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ABSTRACT
A growing literature has revealed that not all mass shootings are covered equally by the media. Thus far, endogenous and contextual characteristics of mass shootings have been causally associated with heightened print and online news coverage such as offender identity, weapon usage, motivations, shooting location and fatality count. This study utilizes univariate logistic regression to investigate whether the occurrence of exogenous events can offset coverage of mass shootings as measured through article counts drawn from the New York Times counts on 68 different cases. Results reveal that the odds of a given mass shooting being newsworthy are 12 times higher in absence of an exogenous event the day prior, the day of, or day after the shooting. These findings also support previously identified statistical trends. Cases featuring Middle-Eastern offenders have 28 times greater odds of being highly newsworthy. Large fatality counts also tend to attract news attention with each additional fatality in a shooting increasing the odds of it being highly newsworthy by one.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Considering this specified definition, throughout this study, mass public shootings will be referred to simply as mass shootings.
2 Attempted mass shootings can also be high-profiled incidents, especially those that arise in school settings.
3 The following link contains an appendix which is anonymously accessible: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v3teoenb9arah36/Appendix%20highly%20covered%20mass%20shootings.docx?dl=0.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alexei Anisin
Alexei Anisin is a Research Associate in the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University Prague. His research has appeared in the Journal of Historical Sociology, Journal of Cultural Geography, Homicide Studies, the International Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Civil Society, among other outlets. His current project focus is geared towards the national as well as cross-national study of mass shootings on one hand, and on state repression and civil resistance on the other.