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Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old student, carried out the Day of Retribution in Isla Vista, California, leaving six dead and fourteen wounded, before taking his own life. There here have been numerous attempts to explain his behavior including claims of him having features of autism spectrum disorder, traits of psychopathy and psychotic symptoms, narcissism, depression, fragile masculinity, and deviant sexual fantasies. This study examines the link between strain, coping and violence, based on General Strain Theory, using a qualitative content analysis of Elliot’s manifesto, My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger. The results indicate that Elliot experienced multiple sources of strain in his life and that he lacked adequate coping skills, which affected his perceptions of and interactions with the world. He experienced isolation, frustration and anger. These negative emotions together with his sense of entitlement intensified over the years, creating desire for revenge and justifying use of extreme violence as an attempt to eliminate strain and find relief.

This thesis provides a systematic literature review in order to accumulate and analyze previous research concerning the role of mass media's coverage of mass shootings in regards to copycats. Previous research indicates mass shootings are crimes where perpetrators take inspiration from one another and subsequently imitate each other. The purpose of this study is to review previous research on this contagion phenomenon to distinguish if there is a correlation between media coverage of mass shooters and copycats based on empirical data. In order to obtain scientifically accurate conclusions to the research questions and the purpose of this thesis, a systematic literature review method has been implemented. The result shows that previous research indicates that there is a correlation between the mass media's coverage of mass shootings and acts of copycats. There are studies presented in this thesis that conclude that some mass shooters openly confess to seeking fame by carrying out a mass shooting and that they receive as much or more media coverage than household celebrities at the time of the shootings. This thesis also concludes that there is evidence to support that after the occurrence of a mass shooting there is an average increase in the probability that another mass shooting takes place within the following 12 days. These findings support identified statistical trends in previous research in the field.  In conclusion, it is of most importance that the media reports responsibly on mass shootings since the implications of the detailed description of events, modus operandi, the firearm used and the amount of news coverage of mass shootings contribute to copycat mass shootings. Keywords: mass shootings, contagion, imitation, copycat, media coverage, fame seeking, mass media

On April 16, 2007, 32 students and faculty were killed on the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University campus, making this incident the deadliest mass school shooting in United States history. Other school shootings, such as the infamous Columbine High School shootings and the more recent Northern Illinois State shootings, have become popular topics in today's social media (Kaminski et al, 2010; Reese 2009). Due to these events, schools and universities have become interested in the safety of their students as well as the students overall feelings towards crime while on their campus. New research studies have taken an interest in students' overall fear of crime and how this fear is impacted by variables including sex of the student and the time of day (Kaminski et al. 2010; Murray 2001). Though these studies have found who is more fearful of crime and which types of crime are feared most among their samples, these studies and others do not take into account whether the student is aware of shooting incidents that have occurred on college campuses around the country. The current study addresses this gap. The purpose of this study is to measure whether a University of Central Florida student's knowledge of mass school shootings influences their own levels of fear regarding crime and criminal victimization. Using an anonymous online survey, data from students at the University of Central Florida was collected and analyzed. The survey used quiz style questioning to gauge a students' overall knowledge on mass school shootings. Other questions such as demographics fear of various types of crime, and fear of different locations on campus were also asked.; This research addresses which areas of the University of Central Florida that students fear most (such as the Parking Garages), whether a student who lives in off campus housing is more fearful then a student who lives on campus, and whether having more knowledge of mass school shootings cause more fear of crime in students then those with less knowledge, and do students with more knowledge feel that they will be victimized more. This research hopes to help the University of Central Florida's Counseling center and well as the UCF Police Department to help understand students fears and needs to help create a safer learning environment and help those students in need in addition to adding to the overall literature on fear of crime.

During the past couple of years, shootings in Malmö have been given considerable amount of attention and not the least by the news media. The tabloids have often been dominated by headlines which indicate an increase of violent shootings in Sweden’s third largest city. Comparing shootings in Malmö to other cities in Sweden is a difficult task as the local police collects data based on different criteria, nevertheless comparisons are frequently made. The objective of this project is to examine how newspapers portray shootings in Malmö by analyzing articles from major newspapers in Sweden. This thesis focuses on the language that is used and in the light of moral panics theory it is discusses whether the news articles in question are instigating moral panics. It is evaluated what discourses are produced and reproduced by the language used in the context of shootings in Malmö through critical discourse analysis (CDA). The main findings reveal that news media tend to promote certain ideas about the severity and the circumstances regarding shootings in Malmö that are symbolic for the instigation of moral panics. In the context of shootings in Malmö the most frequent points that are raised is that shootings are “symptomatic”, shootings are becoming normalized and shootings pose a threat to “normal people” as well. The main implications from this project is that future research is needed on the subject of how data regarding shootings is collected by to police in order to conduct research similar to this. There is a need of a uniformity within the police regarding the definition and classification of shootings in order to facilitate research that compares shootings across the nation. As a follow up to the current project it would be beneficial to investigate the social reactions to the style of journalism discussed in this paper.

Lethality of aggravated assaults has long been discussed in terms of weapons used, location of assault, demographics of victims, and regions of the US in which the assault occurred. However, dating back to the 1950s, medical response times have been discussed as a mediating factor, but minimally explored in analyses. The current study assesses the lethality of shootings with a primary focus on emergency medical and police response times in New Orleans, LA. Along with routine activities and social disorganization indicators, 102 shootings that occurred in 3 months are analyzed to establish response time patterns of lethality. Results indicate that neither medical nor police response times impact the odds of a victim surviving a shooting, but instead, it is the days on which the violent encounters occur and the socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood that have a stronger influence on life or death, although not statistically significant. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Att välja var man ska bo är ett stort beslut för människor där många faktorer spelar in. Med den växande kriminella närvaron och skjutvåldet i Sverige som det ofta skrivs om i media är det inte orimligt att tro att även detta spelar in, människor vill vara trygga där de bor. I denna studie undersöker vi genom en tvärsnittsanalys huruvida det föreligger ett samband mellan priset på bostadsrätter i Stockholms län under 2019 och antalet skjutningar i närområdet under 2018. Genom att kontrollera för sannolikheten att det skjuts i ett område kan vi sedan hantera en skjutning som slumpmässig händelse. Inledningsvis tyder resultatet på ett negativt samband men allt eftersom vi inkluderar kontrollvariabler för att göra skjutningarna slumpmässiga minskar effekten och sambandet blir slutligen svagt positivt. Slutsatsen blir att ytterligare studier behövs för att kunna fastställa den verkliga effekten. / Choosing where to live is an important decision for individuals, influenced by numerous factors. With the growing presence of criminal activities and gun violence in Sweden, often highlighted in the media, it is not unreasonable to consider that this factor also plays a role as people seek safety in their residential areas. This study conducts a cross-sectional analysis to investigate the potential correlation between the prices of condominiums in Stockholm County during 2019 and the number of shootings in the nearby area during 2018. By controlling for the probability of shootings in an area, we aim to treat a shooting incident as a random shock. Initially, the results suggest a negative correlation, yet as we include further controls to treat the shootings as random occurrences, the effect diminishes, ultimately resulting in a weakly positive correlation. Consequently, the conclusion drawn is that further research is necessary to conclusively determine the actual impact.

Gun violence has increased significantly in Sweden in the past years. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether the number of shootings has an impact on the residents' sense of perceived security in Sweden's metropolitan areas, with the control variables of the socio-demographic characteristics gender, age and education level. Previous research has investigated the relationship between perceived security and general crime, where the results show higher insecurity in relation to crime. In addition, individuals living in a socially vulnerable area characterized by low informal control experience higher insecurity than those who do not live in these areas. The study is based on the theories of social disorganization theory and the theory of ontological security. A multiple regression analysis was used where the data consisted of statistics on the number of shootings in Sweden and data from the Samhälle, Opinion and Media (SOM) survey from the year 2021. The result showed, in the full model, that there is an association between the number of shootings and perceived security, when shootings increase, so does insecurity. Regarding the geographical classification, residents in the metropolitan areas showed lower perceived insecurity in comparison to the rest of Sweden in relation to the number of shootings. Women and the low educated experienced higher insecurity than men and the highly educated respectively, while older age only had a small impact on the insecurity in relation to crime. A conclusion that can be drawn based on the study's results is that the number of shootings affects the perceived security negatively when several explanatory variables are examined together. Moreover, there are socio-demographic characteristics that affect the experience of security. Thus, future research should continue to investigate how the number of shootings can affect perceived security.

Genom den rådande digitaliseringen påverkar nyhetskonsumtionen individers vardag och syn på brottslighet. I linje med ett ökat skjutvapenvåld i samhället är rädsla för skjutningar relaterat till nyhetskonsumtion ett relevant forskningsområde. Därmed var syftet med studien att undersöka om individens rädsla för skjutningar relaterat till gängkriminalitet har ett samband med nyhetskonsumtion och om det fanns en skillnad mellan män och kvinnor i deras rädsla för skjutningar relaterat till gängkriminalitet. Tidigare studier på området visade på att kvinnor är mer rädda för brott och skjutningar än män, samt att en ökad nyhetskonsumtion leder till större rädsla för skjutningar. En kvantitativ enkätundersökning genomfördes med ett urval som bestod av 119 personer (72 kvinnor och 47 män), mellan 19 och 71 år (M=27,7, SD=9,8). Resultatet visade inte några signifikanta samband mellan nyhetskonsumtion och rädsla för skjutningarna, inte heller några signifikanta skillnader i rädsla för skjutningar mellan män och kvinnor. Det kunde urskiljas en medelvärdesskillnad där kvinnor var mer rädda än män. Sammanfattningsvis har studiens resulterat till att belysa kunskapsgapet gällande rädsla för skjutningar specifikt och dess samband till individers nyhetskonsumtion, samt den bristande forskningen om män och kvinnors rädsla för skjutningar.

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