Emerald news

School shootings and the role of the media

United Kingdom, 6 December 2012 - In a three week period in late-March/early-April 2012, three shocking school shootings occurred in three divergent settings – in France, a male serial killer murders three children at the Jewish Ozar Hatorah secondary school; in Finland, a young man attacks a high school in the small town of Orivesi, and in California, international news breaks about another school shooting in Oakland. The perpetrator, a former student of the school, kills seven people and injures several. Are these cases part of a unified phenomenon, or is their coincidence random?

This question is the underlying motivation of a new book, published by Emerald Group Publishing, entitled School Shootings: Mediatized Violence in a Global Age.  Edited by Glen Muschert and Johanna Sumiala, it explores the connection between school shootings and coverage in the media, while examining the presence and effects of these events and dynamics in contemporary life. It is available now from the Emerald Bookstore: http://books.emeraldinsight.com

Chapters question the role of violent video games as a factor in mass school shootings and an examination of YouTube videos from rampage school shooters from a variety of nations.  The studies in this volume highlight the importance of media processes for understanding and responding to school-related violence, and also aid our understanding of broader issues, such as how trauma is symbolized, how meanings are constructed, dynamics of collective representation, the processes of public mourning, and the conceptualization of mass violence.

Editors Glen Muschert and Johanna Sumiala explain, “It is the nature of many school shootings that they capture the public attention via media, and that they have become a global cultural phenomenon. Hence, school shootings are highly mediatized international events, and therefore this aspect of the phenomenon deserves close attention, which is, ostensibly, the focus of this volume”. 

Of interest to media personnel, educators, policy makers and researchers, this new book offers an alternative way to approach the important and timely issue of mediatized violence. School Shootings: Mediatized Violence in a Global Age is published as volume 7 of the book series Studies in Media and Communications, and is available from the Emerald Bookstore,  http://books.emeraldinsight.com

ISBN: 9781780529189; ISSN: 2050-2060; Format: Hardback, 300pp; Publication date: 10 Dec 2012; Price £67.95

To register an interest in inspection copies, please contact Claire Swift, Editorial Assistant, cswift@emeraldinsight.com

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Additional message from the Editors:  

"We have recently experienced again a very, very sad tragedy in the US. It is paradoxical, but I have to say we wish our book was not as topical as it is now. As the editors for this newly published volume, School Shootings: Mediatized Violence in a Global Age, we want to express our warm thanks to all the contributors in this book for your intellectual and academic efforts in analysing and discussing this disturbing, and unfortunately most real phenomenon. I have no doubt we'd all like to live in this world without school shootings, but since, as we have just witnessed again, these "exceptions" have become more common than we want to think, our task as social scientists is to critically engage with this confusing and complex world of mediatized violence."

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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