Guns, gangs, and the underclass: a constructionist analysis of gun violence in a Toronto high school.

• Author: O'Grady, William
• Position: Report

On 23 May 2007, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed in a Toronto high school, the first event of its kind in Canada's largest city. According to the local press, Jordan Manners, a grade-9 student who attended C.W. Jefferys Collegiate (CWJC), was shot in the chest in a hallway not far from the school's cafeteria. Immediately after Manners was found wounded on the floor, the school was placed under a four-hour "lockdown," meaning no one but authorities could leave or enter the school. Four days later, two 17-year-old male suspects were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. At a press conference, members of the Toronto Police Service revealed that the two accused lived in the same neighbourhood as Manners and that their identities could not be released as a result of the restrictions imposed by the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA): The police offered no additional information.

Although the media initially sought to contextualize Manners's death by referring to previous school shootings (e.g., Dawson College or W.R. Myers High School in Taber, Alberta), within approximately 48 hours, a very different, dominant framework appeared, one that framed the killing as if it were a tragedy that had its roots in the very nature of Toronto's black, urban "underclass." (2) What makes this transition or frame-change (see Hsiang and McCombs 2004) entirely unique, however, is the following: Because the school was locked down and there was no information pertaining to the motives and identities of the accused (and, at the time of this writing, there still isn't), all attempts by the media to explain the event were inevitably grounded in speculation. Thus, the pertinent questions are, How does one account for this transition? and, Given myriad alternatives, why did the press opt for the underclass framework in particular?

Using data gathered from an analysis of local press coverage, we offer the following argument. The media was confronted with a newsworthy event that appeared to have all the markings of "another school shooting;" however, in the absence of critical information, the organizational requirement of producing a viable story encouraged the adoption of a well-established interpretive framework. Leaving behind the initial references to prior school shootings and the culturally engrained imagery they now seem to evoke, the media embraced the well-recognized urban underclass framework and constructed Manners's death as if it were an anticipated extension of the neighbourhood's troubled history.

We begin with a review of the literature looking at the media's role in the construction of crime as a social problem, followed by a more directed examination of how school shootings in particular have been constructed in North America. Following a review of our methodology, the genesis of the urban underclass framework is examined. We then conclude by exploring the social and political implications of these dynamics in relation to (a) what we know about the media's role in the construction of criminal events and (b) how the media and other claims-makers are responsible for perpetuating discriminatory ideologies that have serious implications for understanding crime and violence in disadvantaged Canadian communities.

Literature review

This study draws heavily from two interrelated bodies of literature: social constructionism as it pertains to the media's role in the construction of crime as a social problem and the literature on school violence and/or school shootings. Our analysis will move back and forth between these two areas, tying them together whenever possible.

For the past 15 to 20 years, constructionism has had a profound impact on how social scientists understand the nature of social problems. The work of Blumer (1970) and Spector and Kitsuse (1977), for example, provided important critiques of conventional social-problems research by calling for a focus on the processes through which problems are defined, responded to, and maintained over time. Thus, social problem status was not to be understood as an objective condition but rather as a function of the claims made by individuals or groups who sought the problematization of a particular condition (Blumer 1970; Loseke 2003). Social problems are, therefore, not to be seen as inherently immoral or problematic conditions but merely as definitions of and orientations to putative conditions (Miller and Holstein 1993; Spector and Kitsuse 1977).

Constructionism has also had a profound influence on how scholars understand the relationship between the media's depiction of crime, on the one hand, and public perceptions of crime, on the other (see Beckett 1994; Best 1991; 2002; Fishman 1979; Sacco 2005). Though perhaps antithetical to strict versions of constructionism (see Woolgar and Pawluch 1985), its appeal stems, in part, from its ability to help explain the media's tendency to distort and amplify crime-related news (see Doyle 2006; Fishman 1979; Orcutt and Turner 1993). For example, scholars have long argued that while the media tend to focus on crimes of violence (see Doyle 2006; Jenkins 1994; Sacco 2005), official police data suggest violent crime represents a relatively small proportion of all reported criminal activity. This trend toward distortion or what some moral-panic scholars might call disproportionality (see Burns and Crawford 1999; Cohen 1972) often leads to a self-reinforcing media hype (Vasterman 2005) that derives much of its momentum from the sheer profitability of crime-related news and the extent to which crime news caters to the organizational requirements of the news industry (see Sacco 2000; 2005).

Also of interest is the research examining how the media have constructed school shootings as a serious social problem worthy of public attention. In his analysis of post-Columbine media coverage, Muschert (2007a), for example, reveals the extent to which the media have perpetuated the myth of the child "super predator"--a vicious killer utterly devoid of feelings and incapable of remorse. Thus, according to Herda-Rapp (2003), the media have helped to usher in a new typology of school shootings: They are brutal crimes committed by young, white males in suburban or rural hamlets across the United States. These shootings are pitched as a new kind of violence, perpetrated in areas once thought to be immune from malevolence of such magnitude. (3)

Burns and Crawford (1999), for example, argue that, in contradistinction to the media-generated moral panic, American data suggests that "recent school shootings were idiosyncratic events and not part of any recognizable trend" (155). Similarly, Best (2002) refers to school shootings as a "phantom epidemic" brought on by the media's intense coverage of particular events and its affinity for statistical distortion. Moreover, research indicates that intense coverage of school shootings over time is, in part, a function of the media's tendency to engage in "frame-changing" (Hsiang and McCombs 2004: 22) as a means of keeping news about school shootings salient. That said, constructionist research has allowed scholars to contrast what is believed to be the reality of school shootings with their image in public and media discourse.

In the post-Columbine era, popular and media discourse have tended to construct school shootings in a rather dark, typological form: A bullied, marginalized, and seemingly deranged young male leaves innocent victims in his wake while shocking the community (see Burns and Crawford 1999; Herda-Rapp 2003; Killingbeck 2001; Springhall 1999). Victims, too, have been constructed in rather predictable ways as young, promising citizens, whose suburban or rural refuge from a heartless world is irrevocably violated. As Muschert (2007a) argues, school shootings as "problem-defining events" have come to characterize the state of youth violence in North America, where threats to and threats from children now play a pivotal role in prevailing discourses of fear (see also Altheide 2002; Muschert 2007b).

It is, therefore, not surprising that scholars have focused so intently on the etiology of school shootings and that myriad explanations had come to the fore (see Muschert 2007b). For some, answers can be found in prevailing constructions of heterosexual masculinity and the alienation experienced by those unable or unwilling to conform (see Danner and Carmody 2001; Kimmel and Mahler 2003; Klein 2006). Others have set their sights on the impact of violent media, popular culture, or access to firearms (Springhall 1999; see also Lawrence and Birkland 2004). More comprehensive explanations have focused on the intersection of community, family, and organizational relations within the school environment (Newman 2004; Springhall 1999; see also Muschert 2007b).

However, in this article we are not principally concerned with the objective causes of school shootings, nor are we interested in furthering the development of a school shooting typology as proposed by Muschert (2007b). Instead, we seek to explain why and under what circumstances particular constructions of school shootings emerge. Thus, with respect to the event in question, given the absence of information about a motive or about the offenders' identities, we attempt to understand why the killing of Manners was initially framed in relation to past school shootings before quickly being recast as if it were a "targeted shooting" carried out within the broader context of an underclass social environment (see Muschert 2007a). Borrowing from constructionist research and from media studies scholarship, we seek answers to this issue, prompted as it was by the unusual circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Jordan Manners on 23 May 2007.

Methodology

The data collected for this article were derived using a case-study content analysis that, according to Altheide (1987), involves the reflexive analysis of textual documents so as to understand...