This research uses moral panic theory to investigate the ways in which print media coverage influences the association of mental illness with acts of mass violence in schools. I explore the relationship between the rhetoric of moral entrepreneurs (such as victims' friends and family members, law enforcement agencies, criminal justice and mental health professionals, gun rights activists, mayors, members of Congress, and presidents), the construction of a moral panic, and the identification of a folk devil (a person or population deemed responsible for the evils of a society; to be feared and controlled in order to minimize threat). Perpetrators of school shootings are often discussed in terms of their consumption of violent media (such as movies, music, and video games), their access to firearms, their social standing among their peers (socially isolated, ostracized, or bullied at school), and their mental health status. I hypothesize that mental illness has become a common frame in which school shooters are discussed by the media, despite the fact that mentally ill persons are less likely than non-disordered individuals to commit acts of violence. Therefore, this characterization of the mentally ill as violent and dangerous is disproportionate to the actual level of threat. I conduct a quantitative frame analysis of print newspaper articles published in the New York Times and one local newspaper during the month following each mass school shooting between 1991 and 2015, coding for the type of moral entrepreneur (grassroots, interest-group, or elite), the folk devil identified (violent media, firearms, social alienation, and/or mental illness), and whether the folk devil was being affirmed or denied. Results reveal that guns are affirmed as the folk devil more often than mental illness, but are also denied most often; whereas mental illness is affirmed nearly as often as guns, and is less frequently denied as the folk devil — leading to the conclusion that mental illness is the most frequently accepted folk devil associated with school shootings. This serves as a cautionary warning against the conflation of mental illness with mass shootings, because it intensifies the stigma attached to mental illness — a known deterrent to seeking treatment. / Ph. D.

This thesis examines the genesis of the derogative emo kid representation and considers the latent functions it initially served in being applied to visible categories of adolescent subculturalists on the behalf of participants within the wider punk subculture. Pulling from the work of Stanley Cohen in arguing that the emo kid representation be conceptualized as a subcultural folk-devil, this thesis argues for the applicability of a Bourdieuian theoretical framework in understanding the means in which subcultural authenticity is not only distributed throughout fields of subcultural participation, but within those spheres of communicative entertainment media in which subcultural knowledge is created, legitimized and disseminated. In offering a Foucaultian genealogy of the niche-mediated emo pseudo-genre, and highlighting its correlation with concurrent movements perceived as facilitating the mainstream colonization of the punk subculture, this thesis argues that the emo kid folk-devil was constructed and reified by virtue of an array of discursive measures based largely in online, micro-mediated forums - through which punk subculturalists vied to marginalize those emo kids so perceived as threatening the exclusivity of the punk subculture and the long-established symbolic economies contained therein. Finally, this thesis demonstrates the process through which this subcultural folk-devil was annexed into a wider socio-discourse concerning dangerous youth populations and, thus, came to be utilized in collusion with mass-mediated campaigns meant to perpetuate the political disempowerment of adolescent populations through the endorsement of representational politics.

This thesis examines the genesis of the derogative emo kid representation and considers the latent functions it initially served in being applied to visible categories of adolescent subculturalists on the behalf of participants within the wider punk subculture. Pulling from the work of Stanley Cohen in arguing that the emo kid representation be conceptualized as a subcultural folk-devil, this thesis argues for the applicability of a Bourdieuian theoretical framework in understanding the means in which subcultural authenticity is not only distributed throughout fields of subcultural participation, but within those spheres of communicative entertainment media in which subcultural knowledge is created, legitimized and disseminated. In offering a Foucaultian genealogy of the niche-mediated emo pseudo-genre, and highlighting its correlation with concurrent movements perceived as facilitating the mainstream colonization of the punk subculture, this thesis argues that the emo kid folk-devil was constructed and reified by virtue of an array of discursive measures based largely in online, micro-mediated forums - through which punk subculturalists vied to marginalize those emo kids so perceived as threatening the exclusivity of the punk subculture and the long-established symbolic economies contained therein. Finally, this thesis demonstrates the process through which this subcultural folk-devil was annexed into a wider socio-discourse concerning dangerous youth populations and, thus, came to be utilized in collusion with mass-mediated campaigns meant to perpetuate the political disempowerment of adolescent populations through the endorsement of representational politics.

Vår uppsats undersöker hur unga gängkriminella framställs på sociala medieforumet ”Flashback”, vilka subjektifierande effekter som uppstår inom diskursen såväl som vilka kriminalpolitiska åtgärder som aktualiseras utifrån dessa effekter. Vårt material omfattas av fyra trådar bestående av 198 kommentarer från plattformen som samtliga berör ungas involvering i gängkriminalitet. Vi belyser både det internationella liksom det nationella forskningsfältet, som alla berör konstruktionen av sociala samhällsproblem i relation till unga, invandrare och gängkriminella. I studien använder vi oss av paraplybegreppet andrefiering i dess allmänhet såväl som Garlands kriminalpolitiska utgångspunkter kring “självets kriminologi” respektive “kriminologin om den Andre”, för att förklara våra upptäckter. I trådarna åberopas det att Sverige numer blivit otryggt. Problemframställningen av unga gängkriminella förhåller sig inte särskilt mycket kring ungdomar, utan i stället är det invandrare och vänsterblockets politik som främst diskuteras vara orsaken till problemet. I framställningen av unga gängkriminella görs antagandet att de huvudsakligen är invandrarmän, vilka andrefieras i diskursen. Dessa tillskrivs stereotypiska egenskaper, som antas vara medfödda eller religiöst påverkade. Således konstrueras invandrare som ociviliserade gentemot den civiliserade svensken. I trådarna på Flashback åberopas straffåtgärder i form av förlängd inkapacitering och utvisning men även extremare våldsamma förslag tas upp, i form av tortyr och avrättning. Förslagen för hårdare tag grundar sig i en demoniserande porträttering av invandrare, då de upplevs ha orsakat den otrygghet i Sverige som åberopas i trådarna och att allt fler unga involveras inom gängkriminaliteten.