Undergraduate Honors Thesis

 

Trauma-inducing news coverage and the roles of memorials after school and mass shootings Public Deposited

https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/z603qz68v
Abstract
  • Almost everyone in the state of Colorado has been affected, or knows someone affected, by the state’s notorious and ongoing list of shootings. As a journalism student and Colorado native, I will be examining a handful of the state’s previous mass shootings. I am studying the ways journalists have induced trauma on victims of a shooting and may also become traumatized themselves through their reporting practices and how changing the narrative for news media will provide solutions to this ongoing trend. 

    It’s important for me to know how journalists can better report on traumatic events to minimize trauma for victims and themselves as well as the impacts reporting has—or hasn’t—had on the community following local shootings. Additionally, I will be studying the role of memorials and memorial journalism in the aftermath of traumatic events. Examining the ways memorials provide assistance and recovery to victims and survivors, I plan to connect my research with a possible solution on how reporting can better serve the public through an evolved form of news media, the use and implementation of reporting that memorializes the traumatic event.

    The following is research related to Colorado’s history with mass shootings, media frenzies surrounding tragedies and the mental health of journalists and newsroom culture. In addition to this, I examine the role of memorials, both physical structures and as online articles that are spaces of relief for the community following death and pose a solution in journalistic practices to minimize harm for reporters and the community. 

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Date Awarded
  • 2022-04-08
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  • 2022-05-04
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