Communication Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-8-2026
Abstract
This study examines how routine digital media use shapes public blame attribution and prevention preferences following K-12 school shootings. Drawing on Mean World Syndrome (MWS) and research on doomscrolling, the study investigates whether habitual exposure to threatening and sensationalized content is associated with patterns of digital engagement and interpretations of responsibility for school shooting events. Using a nationwide survey of U.S. adults (N = 540), the study measured MWS, doomscrolling tendencies, political orientation, blame attribution, and engagement behaviors such as seeking information, sharing, and commenting on school violence–related content. Canonical correlation analyses indicate that higher levels of MWS and doomscrolling are associated with greater engagement across multiple digital media behaviors. In contrast, blame attribution is structured primarily by political ideology, with liberal respondents emphasizing gun policy and conservative respondents attributing responsibility to mental health and media influences. These findings suggest that while media-shaped worldviews influence how individuals engage with school shooting information, political ideology plays a dominant role in shaping public interpretations of responsibility and preferred prevention strategies. The study highlights how digital media environments contribute to the formation of public attitudes that influence criminal justice and school safety policy debates.
Recommended Citation
Lemanski, Jennifer L., and Gordon A. Crews. "Public Blame and Prevention Preferences Following K-12 School Shootings: Mean World Beliefs and Doomscrolling." American Journal of Criminal Justice (2026): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-026-09937-9
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
American Journal of Criminal Justice
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-026-09937-9
Comments
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.