Threats of Local School Violence Following National Media Coverage of a Violent Episode

In April 1999, 2 students entered Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, and launched an attack on their fellow students which left 13 dead before they killed themselves. The news media made this episode one of the most closely watched news events of the decade. In the days and weeks following, the media reported an increase in the number of threats of violence and widespread disruption of schooling. This study, by investigators from Hershey, PA, reported the temporal and demographic distributions of threats of school violence following media coverage of a violent episode involving a school. The authors examined records from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Association (PEMA) detailing reported threats of school violence in elementary, …