Virginia Tech Massacre

Malkinson, T.J. In Remembrance. Engineering Management Society Newsletter. 57(2):1-2, 2007.
The Engineering Management Society honors those killed and expresses sympathy to their families, to those who carry on at Virginia Tech University and to the greater community worldwide.

The 1999 attack on Columbine High School by two of its students resulted in 15 dead and 24 wounded. The death toll might easily have been over forty times higher. An attempt is made to understand the motivations of the two shooters and to explain the critical events that changed them into mass murders. The history leading up to the attack is reviewed. A theory is proposed wherein virtual reality, as experienced in computer games, can act protectively in allowing the non-violent processing of rage and sexual impulses. However, when implementing time or content restrictions, caution is warranted. If such constraints are too blunt, too dismissive, or too contemptuous, one might provoke a potentially dangerous crisis.

Issue 72.3 of the journal American Imago featured four essays focused on grief and loss. The issue, titled "Memory and Remembrance: Essays in Psychoanalytic Autobiography," contains "Lockout: Spacing Trauma and Recovery in the Aftermath of the Virginia Tech Shootings," an essay written by Virginia Tech University faculty member Stefanie Hofer. She lost her husband, Jamie Bishop, on April 16, 2007 during the deadliest school rampage in the US history. Hofer joined us to talk about her post-traumatic writing and how it has helped her to persevere and heal.  http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/podcasts/20151121.mp3 Podcast transcript

Reflecting on the role that writing played in the recovery, the author describes the mourning process after loss of her husband during the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. She analysis how her traumatization was intensified by the interaction with the public. The private and tranquil space of her home is portrait as the center of mourning and healing. Through writing she regained emotional control in and over literary and figurative spaces of traumatization which enabled her gradual reintegration into the public life.

Using my own healing from the trauma of losing my husband during the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, I argue that viewers can use TV as an individualized tool for emotional strengthening. By offering a wide variety of programs in the safe space of my home TV enabled me to comfort my emotional needs at different stages of my healing and recovery. The HGTV show House Hunters helped me with separating external triggers from internal turmoil and reacquainting myself with decision making thereby preparing me to reconnect with the outside world. My repulsion of fiction caused by the need for moral witnessing in the aftermath of trauma was challenged by the HBO series Treme. The show, as I accentuate, entails many features of moral witnessing despite being categorized as a (documentary) fiction. Furthermore, its fictional components allow the viewer to access the inaccessible--the trauma caused by Hurricane Katrina--without risking exploitation of personal memories and intrusion of privacy. Ultimately, Treme paved the way for my return to fiction, a source of pleasure of my pre-April 16 self. Hence, television gave me the freedom to explore my post-traumatic feelings at my own pace thereby assisting the growth of the ability to become in control of my emotions again.

The following research aims at identifying the differences between cyberterrorism and hacktivism. In traditional media, both terms have been used as synonymous. Furthermore, in academia there is still no consensus upon the definition of both of these terms. As a result, there is still an unclear understanding of both phenomenona.

Through concept analysis, the study discusses different definitions and approaches to both ideas. Authors of the conceptualisation range from civil society, academics and formal institutions. After identifying the key components of hacktivism and cyberterrorism, through a qualitative case study, three different net disruption cases are studied. The cases selected are: the digital Zapatistas and FloodNet, Ferizi’s hacking trial and Operation Payback and Avenge Assange. All of the cases were selected due to their notoriety, impact and importance in the field.

Thus, this study seeks to contribute to the current literature and discussion about net disruption, through a critical point of view.

(Trinity College Dublin Thesis for  M.Sc. Computer Science - Interactive Digital Media Thesis. Grade:  1.1, British grading system)

This essay offers a counter-reading of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, a controversial video game about the infamous school shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 in which players adopt the roles of the shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebod. Focusing on the game’s unique procedural rhetoric, we argue that SCMRPG! juxtaposes interactive, non-realistic violence–reflected in a campy nineties video game aesthetic–with photographic evidence, extant dialogue, and a detailed narrative of the tragic events at Columbine to promote critical thought about gun violence generally and school shootings in particular. The essay concludes with a brief reflection of the vital that role video games can play in critical pedagogy.

Today’s society is saturated with media content, from classical literature to modern video games, and this content often contains depictions of violence. Some academics have argued that there is direct causal relationship between consuming media violence and having violent thoughts and/or acting out on these thoughts, and have attempted to prove this hypothesis by conducting the necessary research. The results of this research have been used by some as evidence when making claims that tragic and violent media spectacles, such as the Virginia Tech (VT) massacre, are caused by the amount of media violence that people (in particular young people) are exposed to. This research has been heavily criticised by fellow academics for a number of reasons. This essay will explore the ‘media effects’ model – what the model proposes, what the research so far has revealed about the effects of violent media, and the criticisms leveled against the theory. The VT massacre will be used as a case study to add to the discussion – the essay will begin with a brief description of the event, followed by an analysis of the media effects model.