Appearance Cues and The Shooting at Columbine High-2
Appearance Cues and The Shooting at Columbine High-2
Appearance Cues and The Shooting at Columbine High-2
Blackwell
Oxford,
Sociological
SOIN
2002
0038-0245
10February
72
Original
Appearance
Jennifer
00 AlphaUK
Paff
Article
2003
Publishing
Cues
Inquiry
Ogle
Kappa
and
et al.
Delta
Ltd
the Shootings at Columbine High: Construction of a Social Problem in the Print Media
During the 1990s, school grounds across the United States were the sites
of student violence injuring or killing students and school personnel (Cannon,
Streisand, and McGraw 1999). The most destructive such act to date in terms of
fatalities occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colorado, an affluent suburb of Denver (Cannon, Streisand, and McGraw 1999).
On this day, two Columbine students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, used
gunfire to claim their own lives as well as those of 12 students and one
teacher. Numerous others sustained injuries as a result of shots fired by Harris
and Klebold or from explosions of bombs planted in the school by the two boys.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed the Columbine shootings, the
national and local media devoted considerable attention to the coverage of this
act of school violence. By the first anniversary of the shootings, the two major
newspapers in the Denver metropolitan area had published over 1,000 articles
about it. From the outset, media coverage of the event forged linkages between
this school shooting and appearance cues, with numerous references to the
appearances of the gunmen and their alleged associates, the appearances of their
victims, and the appearances of myriad others who were somehow implicated as
either involved in or affected by the incident at Columbine High. Suddenly,
claims, or the arguments proposed, are not held as objective truths; rather,
they are viewed as a part of rhetoric, or claims-makers attempts to persuade
others of the validity of their claims (Best 1987, 1989). Presumably, it is through
these persuasion tactics that the trick of social construction is carried out,
in that at least some messages are eventually taken for granted as real or
true. Thus, although constructionists are interested in the content of
claims made by varied constituents, they are also keenly interested in how
those claims are made, by whom, and for what possible purpose (see Best
1987).
Best (1989) distinguishes between two types of claims-makers: primary
and secondary. According to Bests conceptualization, claims-making begins
when primary claims-makers, or individuals with special knowledge (e.g.,
experts, victims, witnesses), draw attention to an issue in an attempt to incite
awareness or change. Media coverage of primary claims-making activities
(especially those launched by nonexperts) may facilitate efforts to highlight an
issue. However, the media do not merely restate claims, transmitting them to a
larger audience (Best 1989). The conventions of the mass media transform
claims (see Altheide 1985; Altheide and Snow 1979; Best 1989). As such,
according to Best (1989), the mass media are secondary claims-makers.
As secondary claims-makers, then, the media play a key role in interpret-
ingthat is, reinterpretingand disseminating claims to a broad audience.
Although journalists may seek to be objective in their reporting, media con-
tent is rhetoric in that its form and content necessarily reflect a certain set of
motives and values, which scholars have referred to as media logic (Altheide
1985; Altheide and Snow 1979). For instance, in the case of newspaper articles,
media writers face rigid length restrictions and thus may state concepts or ideas
simply and conclusively. Media writers also may cite multiple others in an
attempt to lend the impression that their story was thoroughly researched (Best
1989). Further, in describing a crisis situation such as a school shooting, media
writers may be pressured by either the public or their superiors to present
answers or to provide resolution or solutions, which also may shape the resulting
article (Altheide and Michalowski 1999).
Claims presented in the media play a key role in ordering and maintaining
audience perceptions of social reality. Media messages may cultivate certain
perceptions among readers (Gerbner et al. 1978), and thus may shape the ways
in which readers define situations and interpret the world around them (Altheide
and Michalowski 1999). Specifically, media messages may shape what readers
think about (Shaw and McCombs 1977). For example, media messages related
to violence have been shown to cultivate the perception that the world is a scary
or dangerous place (Gerbner and Gross 1976; Signorelli and Gerbner 1988;
Signorelli, Gerbner, and Morgan 1995). Recent work suggests that such media
4 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.
messages are quite prevalent: from their analysis of print and television media,
Altheide and Michalowski (1999) concluded that fear is a common theme
embedded in contemporary news reports. In turn, viewer attitudes cultivated or
reinforced by the media may shape public policy related to violence or crime
(Altheide and Michalowski 1999). Messages that aptly echo the zeitgeist, or
that reflect deeply held or typified (i.e., taken-for-granted) meanings of the
cultural context, may be those that are most firmly embraced by the readers
(Eco 1979; Fiske and Hartley 1978; Manning and Cullum-Swan 1994). In fact,
media writers may attempt to tap into these values as they formulate their
reports: Altheide and Michalowski (1999) suggested that the medias use of fear
as a discourse may be an attempt to capitalize upon deeply held American values,
such as the safety of the nations children and the entertainment orientation of
US culture (i.e., fear as entertainment).
In the present research, we built upon the work reviewed in this article by
exploring the medias representation of an act of violence perpetrated by and
against American youth. As noted, we focused upon the medias implication of
appearance cues as relevant to this crime. More specifically, our work was
guided by the following research questions: How and why did the media craft
the Columbine shootings as an appearance-related social problem? What role
did primary and secondary claims-makers play in constructing the shootings
in this manner? How, according to claims presented in the media, did this
construction of the shootings affect those who were implicated as either key or
tangential players in the crime or in broader appearance-related social
problems? Did those affected by the medias claims launch counterclaims in
their defense? If so, how was this dialogue played out in the media? These
issues are important to explore. Media reach a broad audience, offer coverage
of primary claims-making, and have the potential to shape the ways in which
viewers define reality or, as here, a specific social problem (i.e., the why
behind the Columbine shooting). The role of claims presented in the media may
have been especially pivotal in constructing the reality of the Columbine
shootings, as those with the most primary or expert knowledge of the incident
(i.e., Harris and Klebold) did not survive and thus played a very minor role in
1
constructing an explanation for their actions. Further, and as noted, media
coverage may shape public policy developed in response to a perceived social
problem (Altheide and Michalowski 1999).
Like that of Best (1989) and ONeal (1997), our work focused upon both
the form and the content of media texts. With respect to form, we explored
issues such as (a) the varied voices represented, (b) the types of information
provided by these sources or claims-makers, and (c) the possible motives of
these sources or claims-makers. Analyses of media content focused upon
the description or conceptualization of the shootings at Columbine as an
APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 5
Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach and the constant
comparative process (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990). Data
were coded, or broken down, conceptualized, and put back together in new
ways (Strauss and Corbin 1990, p. 57). First, the researchers engaged in con-
cept identification, searching for varied and discrete meanings among the data.
These concepts were then compared against one another. Through this com-
parison process, the researchers were able to discover similarities among concepts
and group them together under higher-order, more abstract concepts referred to
as categories (Strauss and Corbin 1990). These categories were developed
into a coding guide that was then applied to the data during the process of
open coding (Strauss and Corbin 1990).
This research was conducted to discover theoretical conceptions emerging
directly from the data and also to explore the relevance of an existing theoretical
perspectiveconstructionismto the data. In keeping with the constructionist
tradition, coding and analyses focused not only upon the content of claims
presented, but also upon the process by which these claims were made, includ-
ing who made them and for what possible reason. For the purposes of this
research, primary claims included quoted information attributed to a specific
individual or group. Examples of primary claims-makers included students
(witnesses, victims), parents of victims or Columbine students, law enforce-
ment officials, members of subcultural groups linked to the shootings, and
citizens who wrote letters to the editor. Secondary claims were defined as those
made by journalists, including professional media writers such as reporters and
editorialists.
During the final stages of analysis, the researchers used axial and selective
coding processes (Strauss and Corbin 1990) to explore (a) relationships among
themes discovered within the data and (b) the fit between the constructionist
perspective and the data. To facilitate the coding and data-analysis processes,
the researchers used the Nonnumerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching
and Theorizing (NUDIST) computer program (1997).
To establish the trustworthiness and dependability of data coding and ana-
lysis, the researchers met throughout the coding process. At these meetings,
meanings of and relationships among various concepts and categories were
discussed and explored until mutual understanding was achieved. During the
open coding process, an additional coder audited category assignments of text
to review the fit between the categories composing the coding guide and the
data. Disagreements regarding application of the coding guide were negotiated
between the authors and the audit coder. Due to the high interrater reliability
coefficient (94.8 percent), the review process was terminated after approxim-
ately 20 percent of the data (32 randomly selected newspaper features, including
articles and editorials) had been audited.
APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 7
Results
What follows is a discussion of themes that emerged from this rhetorical
analysis. Themes are presented as they relate to the stages of the problems
construction in the media, or how it was that appearance became part of
the Columbine problem. Throughout the discussion, attention is focused
upon both the form and the content of claims made. Where appropriate, the
use of counterclaims is discussed. Table 1 presents a summary of the themes
discussed.
Bringing Appearance into the Discussion
Reconstructing the Crime. Within hours of the Columbine shootings, the
medias construction of the crime as an appearance-related social problem had
begun. The initial media reports related to this incident were rife with quotes
and interpretations focusing upon the appearances of both the gunmen and their
victims. By April 22, 1999 (two days after the shootings), the DP and the RMN
had published 31 and 22 references to the appearances of the gunmen and their
victims, respectively.
The majority of the initial references to the appearances of the gunmen
were made by primary claims-makers, particularly Columbine students, who
provided first-hand accounts of the shooting. At the time, little was known
about the incident, and the gunmen had yet to be identified. Media writers
apparently invoked these accounts to assist in reconstructing for their readers
the details of this mysterious and horrific event. For the most part, these earliest
accounts were descriptive in nature, yielding little explanation for the gunmens
dress:
Sophomore Amanda Stair, 15, was in the library when the shooting started. She also heard
what sounded like grenades going off. We hid under different tables, Stair said. Two guys
in black trench coats walked in. They said Get up, or they would shoot us. ( RMN 4/20/99)
Numerous witnesses (i.e., primary claims-makers) who were quoted in the two
newspapers echoed Stairs account of two gunmen, each wearing a black trench
coat. Within days, however, a discrepancy emerged among the witnesses stories:
some reported seeing a gun-wielding youth in a white T-shirt. This claim moved
the content of claims-making beyond description to a new levelthat of
theory-building. Soon, media writers staged secondary claims in which they
referenced the notion, apparently proposed by law enforcement officials, that a
third gunman might have been involved in the incident:
Some students reported seeing two gunmen in black trench coats. Others said one of the teen-
agers wore a white tee-shirtlaunching speculation that at least one person besides Harris and
Klebold was involved. One of the two dead teenagersit wasnt clear which onewas wearing
a white shirt and did not have a trench coat on when officers found his body Tuesday. He
Table 1
8
Summary of Themes Related to the Construction of the Columbine Shootings as an Appearance-Linked Social Problem
I. Bringing Appearance
into the Discussion
Students make claims about A. Reconstructing the Crime Media writers (a) cover/validate
appearances of gunmen primary claims to reconstruct crime,
(trench coats, tee) and victims (b) begin to theorize about crime, and
(white hats, skin color). (c) magnify claim that ethnicity was
used to target victims.
Students make claims asserting B. Moving beyond Media writers make claims (a) that
(a) their fear of gunmen and Reconstruction: Building a trench coats are symbols of
(b) that gunmen wore trench Foundation for Further violence/the profane and (b) that
coats regularly. Hypotheses the gunmen wore symbols of violence
regularly.
II. Locating Cause: How
Can Appearance Explain
Why This Happened?
A. Subcultural-Group Claim Media writers make claims (a) that link
gunmen to Trench Coat Mafia and the
Trench Coat Mafia to Goths,
neo-Nazis, etc. and (b) that validate
appearance as a cue to violence.
Table 1 (continued)
Students make claims (a) that B. Social-Tensions/Revenge Media writers cover/validate primary
9
10
JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.
Table 1 (continued)
may have shed the coat during the attack, Davis [a law enforcement official] said.
(RMN 4/25/99)
Once the possibility of a third gunman was made public, the newspaper media
became a venue for musing about who else might have been involved in the
crime. In this vein, hypotheses (i.e., claims) about additional suspects were posed
in the form of secondary claims. As we will discuss, these claims were often
based upon perceived similarities between the appearances of the gunmen and
the appearances of those identified as additional suspects in the shootings.
Early news reports concerning the victims appearances also featured
claims made by witnesses to the crime, once again in an apparent attempt to
describe for readers the events of April 20, 1999. Several students, most of
whom were in the Columbine library during the shooting, were quoted as
saying that Harris and Klebold had targeted athletes or jocks in their shooting
spree. According to these primary accounts, the gunmen had ascribed jock
status to students who were wearing white baseball hats:
Meanwhile, Brittany Bollerud, 16, hid under a library table and saw only the gunmens shoes
and long trench coats. They yelled, This is revenge, she said. They asked people if they
were jocks. If they were wearing a sports hat, they would shoot them. (DP 4/21/99)
They said, All jocks are dead. All jocks stand up. Any jock wearing white baseball caps
stand up! said sophomore Joshua Lapp, who was in the library [during the shooting]. (RMN
4/27/99)
In one article, a student was quoted as suggesting that ethnicity had also played
a role in the gunmens selection of victims:
They shot a black kid. They called him a nigger. They said they didnt like niggers, so they
shot him in the face. (DP 4/21/99)
Quotes from three other students supported the claim that the shooters had
made racial slurs during the shooting, but these students did not intimate that
the killers used ethnicity as a mechanism with which to select their victims.
Intermingled with and alongside of the student accounts of the gunmens
actions were the interpretations of media writers. In the days following the
shooting, comments made by several media writers reiterated the notion that
Harris and Klebold had targeted both athletes and ethnic minorities in their act
of violence, despite the fact that only one witness had indicated that ethnicity
played such a role:
The masked shooters first targeted specific victims, especially ethnic minorities and athletes
and then randomly sprayed the school hallways about 11:30 a.m. with bullets and shotgun
blasts witnesses said. The bloody rampage spanned four hours. (DP 4/21/99)
That at least some readers embraced the claim that appearance cues, such as
white hats and skin color, were used by the killers to target victims is clear from
12 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.
the following quotes, published nearly a year apart. The first remark was made
by the father of a Columbine student and was published two days after the
shooting. The second comment was made on the anniversary of the shooting by
a grade-school child.
Im just glad that Valerie didnt have her cheerleading uniform on, he said. . . . I know
they would have targeted the cheerleaders. (RMN 4/22/99)
Does anybody know what happened last year? [said a teacher to her class]. I know
what happened, two boys shot some kids. . . . They shot Isaiah because he was black.
(DP 4/21/00)
Trouble at Columbine. Gunshots. Suddenly, existence boiled down to what mattered most.
And strange kids in trench coats were threatening to yank it away. (DP 4/21/99)
The story is tragic and its heartbreaking and its got kids wearing trench coats who spout
German and who are called Goths and who kill their classmates. (RMN 5/2/99)
The trench coat walked up and shot the boy point blank in the back. ( DP 4/21/99, 4/22/99)
In discussing the dress of Harris and Klebold, media writers also drew
upon pre-existing meanings that had been linked to trench coats in other
cultural contexts. Several reporters suggested that Harris and Klebold might
have chosen to wear trench coats on the day of the shootings because characters
APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 13
in films such as The Matrix or The Basketball Diaries had donned similar
garments to commit acts of gun-related violence:
The Columbine shooting suspects, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, favored trench coats like
the one DiCaprio wears [in The Basketball Diaries]. (RMN 4/23/99)
In the enormously popular new movie Matrix, Keanu Reeves wears a black duster and battles
the forces of evil with two-fisted bursts of gunfire. He stages an attack on the conspiracy
that has turned his life into a living hell. The movie already is being mentioned as a possible
source of influence on the Trench Coat Mafia, two of whose members entered Columbine
High School Tuesday carrying weapons and wearing long black coats. (RMN 4/22/99)
Similarly, another media writer suggested that Harris and Klebold had modeled
their April 20 appearances after Kip Kinkel, an Oregon boy who had worn a
black trench coat while killing one classmate and injuring 23 others on his
school campus in 1998. Here, then, media writers presented trench coats as
props already suffused with dark meanings and selected by the gunmen to
help them take on their roles as adolescent killers, much like a recent col-
lege graduate might use an interview suit to help him/her fulfill the role of
interviewee (see Wicklund and Gollitzer 1982). The following text, which
describes Harris entry into the school immediately before the rampage, imparts
this notion of the trench coat as a role dress for violence:
As [Brooks Brown, a Columbine student] stood outside a door that leads to the cafeteria, Eric
Harris came up the walk. Gone was the flannel shirt [that Harris had been wearing earlier that
day], replaced by a long, black trench coat. (RMN 4/25/99)
Taken together, then, these media reports created an image of two young
men who routinely adorned themselves in symbols of violence, both before and
during the shootings at Columbine. These (largely secondary) claims seemingly
established a pattern of potential for violence that led up to the shootings. And
14 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.
it was this association between the gunmens dress and violence that provided
the platform from which media writers began to construct more speculative
claims in which appearance was presented as a cause of the shootings.
Locating Cause: How Can Appearance Explain Why This Happened?
Within the first week after the shooting, entire articles were devoted to
the appearances of the gunmen and related others. References to appearance
were no longer provided simply as details germane to the Columbine incident;
appearance had become a media story in its own right. The apparent thesis of
many of these appearance-focused reports was the location of cause for the
shootings: media attention had switched from what the gunmen and their
victims were wearing to why they were wearing it and how it might have
contributed to their act of violence. In seeking to understand and/or explain the
shootings at Columbine, three claims were invoked with respect to appearance:
the subcultural-group claim, the social-tensions/revenge claim, and the dress-
as-facilitator claim.
The Subcultural-Group Claim. Soon after the shooting, claims made by
media writers linked Harris and Klebold to a variety of adolescent subcultures
whose membership was symbolized in part by appearance cues. Most often,
these secondary claims identified the gunmen as members of the Trench Coat
Mafia, a group of Columbine outcasts who were said to wear black trench coats,
embrace violence and hatred, and worship death. In several instances, secondary
claims also drew linkages between the Trench Coat Mafia and other subcultures,
primarily the Goths, Marilyn Manson fans, satanic cults, and neo-Nazi groups.
Frequently, media writers augmented their claims with loose references to
information sources (e.g., fellow students, experts), perhaps in an attempt
to add credibility:
Fellow students describe the shooting suspects as part of a clique of generally quiet, brood-
ing outcasts with penchants for dark trench coats, shaved heads, and militant armbands.
By several accounts, the group also is interested in the occult, mutilation shock-rocker
Marilyn Manson and Adolf Hitler, whose birthday was Tuesday [the day of the shooting].
(DP 4/21/99)
Masked gunmen Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, are said to have hung out with
the so-called mafia, a small, self-styled group drawing on the satanic Goth scene and
neo-Nazi paramiltarism. Underlying both those subcultures, experts say, are preoccupation
with death, feelings of being misunderstood and isolated, and often unspeakable anger.
Classmates say Klebold and Harriswho apparently killed themselveswore swastikas
and worshipped Adolf Hitler. Some say their clique drove hearses, tested friendships by
cutting each other with knives, engaged in endless hours of macabre Internet chatter and
relished a bloody fantasy game called Doom on their computers. Several Columbine
students say the group idolized Marilyn Manson, who claims to be a satanic priest. ( DP
4/22/99)
APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 15
bag kind of supplies. . . . Have your childrens personalities changed in troubling ways? Have
you dismissed these changeshow they look, act, as just normal changes that come with
being a child? (DP 4/26/99)
That this taunting contributed to the gunmens dislike for the jocks is reflected
in claims staged by both students and media writers about comments made by
the gunmen during their shootings:
[During the shootings, Harris and Klebold] kept saying jocks made them feel like outcasts.
Then they said they were going to the cafeteria to get more people, said Todd. (RMN 4/22/99)
This is for all of the people who made fun of us all these years, the two boys in trench coats
said, laughing as they opened fire. (DP 4/23/99)
boys had endured. The following claims, indicative of this rhetoric, were made
by a Columbine student and an employee at a coffee house catering to the Goth
crowd:
They [Harris and Klebold] seemed to have their own way of doing things. People made fun
of them, and when I heard someone say they wanted revenge, I said, That makes sense.
(DP 4/21/99)
But employees and patrons of the Rising Phoenix coffee house in Arvada also tried to
understand how teenage outcasts can feel persecuted by a mainstream culture that cannot
tolerate their dress, hairstyle, or other statements of individuality. The kids who did this,
something had to push them, said David Hundley, a disc jockey at the Rising Phoenix.
(DP 4/22/99)
As we will discuss, the claims that the boys had concealed weapons underneath
their coats would play a key role in the shaping of public policy aimed at remedy-
ing the Columbine problem.
Further, claims made by members of the Goth and Trench Coat Mafia
communities and other primary claims-makers (e.g., school employees, business-
people serving the Goth community, representatives of the American Civil
Liberties Union [ACLU]) suggested that individuals in these groups were
alarmed and angry that others would implicate them as involved in the
shootings. To defend the honor of and to protect individuals who had
been implicated as somehow involved in the Columbine shootings, a variety
of counterclaims were submitted by varied claims-makers to challenge
previous accusations of guilt by association. For instance, counterclaims
were made to distance subcultural group members from Harris and Klebold
and their act of violence. To this end, members of the Trench Coat Mafia
denied the claim that Harris and Klebold were actively involved in this
clique. Typically, these counterclaims were presented as secondary, in that they
represented a media writers version of a primary claim but not the primary
claim itself:
The teen said Harris and Klebold were less socially active than other mafia members. From
the outside, he said, they must have seemed part of the group because of their black trench
coats and their similar Goth style of dress. But, speaking from the inside, he said they really
werent members [of the Trench Coat Mafia]. Although they sometimes hung with the mafia
in Columbines commons and shared sneers at the jocks, he recalled, they ate at a separate
lunch table and led separate lives. (DP 4/24/99)
APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 19
Several claims-makers disputed the allegation that members of the Trench Coat
Mafia and/or the Goths embraced violence or the hatred of others. These claims
were often submitted by members of these groups or by those who associated
with them. However, as in the second quote below, secondary claims-makers
also offered their version of this claim:
Theyre [the Goths] not violent. Theyre not racist. Theyre not into the whole hate mental-
ity, said Sweet [a researcher who had studied Goth culture]. (DP 4/22/99)
The two Columbine gunmen embraced some Goth trappings but also embraced racism and
violence that most in the Goth world reject. (DP 5/10/99)
We have three or four kids who wear the long black trench coats, but they are actually great
kids. Its a fashion thing, said Ann Bailey, principal at Jefferson High School in Denver. (DP
4/21/99)
claims were advanced by students (or their parents) whose dress had been
regulated after the Columbine shooting:
Neil [an Englewood student who was ticketed for the wearing of Gothic-style accessories],
for his part, said, I should be able to express myself however I want, to wear whatever I
want, as long as its not hurting anybody. (DP 4/23/99)
Finally, those opposing dress codes intimated that such a solution was a
superficial and unrealistic way to address the acts of violence executed by
Harris and Klebold. As suggested by the following excerpt from a letter to the
editor of the DP, these claimants perceived that a real solution to the Columbine
problem would need to address more serious issues than appearance (this
sentiment also was used as a counterclaim in the backlash against the con-
struction of Columbine as an appearance problem):
If Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had been wearing Denver Broncos jerseys with No. 7 on
the back, would school systems be so quick to ban those? This banning of trench coats is a
ridiculous response promoted by people who refuse to deal with the real underlying causes
of violence. (DP 4/24/99)
The new patches are meant to spotlight a critical concept that emerged from the
Columbine siege and to promote it universally, in a way that speaks to all students and all
adults, officials said. (DP 8/4/99)
Finally, the media content about the report validated counterclaims ques-
tioning not only the gunmens involvement in the Trench Coat Mafia but also
the claim that members of the group behaved violently or advocated the hatred
of others:
APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 23
MYTH 3: Harris and Klebold were members of the Trench Coat Mafia. FACT: The Trench
Coat Mafia was a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing, Kiekbusch said, not an organized group
or clique. The group was composed of about a dozen students, mostly social outcasts who
hung out together. Their picture appeared in the 1998 Columbine yearbook. But Harris and
Klebold werent in the picture and they werent part of the group, Battan and Kiekbusch
said. They did wear black, Western-type dusters into the school, but only as a way to hide
their weapons. (DP 3/12/00)
In fact, according to secondary claims made about the report, Harris and
Klebold did not regularly cloak themselves in symbols associated with violence
or the Goth culture; rather, they appeared outwardly normal, [sharing] their
dark side only with each other (DP 5/16/00). This claim seemingly under-
mines earlier (secondary) claims suggesting that a childs appearance can be
used as a reliable indication of his/her proclivity to behave in an antisocial or
violent way.
As such, through media coverage, both primary and secondary claims-
makers were able to amend their previous claims about what happened in
Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and why it happened. As a result of
these amendments, the overarching claim that appearance had played a key role
in the Columbine shootings was perhaps diminished to the acknowledgement
that the gunmen had been teased by other students, sometimes about their
appearances, and that they had hidden their weapons underneath their trench coats
during the siege. However, it would seem that by the time the Sheriff s Office
released the report, Columbine had already been constructed as an appearance-
related problem; in the months prior, multiple reports had confirmed claims that
appearance had, in fact, contributed to the crime. Further, the solutions pro-
posed and adopted to resolve the Columbine issue were based upon these ini-
tial claims that crime was an appearance-related problem. As such, for at least
some readers or claims-makers, the relative impact of the Columbine Report in
constructing the Columbine problem may have been somewhat overshadowed
by the initial claims that were deconstructed within the Report.
Discussion and Conclusions
Constructionism was an effective framework for analyzing media repres-
entations of the Columbine shootings as an appearance-linked social problem.
As the data in Table 1 indicate, claims made by both primary and secondary
claims-makers drew linkages between this incident of youth violence and
appearance. The content and nature of these claims varied according to the
stage of the problems construction. For instance, in stages I and II, primary
claims-makers provided eyewitness accounts of experiences related to the
Columbine incident or observations about the Columbine gunmen. In stages III
and V, primary claims-makers launched claims and/or counterclaims to dispute
allegations or to revise prior claims about the problem, and in stage IV, these
24 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.
Indeed, the growing body of evidence that claims highlighted and created
by the media may have an impact on public policy constitutes a call for continued
research related to the medias role in the construction and explanation of
issues as social problems. Further work might focus upon other issues, such
as the role of appearance in date rape cases or the use of appearance cues to
ascertain a criminal suspects possible guilt or innocence. An exploration of the
relevance of constructionism to other issues negotiated within the context of the
media may further illuminate the process by which claims may shape audience
perceptions of social reality as well as public policy proposed or adopted in
response to these claims. In turn, building such a body of empirical findings
would facilitate further theory development related to the medias role in the
social construction of reality.
ENDNOTES
* Direct correspondence to: Colorado State University, 150 Aylesworth SE, Fort Collins,
CO 80523-1575; e-mail: [email protected].
1
Some claims made by Harris and Klebold were published posthumously in the Denver Post
and the Rocky Mountain News.
2
Tuchman (1973) describes three different types of news stories: hard news (the presentation
of facts about events perceived as newsworthy), continuing news (continued coverage of an event
or series of events that take place over a time period), and feature stories (human interest stories).
3
Circulation figures were taken from DP and RMN listings on the Nationwide Newspapers
E-Commerce Website.
4
The DP did not feature coverage of the Columbine shooting in its April 20, 1999 edition; the
DP is a morning paper, and the shooting occurred after the April 20, 1999 edition was published.
The RMN, an afternoon paper, did feature coverage of the shootings in its April 20, 1999 edition.
These RMN features (i.e., those dated April 20, 1999) were included in the present analysis.
5
Unlike Best (1989) and ONeal (1997), we do not argue that the medias construction of
the Columbine shootings as appearance-related totally precluded dialogue related to social change;
the media did feature primary and secondary claims related to gun control and made in response
to the shootings. We suggest, however, that the medias focus upon appearance shaped some of the
solutions offered and may have diminished attention allocated to other issues that may contribute to
youth violence.
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