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Collective Coping through Networked Narratives: YouTube Responses to the Virginia Tech Shooting

School Shootings: Mediatized Violence in a Global Age

ISBN: 978-1-78052-918-9, eISBN: 978-1-78052-919-6

Publication date: 23 November 2012

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter analyses social networks and discourses in relation to YouTube videos and user comments relating to the traumatic event of a school shooting.

Methodology/approach – First, general patterns in the YouTube responses are mapped. What was the overall structure of the flow of videos posted in response to a shooting? Second, social network aspects are discussed. Which systems of interrelated (re)actions emerge through the videos? Finally, a set of three videos representing key texts in the analysed discursive formation are further analysed as regards the written discourse of their comment threads.

Findings – Participants were organised in the form of relatively autonomous and isolated islands of meaning making, but one could still identify a core public engaging in the creation, maintenance and negotiation of the branching and relatively open-ended narratives that recount and try to make sense of what happened and why.

Implications – The main result is that, also in relation to largely dramatic and tragic events such as a school shooting, there are patterns to support the idea of an emerging new media landscape where audiences play an increasingly active role as co-producers of content and interpretations.

Originality of paper – The paper deals with comments as well as video content, and on analysing them from the joint perspectives of social network analysis and discursive network analysis. This means that results give knowledge about two things; how the YouTube audience(s) to videos about the Virginia Tech shooting is/are organised, and what topics are discussed in relation to the videos.

Keywords

Citation

Lindgren, S. (2012), "Collective Coping through Networked Narratives: YouTube Responses to the Virginia Tech Shooting", Muschert, G.W. and Sumiala, J. (Ed.) School Shootings: Mediatized Violence in a Global Age (Studies in Media and Communications, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 279-298. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2050-2060(2012)0000007017

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited