The news media's framing of mass shootings: Gun access, mental illness, violent entertainment, and terrorism

Abstract

The present study uses a media distortion analysis to examine the news media's framing of gun access, mental illness, violent entertainment, and terrorism in New York Times coverage of mass shootings in America between 2000 and 2016. Specifically, this work examines these four frames to identify the news media's framing of the overall mass shooting problem, changes in framing over time, mass shooting characteristics influencing coverage including each of the four frames, and potential news media distortions of the phenomenon. Findings illustrate gun access frames were the most commonly used of the four frames and increased the most over time. Mental illness frames were slightly more common than terrorism frames, although terrorism frames increased more over time. Violent entertainment frames were the least common overall. The most significant predictors of the four frames, across three comparative analyses, include Arabdescent perpetrators (terrorism), jihadist-inspired motivations (terrorism), mental illness (mental illness), school targets (gun access, mental illness, violent entertainment), and government targets (gun access, terrorism). A discussion of findings identifies news media distortions in mass shooting framing and provides implications for scholars, media outlets, and the public.