The Features of Tragedy, Expressions of Sympathy, and Debates over Policy: A Time Series Analysis of Mass Shootings and Social Media Discourses
Abstract
Social media responses to mass shootings in the United States provide important opportunities to consider the social and political nature of public mourning and debate in response to tragedy. In this paper, we focus the outpouring of grief in response to mass violence and the subsequent contestation over gun policy on Twitter, tracing these discourses to features of the tragic event. By measuring Twitter discourses with two distinct approaches that yielded highly consistent results and applying time-series modeling, we find that the characteristics of mass shooting victims affect the levels of collective grieving and gun policy discussions, highlighting the unfortunate fact that not all lives are equally valued and grievable by society. Additionally, the dynamics of responses to mass violence differ, with expressions of sympathy and discussions on gun policy more ephemeral and the second amendment gun rights discourse much more sustained.