When gunfire erupts on campuses across the country, media outlets seeking data-informed context often turn to UCLA Luskin Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor, one of the nation’s leading scholars of school violence.
For decades, Astor had believed that the key to preventing school shootings was to invest heavily in social-emotional learning, trauma-informed care, counseling, and other efforts to make schools safer and more welcoming.
While these measures have had great benefits for students and communities, school shootings have not declined. Now, Astor says he has come to a painful realization that much of the violence has been driven by another factor: the perpetrators’ craving for fame and notoriety.
“What was missed, I believe, was that each shooter wanted to make sure that this was national. Their No. 1 audience was the media,” Astor told the Hechinger Report following a presentation of his findings at this year’s American Educational Research Association annual meeting.
Astor compares school shootings to suicide contagions or spates of terrorism, where extensive publicity can inspire copycats. He calls on journalists and social media companies to adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims.
“If we want to see a reduction in school shootings, we need to work with the media.”
