the development of policies to mitigate the problem of school violence. These purposes are linked using a multilevel typology of school violence and their sources, created by Henry (2009).

Findings – The chapter explores the levels of violence addressed by six antiviolence policies: crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), zero tolerance, anti-bullying programming, emergency management planning, peer mediation, and school climate programming. The analysis indicates the level(s) of violence each type of policy is designed to address and identifies research evidence regarding the efficacy of each policy. The analysis also focuses on the unintended consequences of school antiviolence policies, especially those which reduce violence on one or more levels, while exacerbating the problem on other levels.

Research limitations/implications – The analytical approach was selective, rather than exhaustive. Nonetheless, the analysis has suggested a number of ironies concerning the unintended consequences of antiviolence programming in schools. This suggests the need for broader analysis in this area.

Practical implications – The analysis identifies a number of detrimental effects that have resulted from school violence policy initiatives ranging from the socialization of youth toward a society of control and authority. In addition, the chapter helps to clarify the (often negative) effects of hype about violence in schools.

Originality/value of chapter – Although not often connected, this chapter explores the intersection between the discourse of school violence (typically, a social problems framing concern) and the development of school antiviolence policies (typically, an applied social scientific concern).

Glenn W. Muschert

Papers

Research in School Shootings

Media Salience and Frame Changing across Events: Coverage of Nine School Shootings, 1997-2001

The Columbine Victims and the Myth of the Juvenile Superpredator

The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective

The columbine effect and school antiviolence policy