It’s Not Just “8 Dead”: Examining News and Twitter’s Social Construction of the Atlanta Spa Shootings Through the Lens of Networked Gatekeeping and Affective Publics
{"title":"It’s Not Just “8 Dead”: Examining News and Twitter’s Social Construction of the Atlanta Spa Shootings Through the Lens of Networked Gatekeeping and Affective Publics","authors":"Gyo Hyun Koo, Bin Chen","doi":"10.1177/20563051241269278","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Drawing from the theories of networked gatekeeping and affective publics, this study compares how news media and social media users shaped the discourse surrounding the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. We investigate both the substantive (topics) and affective (emotions) dimensions of news articles and tweets, showcasing how institutional media and the public engage in the social construction of mass shootings involving people of underserved communities. To do so, we built two datasets: 964 news articles and 265,951 tweets. The findings from the computer-assisted content analysis reveal that Twitter users focused more on humanizing the victims and contextualizing the Atlanta spa shootings within the broader framework of anti-Asian racism, in contrast to the news outlets. Twitter users expressed significantly greater anger and fear than what is reflected in the news articles. This study also demonstrates that the news stories failed to acknowledge the intersecting identities of the victims. The findings contribute to our understanding of how journalists and individuals shape agendas and convey their affective reactions through news and social media. We suggest actions that can be taken to create a more inclusive and culturally responsive media environment.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Media + Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241269278","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Drawing from the theories of networked gatekeeping and affective publics, this study compares how news media and social media users shaped the discourse surrounding the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. We investigate both the substantive (topics) and affective (emotions) dimensions of news articles and tweets, showcasing how institutional media and the public engage in the social construction of mass shootings involving people of underserved communities. To do so, we built two datasets: 964 news articles and 265,951 tweets. The findings from the computer-assisted content analysis reveal that Twitter users focused more on humanizing the victims and contextualizing the Atlanta spa shootings within the broader framework of anti-Asian racism, in contrast to the news outlets. Twitter users expressed significantly greater anger and fear than what is reflected in the news articles. This study also demonstrates that the news stories failed to acknowledge the intersecting identities of the victims. The findings contribute to our understanding of how journalists and individuals shape agendas and convey their affective reactions through news and social media. We suggest actions that can be taken to create a more inclusive and culturally responsive media environment.
期刊介绍:
Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.