Here & Now

Post-Shooting Sentiments 'As Intense As They Are Fleeting'

Frederica Freyberg:

Response and reaction to yet more mass shootings is the subject of research out of the UW-Madison. In tonight’s inside look, how researchers looked at social media and specifically Twitter because of how it provides “an important window into the nature of public mourning and policy debates in the wake of these tragedies.” Results of the study appear in the Journal of Computer-mediated Communication and the authors say may add to our understanding why there is so little legislative success with gun control policies. The study’s lead researcher, Yini Zhang is here. And thank you very much for joining us.

Yini Zhang:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Your team analyzed about one million tweets about mass shootings over two years and you broke these tweets into three theme groups. Those being thoughts and prayers, gun control and defense of gun rights. How did the three themes stack up in terms of number of tweets in each category right after mass shootings?

Yini Zhang:

So depending on the method we used to analyze those tweets, I would say so the most tweets we saw was thoughts and prayers, because as you might see right after each shooting, there were like an outpouring. There was an outpouring of expression of sympathies in the form of thoughts and prayers. I would say that’s kind of like as intense as they were fleeting. Because they just peaked right after the mass shootings. But disappeared within one day. And then I would say the next would be the gun control and the gun rights. But depending on the method we used, so it varies.

Frederica Freyberg:

So I want to get deeper into that issue of the kind of the longevity in the Twittersphere and system of these different kinds of themes. You’re saying that the thoughts and prayers was kind of fleeting.

Yini Zhang:

Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:

Like one or two days?

Yini Zhang:

Yes. Surprising. So they just spiked immediately after the shooting, after a particular shooting, and then it stayed in the system, stayed in the Twitter system for just one day. And then kind of like disappeared.

Frederica Freyberg:

And then how does that compare to the gun control tweets?

Yini Zhang:

For gun control tweets, they lasted for about 35 days. So much longer period. However, this gun control dynamic, temporal dynamic, is eclipsed by the gun rights dynamic, which lasted for about 40 days.

Frederica Freyberg:

And you’re also saying in your report that not only did the defense of gun rights have lasting power in the Twitter system, but that it would kind of cycle back as well, where the other themes didn’t. Where if there was an anniversary or some kind of action or some kind of other news spike around the particular mass shooting?

Yini Zhang:

Yeah. The gun control tweets, we observed a cyclical pattern, for the gun control tweets. Probably due to the anniversary effect or weekly pattern of tweets. We observed more tweets during the weekdays and less during the weekends.

Frederica Freyberg:

How do you explain the difference in kind of the what I’m calling the longevity of these themes in the Twitter system? You know, how do you explain why the thoughts and prayers is so fleeting compared to the defense of gun rights.

Yini Zhang:

Mass shootings are tragedies. So the public tends to forget them really quickly. Also public attention tends to have really short span. So it’s unsurprising that those events can be forgotten very soon because other events will come up and people will shift their attention to those events.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, the researchers in this report say the signal about this sent to journalists and politicians is that the passion of gun rights supporters merits more attention and action. Is this why there is so little legislative success with gun control policies in the author’s mind?

Yini Zhang:

Yes. This is what we think kind of like social media explanation for the legislative stalemate for gun control. As you can see, the gun rights advocates have been really active on Twitter. They kept their voice loud and strong. And then that impression lead to the politician is that they’re resistant to change. So it might send a signal to politicians that we’re super resistant to change. We’re paying attention to any legislative actions. So here we are and you should pay attention to our concerns and listen to our voices. This is different from the gun control side, which is less organized and less — lasts shorter.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Yini Zhang, thanks very much for joining us. I know there’s more work around this research project going forward, but thank you very much.

Yini Zhang:

Thank you for inviting me.