How sensationalized media coverage of the Columbine High School shootings created a new fear of alienated white youth is the subject of research published by a Sonoma State University professor.
Professor Benjamin Frymer wrote "The Media Spectacle of Columbine: Alienated Youth as an Object of Fear" in the American Behavioral Scientist 2009 as part of its special issues on the 10th anniversary of the high school shootings in Colorado.
The Colorado high school massacre occurred on April 20, 1999 and is considered the deadliest for an American high school. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 23 others, before committing suicide.
Frymer is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at SSU and specializes in the study of alienated youth in schools. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at UCLA about the Columbine High School tragedy.
Frymer says "Although the perception of unruly and violent youth has historically generated a larger fear of young people in American life, especially since the 1950s, the media coverage of the Columbine shootings created a new fear and reality of "alienated youth" run amok."
Analysis of both print and television media shows that the Columbine killers were turned into representatives for an entire category of youth, the "alienated" who could no longer be understood, trusted or controlled, he says.
"The mass media created a spectacle of youth, one which continues in 10th anniversary coverage, in which American youth as a population were demonized and therefore further estranged from American society," Frymer says.
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