Terrorizing the Masses: Identity, Mass Shootings, and the Media Construction of «Terror» New edition [Pehme köide]

Through an insightful and engrossing analysis, Ruth DeFoster uncovers stunning media bias. Mass shootings committed by Arab or Muslim Americans are labeled as terrorism and receive exponentially more coverage than those committed by white men. The evidence is clear and the misrepresentation alarming. You will never think of mass shootings in the same way again. Evelyn Alsultany, Director of Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan; Author of Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 In Terrorizing the Masses, Ruth DeFoster analyzes how news media framed five mass shootings occurring over the span of two decades. Given the rarity of these events, DeFoster cogently argues that U.S. news media create the frameworks through which we come to know such events and thus determine political, social, and cultural responses to these terrible acts of gun violence. In this important book, DeFoster does not shy away from the difficult questions her analysis raises, particularly in terms of what it is about U.S. culture (and mass shootings, as she takes pains to remind us, are a peculiarly U.S. phenomenon) and its racialized masculinities that create conditions in which such violence continues to occur. Carol Stabile, Professor and Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, University of Oregon