UC Irvine

This dissertation explores the dynamics of who gets attention in the gun debate in the United States, how activists are covered by media, and why. Scholars of social movements consider activists to be strategic actors that strive to earn the attention and sympathy of different audiences. Media is a particularly important audience, serving as a gateway to broader publics. The existing literature focuses on how and why certain organizations and/or movements receive media coverage. However, less attention has been paid to how and why certain activists are featured in media coverage while others are excluded. To fill this gap, I identify when the gun debate receives media attention and collect newspaper articles from a diverse range of outlets during those moments. I also collect data to reflect how activists portray themselves in less-mediated venues, such as social media and organizational sites. To analyze this data, I manually coded these documents (n=2,417) using qualitative software atlas.ti to look for patterns in which activists get featured in media coverage, how they’re portrayed, and whether that portrayal aligns with their desired or preferred self-image, as communicated in less-mediated venues. The analysis demonstrates that between 2012 and 2020, mass shootings in Newtown, CT in December 2012; Orlando, FL in June 2016; and Parkland, FL in February 2018. After Newtown and Orlando, the activists who dominated coverage were leaders of large organizations speaking on behalf of their institutional status. The debate diversified, at least momentarily, after Parkland, and new kinds of activists were featured in coverage. This included activists who claims to standing—or their argument about why they deserve attention—were based in their personal experience of harm, experience of harm to a loved one, status as a student, and/or celebrity. This was also reflected in how the activists who earned coverage portrayed themselves in less-mediated venues, by characterizing themselves in ways other than their organizational affiliation and rank. This dissertation builds upon the literature on media coverage of social movements by investigating the factors and conditions that shape individual activists’ abilities and chances to earn media favorable media coverage. The findings suggest that journalistic and discursive norms can change over time, presenting different opportunities and constraints for activists to promote their cause. This is important for understanding how certain activists come to speak for movements, with or without the consent of major organizations and constituencies. This dissertation also builds our understanding of the gun debate, media coverage, and discourse surrounding guns and gun violence in the United States. This theoretical framework can also be applied to a range of other issue-debates, such as abortion, climate change, immigration, nuclear weapons, and more.