Examining Racial and Spatial Disparities in Harmful News Media Reporting on Community Firearm Violence - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Community firearm violence (CFV), defined as fatal and non-fatal shootings that result from interpersonal violence, disproportionately impacts people from minority populations and occurs predominantly in communities with high rates of poverty and disinvestment. News media play a crucial role in shaping how the public and policy makers understand and respond to health threats, including firearm violence. Media typically present CFV through episodic crime reports, focused on single shooting events that depict violence as a “crime” issue, which can lead audiences to blame victims, reinforce stereotypes, and undermine public health responses. Our preliminary study with firearm-injured people identified that episodic crime narratives of their shootings felt dehumanizing to them and added to their trauma. Despite emerging research indicating that harmful reporting on CFV is a threat to public health, there is no consensus definition of harmful reporting on CFV, no instruments to measure harmful reporting on CFV, and no existing research on racial and spatial disparities in harmful reporting on CFV. These disparities are important to uncover, because if present, then modifying media approaches to limit harmful reporting is a potential target for minimizing disparities in CFV incidence, and for CFV prevention. Past experience with suicide reporting indicates that when evidence-based journalistic guidelines are implemented, they can reduce harmful reporting, prevent suicide, and have a positive impact on public health. The proposed research will reduce existing gaps in scientific knowledge and contribute evidence to inform development of journalistic guidelines for reporting on CFV through the following specific aims: (1) Define harmful reporting on CFV. We will identify media approaches that are potentially harmful using the Delphi technique to achieve consensus among stakeholders identified in collaboration with partners at a community-based organization. (2) Develop and pilot a novel instrument to measure harmful reporting on CFV. We will measure the frequency and severity of harmful reporting elements identified in Aim 1 through iterative codebook development and content analysis of an existing dataset of Philadelphia television (TV) news coverage of CFV. (3) Evaluate racial and spatial disparities in harmful reporting on CFV. We will examine associations between shooting victim demographics, shooting location characteristics, and measures of harmful reporting. We hypothesize that TV news reports of firearm-injured young Black men who are shot in census block groups with higher rates of poverty will contain more harmful elements than reports of other firearm-injured people and places. Consistent with the strategic goals of the NIMHD, this study will be the first to define and measure disparities in harmful reporting on CFV. We will establish the groundwork for a future R01 multi-city study to examine direct associations between harmful reporting and the incidence of CFV and to develop and test media approaches that minimize disparities in reporting and support public health responses to CFV.
