Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007 / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-64).

Also presented as the author's thesis (Diss.)--Universität Kassel, 2007 under the title: Zur Massenviktimisierung illegaler Migranten an den Aussengrenzen der Europäischen Union. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study is a content analysis of news articles of school shooting incidents that occurred within the United States between 1997 and 2012. This paper was designed to (a) address the current profile of school shooting offenders and offenses, (b) assess a proposed typology of school shootings, (c) consider common case processing characteristics for offenders of school shootings incidents, and (d) address the potential for offender and offense characteristics to affect the amount of media coverage an incident receives. The database of “Major School Shootings in the United States Since 1997” by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was used to compile a sample of 101 incidents in which a single offender committed a school shooting. To the extent possible, media accounts were used to corroborate details of each school shooting incident. Data pertaining to the offender characteristics, case processing characteristics, offense characteristics, characteristics regarding a typology, and media coverage characteristics were examined. The current profile and typology were, for the most part, upheld. Six variables proved to be significantly related to the total amount of media coverage an incident received: mental health history, school-related mass murder type, offender/victim type, total victims injured or killed, region of the U.S., and year of incident occurrence. Of these variables, three remained significant in a regression analysis: the school-related mass murder type, region of the U.S., and year of incident occurrence were predictive of the amount of media coverage an incident received. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Wayne Nafziger / This Master Thesis analyzes the factors that influence the occurrence of democide. The study focuses on a set of fifty three developing countries from 1960 to 2001. The dependent variable is democide and independent variables include: democide, International Monetary Fund (IMF) credits, consumer price index (CPI), gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, Gini index, military expenditures as a percentage of GDP, incidence of intrastate conflict, and democracy. An important limitation of the current literature has been the shortage of studies using yearly democide dataset. Even fewer of those studies strive to incorporate the actual number of people killed; instead they use democide as a dummy variable in their models. This study aims to fill this gap. The objective of this thesis is to answer an important question of whether the economic and social factors such as gross domestic product, IMF credits, income inequality, inflation, conflict history, and democracy play an important role in influencing murders by governments in the less developed and developing countries. The results when using democide as a dummy variable are consistent with the previous studies showing that conflict history and GDP per capita increase the likelihood of democides. This study also reveals that an increase in IMF funding last year can potentially lead to an increase in democide this year. Controlling for democracy does not have a significant effect on the regressions. The history of conflict remains statistically significant at one percent significance level in both fixed and random effect models using democide variable as an actual number of people killed regardless whether democracy variable is included or not. Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP also appear to be statistically significant at ten percent level. Even when IMF variable is replaced by IMF as a percentage of GDP and GDP per capita variable is replaced by a squared GDP, the history of conflict variables remain consistently statistically significant at one percent significance level in logit, probit, fixed, and random effect models.

This research explores the new tradition of creating mass murder memorials in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. Using written and oral history sources in combination with memorial designs, I explore the planning processes undertaken by five different communities: Virginia Tech, Columbine, University of Texas, Oklahoma City and Edmond, OK. I analyze what these case studies reveal about how changing cultural expectations and political needs transformed commemorative practices concerning violence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By exposing how the timely interventions of national figures increasingly shaped local commemorative aspirations, my research illuminates how the brief period of national unity in the immediate aftermath has been discursively and materially foregrounded as the heart of national public memory narratives of mass murder. I argue that at the turn of the twenty-first century the memory of victims of mass murders"assuming something akin to the role that fallen soldiers have played for the bulk of American history"are now viewed by a range of political, religious and cultural actors as a highly effective means of bolstering perceptions of local, organizational and national unity. This project contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on commemoration in three ways. First, I challenge the literature on memorials built in the immediate aftermath of violence and tragedy by illustrating how these memory sites are increasingly but the first stage of the material culture of public memory. Second, my theory of a ritualized assemblage develops the existing literature by forwarding a concept well suited to analyze the relationship of between seemingly disparate memory sites. Lastly, the rhetoric of what I call the Myth of the Slaughtered Citizen contributes to the literature on nationalism and commemoration by explaining how the victims of mass murder were culturally substituted into the commemorative role traditionally held by fallen soldiers to promote a sense of local and national unity. / Ph. D.

The role of exposure to a human-made disaster and the subsequent development of post-traumatic stress reactions were examined. Subjects included 49 males and 30 females who were variously exposed to the Luby's shooting incident in Killeen, Texas in October of 1991. Post-traumatic stress symptomatology was measured by the SCL-90R. Exposure was operationalized by using a scenario-rating scheme with independent raters estimating each subject's level of exposure. A regression and commonality analysis revealed that exposure is an important predictor in post-traumatic symptomatology. Premorbid functioning and gender were also found to play important roles, with females expressing higher levels of symptomatology.

The title of this thesis borrows the notion of ‘wounded space’ from anthropologist and historian Deborah Bird Rose. The work’s central aspiration is to initiate a conversation about the power and fate of physical settings of traumatic events, and, in particular, about the cultural work such places can be seen to perform in the contemporary Western world. My focus is on ‘traumascapes’ places that are traditionally described and understood as haunted. I use the notion of traumascapes as a means of historicising haunting and haunted places and of recognising them as an integral part of our landscapes and lived sociality. (For complete abstract open document)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. , 20. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references.

Many mass-shooters commit suicide. Both mass shooting and suicide has been linked to Strain Theory. Studies have shown that workplace shootings often occur after the shooter has been fired. Studies have found that school shooters often have been exposed to bullying and social exclusion. Research on mass shooters who are terrorists has yielded conflicting results. The purpose of this study was to examine which types of mass shootings that end with the perpetrator committing suicide. The sample consisted of 345 cases from the United States, as well as some high profile cases from other countries. The results showed that there is an association between the perpetrator's relationship to both the victim and the type of target, and that the perpetrator committing suicide. This has potential implications for the link between the mass shootings and Strain theory. Increased knowledge about this may contribute to more effective crime prevention strategies.

No description available.