RACIALIZATION OF THE VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTINGS

Abstract

This study investigated differences between how local and national newspapers framed race in their coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech (VT) shootings. The results showed a local newspaper, with geographic and social ties to the VT community, published more stories about the shootings than did national newspapers and continued to publish articles well after the national newspapers had stopped. Further, national newspapers mentioned the shooter's race more often than did the local newspaper, despite having published fewer articles. The results also showed that national newspapers racialized the shooter more often and more prominently than did the local newspaper, but that the two newspaper types did not differ according to the levels of racialization each used (i.e., attributing the crime to the shooter himself rather than attributing it to his race), according to how racialized discussion of the shooting was, or in their use of implicit racialization.

Keywords:

• Asian
• framing
• race
• racialization
• school shootings
• Virginia Tech

Notes

1. It must be acknowledged that using the terms “Asian race” and “Korean ethnicity” can be problematic and reductive. The terms are defined here, however, as they were used in the news coverage examined in the present study and by Kellner (2007, 2008). In other words, we utilized the definitions of “Asian,” “race,” “ethnicity,” and “Korean” found in content describing Cho, rather than applying perhaps more comprehensive definitions to the content (such as distinguishing between South Korea and North Korea or using a more accurate definition of “Asian” to include East Asians, as well as Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Asians from the Indian subcontinent).

2. For example, NPR.org, NYTimes.com, and USAToday.com all published stories in the weeks after the VT shootings either written by journalists from The Roanoke Times or featuring them as sources.

3. Only articles that squarely focused on the shooting incident were included in the analysis. When the criteria devised by Park, Holody, and Zhang (2012) were applied, approximately 15 percent of newspaper articles were screened out.

4. It should be noted that only the 55 national and 51 local newspaper articles that included a race frame were included in this and all subsequent statistical tests.

5. For example, both the New York Times and USA Today referred to the site of the shootings as “Virginia Tech University” and The Roanoke Times did not. This indicates journalists at the local newspaper were more aware that the university is properly referred to by its full name, “Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,” or simply as “Virginia Tech.”