By: Peter Joseph Gloviczki
I am honored and delighted to share an update about ongoing research toward a third scholarly book. My research program considers news narratives and representation during and immediately following major media events, with a particular emphasis on the aftermath of school shootings.
The research is supported in part by a Joseph McKerns Research Grant, generously provided by the American Journalism Historians Association in 2021. Because of the COVID-19 public health pandemic, my research trip was delayed until 2024. Specifically, I visited the Vanderbilt Television News Archive (VTNA) at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. I first came to the VTNA in 2015 and I knew I wanted to return. The McKerns Research Grant made that return possible.
During my visit to the VTNA, I watched a host of long- and short- news narratives spanning the 1990s through the present-day, beginning with the Columbine School Shooting in Littleton, Colorado (1999), and continuing through the Robb Elementary School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas (2022). My work at the archive helped reveal similarities and differences in media coverage of school shootings across the last three decades. I am interested in legacy construction of and for victims of school shootings. 
Methodologically, I use interpretive, reflexive qualitative research methods. Data guide research questions in an inductive, ground-up approach. I diligently listen to news narratives. My chosen research methods include the case study research strategy, popularized by Robert K. Yin and Robert E. Stake, and autoethnography, as popularized by Norman K. Denzin, Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner, and textual analysis, as popularized by Earl Babbie. In theoretical terms, I have been inspired by uses and gratifications theory, as well as changing conceptions of the media audience during our more mobile and social digital era.
The VTNA provided a treasure trove of news and information spanning 1968 to the present day. The opportunity to sit with these narratives and think deeply lets me consider how and why events are (or are not) braided together in major media coverage. What themes are repeated across time, space and place? When certain themes do not endure, for what kinds of reasons might those themes fade? Archives like this are valuable for researchers who care deeply about media culture. Here, the stories of the past truly come alive.
My first book is Journalism and Memorialization in the Age of Social Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). My second book is Mediated Narration in the Digital Age (Nebraska, 2021). I expect to submit my third book for consideration to University of Nebraska Press, when it is ready. This research trip to the VTNA helped me make significant strides toward that goal. Where my first two books considered the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting and the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, respectively, I expect that my third book will consider the 2018 Parkland, Florida, shooting and the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, shooting.
I went to the VTNA with the desire to spend time listening closely to as many stories of victims’ families as possible, to listen for how families remember their loved ones. Over time, I am noticing how individuals who lost loved ones sometimes publicly speak about horrendous and seemingly unimaginable losses. What I heard when I listened was deeply moving, especially hearing the presence of deep and understandable anger in the voices of victims’ famil
ies. These testimonies also give voice to profound loss and trauma. I feel grateful for the opportunity to engage in this research, helping understand reportage about tragedies in American media culture.
Peter Joseph Gloviczki (Ph.D. Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, 2012) is a tenured professor at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. From July 2022 through June 2024, he chaired the Department of Broadcasting and Journalism. He is past president of the Carolinas Communication Association and past head of the Cultural and Critical Studies Division in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
