Appearance Cues and the Shootings at Columbine High:

Blackwell
Oxford,
Sociological
SOIN
2002
0038-0245
10February
72
Original
Appearance
Jennifer
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Paff
Article
2003
Publishing
Cues
Inquiry
Ogle
Kappa
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Delta
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the Shootings at Columbine High: Construction of a Social Problem in the Print Media

Construction of a Social Problem in the Print Media*

Jennifer Paff Ogle, Colorado State University

Molly Eckman, Colorado State University
Catherine Amoroso Leslie, Kent State University

In this study, we used an interpretive approach to examine print media (newspaper)

representations of the relationship between appearance and the 1999 shootings at
Columbine High School in Colorado. Our work was guided by the social constructionist
definition of a social problem. Grounded theory analyses revealed that both primary
and secondary claims-makers staged claims and/or counterclaims contributing to the
construction of Columbine as an appearance-linked social problem. The content and
form of these claims varied according to the stage in the construction of the problem.
Further, although both primary and secondary claims were made with respect to the con-
ceptualization of the problem, an explanation for it, and solutions to it, the roles of
primary and secondary claims-makers in constructing the problem varied. Implications
of claims made within the media and related to the role of appearance in the shootings
are considered, and a call is made for future work in this area.

During the 1990s, school grounds across the United States were the sites
of student violence injuring or killing students and school personnel (Cannon,
Streisand, and McGraw 1999). The most destructive such act to date in terms of
fatalities occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colorado, an affluent suburb of Denver (Cannon, Streisand, and McGraw 1999).
On this day, two Columbine students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, used
gunfire to claim their own lives as well as those of 12 students and one
teacher. Numerous others sustained injuries as a result of shots fired by Harris
and Klebold or from explosions of bombs planted in the school by the two boys.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed the Columbine shootings, the
national and local media devoted considerable attention to the coverage of this
act of school violence. By the first anniversary of the shootings, the two major
newspapers in the Denver metropolitan area had published over 1,000 articles
about it. From the outset, media coverage of the event forged linkages between
this school shooting and appearance cues, with numerous references to the
appearances of the gunmen and their alleged associates, the appearances of their
victims, and the appearances of myriad others who were somehow implicated as
either involved in or affected by the incident at Columbine High. Suddenly,

Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 73, No. 1, February 2003, 127

2003 Alpha Kappa Delta
2 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

appearance became a variable in the Columbine investigationor, more pre-

cisely, a variable in the print medias interpretation of the incident, the ensuing
investigation, and the publics reaction to the incident and investigation.
In this article, we use an interpretive approach to explore print media
(newspaper) representations of the relationship between appearance and the
tragedy at Columbine High School. Like ONeal (1997), who examined print
media presentations of the phenomenon of violence to acquire fashion apparel
(e.g., killing for clothes), our work is guided by the social constructionist
definition of a social problem. Of particular interest to us is the process by
which the print media transformed the Columbine incident into an appearance
issue, or a social problem linking school violence to appearance. Further, we
are interested in examining the role of the popular press as a public forum for
negotiating meanings about various appearances.
Guiding Theoretical Concepts: Constructing Social Problems
through Claims-Making
According to the constructionist framework, knowledge is subject to and
the product of social forces. In the well-known words of Berger and Luckmann
(1966), knowledge is socially constructed. That is, knowledgeor the categor-
ies of understandingis created by people through interactions and socializa-
tion (and in turn, this knowledge shapes people). These socially constructed
categories reflect the commonsense world as people know it (Berger and
Luckmann 1966, p. 19) and are real to those who create and share meanings.
In this way, knowledge (i.e., reality) is at once subjective (i.e., reflective of
the ideas of those who construct and embrace it) and objective (i.e., perceived
as true).
Scholars have invoked these basic tenets of constructionism to develop a
sociological theory of social problems. Unlike the objectivist perspective, the
constructionist formulation of social problems does not focus upon the con-
ditions associated with or labeled as social problems (Ibarra and Kitsuse 1993;
Schneider 1985; Spector and Kitsuse 1977). Rather, constructionists are inter-
ested in exploring (a) how social actors conceptualize an issue as a social prob-
lem (i.e., what is the problem about?) and (b) how they go about constructing
this issue as a social problem in the eyes of others (i.e., how their reality
becomes shared) (Ibarra and Kitsuse 1993). To this end, constructionists
explore the claims-making activities that allow for the discursive reproduction
of social problems (Ibarra and Kitsuse 1993, p. 22).
Claims-making refers to the activities of individuals and groups who make
assertions or grievances about an issue (Spector and Kitsuse 1977). Typically,
claims are assumed to reflect the interests of the social actors or constituents
who make them (see Best 1987). Thus, from a constructionist perspective,
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 3

claims, or the arguments proposed, are not held as objective truths; rather,
they are viewed as a part of rhetoric, or claims-makers attempts to persuade
others of the validity of their claims (Best 1987, 1989). Presumably, it is through
these persuasion tactics that the trick of social construction is carried out,
in that at least some messages are eventually taken for granted as real or
true. Thus, although constructionists are interested in the content of
claims made by varied constituents, they are also keenly interested in how
those claims are made, by whom, and for what possible purpose (see Best
1987).
Best (1989) distinguishes between two types of claims-makers: primary
and secondary. According to Bests conceptualization, claims-making begins
when primary claims-makers, or individuals with special knowledge (e.g.,
experts, victims, witnesses), draw attention to an issue in an attempt to incite
awareness or change. Media coverage of primary claims-making activities
(especially those launched by nonexperts) may facilitate efforts to highlight an
issue. However, the media do not merely restate claims, transmitting them to a
larger audience (Best 1989). The conventions of the mass media transform
claims (see Altheide 1985; Altheide and Snow 1979; Best 1989). As such,
according to Best (1989), the mass media are secondary claims-makers.
As secondary claims-makers, then, the media play a key role in interpret-
ingthat is, reinterpretingand disseminating claims to a broad audience.
Although journalists may seek to be objective in their reporting, media con-
tent is rhetoric in that its form and content necessarily reflect a certain set of
motives and values, which scholars have referred to as media logic (Altheide
1985; Altheide and Snow 1979). For instance, in the case of newspaper articles,
media writers face rigid length restrictions and thus may state concepts or ideas
simply and conclusively. Media writers also may cite multiple others in an
attempt to lend the impression that their story was thoroughly researched (Best
1989). Further, in describing a crisis situation such as a school shooting, media
writers may be pressured by either the public or their superiors to present
answers or to provide resolution or solutions, which also may shape the resulting
article (Altheide and Michalowski 1999).
Claims presented in the media play a key role in ordering and maintaining
audience perceptions of social reality. Media messages may cultivate certain
perceptions among readers (Gerbner et al. 1978), and thus may shape the ways
in which readers define situations and interpret the world around them (Altheide
and Michalowski 1999). Specifically, media messages may shape what readers
think about (Shaw and McCombs 1977). For example, media messages related
to violence have been shown to cultivate the perception that the world is a scary
or dangerous place (Gerbner and Gross 1976; Signorelli and Gerbner 1988;
Signorelli, Gerbner, and Morgan 1995). Recent work suggests that such media
4 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

messages are quite prevalent: from their analysis of print and television media,
Altheide and Michalowski (1999) concluded that fear is a common theme
embedded in contemporary news reports. In turn, viewer attitudes cultivated or
reinforced by the media may shape public policy related to violence or crime
(Altheide and Michalowski 1999). Messages that aptly echo the zeitgeist, or
that reflect deeply held or typified (i.e., taken-for-granted) meanings of the
cultural context, may be those that are most firmly embraced by the readers
(Eco 1979; Fiske and Hartley 1978; Manning and Cullum-Swan 1994). In fact,
media writers may attempt to tap into these values as they formulate their
reports: Altheide and Michalowski (1999) suggested that the medias use of fear
as a discourse may be an attempt to capitalize upon deeply held American values,
such as the safety of the nations children and the entertainment orientation of
US culture (i.e., fear as entertainment).
In the present research, we built upon the work reviewed in this article by
exploring the medias representation of an act of violence perpetrated by and
against American youth. As noted, we focused upon the medias implication of
appearance cues as relevant to this crime. More specifically, our work was
guided by the following research questions: How and why did the media craft
the Columbine shootings as an appearance-related social problem? What role
did primary and secondary claims-makers play in constructing the shootings
in this manner? How, according to claims presented in the media, did this
construction of the shootings affect those who were implicated as either key or
tangential players in the crime or in broader appearance-related social
problems? Did those affected by the medias claims launch counterclaims in
their defense? If so, how was this dialogue played out in the media? These
issues are important to explore. Media reach a broad audience, offer coverage
of primary claims-making, and have the potential to shape the ways in which
viewers define reality or, as here, a specific social problem (i.e., the why
behind the Columbine shooting). The role of claims presented in the media may
have been especially pivotal in constructing the reality of the Columbine
shootings, as those with the most primary or expert knowledge of the incident
(i.e., Harris and Klebold) did not survive and thus played a very minor role in
1
constructing an explanation for their actions. Further, and as noted, media
coverage may shape public policy developed in response to a perceived social
problem (Altheide and Michalowski 1999).
Like that of Best (1989) and ONeal (1997), our work focused upon both
the form and the content of media texts. With respect to form, we explored
issues such as (a) the varied voices represented, (b) the types of information
provided by these sources or claims-makers, and (c) the possible motives of
these sources or claims-makers. Analyses of media content focused upon
the description or conceptualization of the shootings at Columbine as an
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 5

appearance-linked social problem, the explanation provided for the problem,

and solutions offered to alleviate the problem.
Method
An interpretive approach was used to explore print media interpretations
of the role of dress in the Columbine incident. Newspaper articles (including
hard news stories, continuing news stories, and feature stories)2 and editorials
(including op-ed commentaries by media writers and letters to the editor)
addressing the Columbine incident were collected from the two major news-
papers in the Denver area, the Denver Post (DP) and the Rocky Mountain News
(RMN). These newspapers have estimated daily readerships of 413,730 and
481,065, respectively,3 and readership extends beyond the Denver area, making
them regional newspapers. Further, because of Littletons proximity to Denver,
both of these papers provided ongoing and detailed coverage of the event and
related investigation.
Data were collected in several waves that reflected the flow and ebb of
events related to the Columbine investigation and the corresponding media
coverage. A total of 1,051 articles and 211 editorials related to the Columbine
incident were identified. The first and most extensive wave of data included
articles and editorials dating from April 20, 1999,4 (the day of the shooting) through
July 1, 1999, at which time newspaper attention devoted to the Columbine
incident temporarily subsided. Data also were collected from newspapers dated
as follows:

1. August 4, 1999the date on which the Colorado High School Activities

Association unveiled the plan for RESPECT patches;
2. December 1314, 1999the two days after the release of an exclusive
issue of Time magazine focusing upon the content of five home videos
made by the gunmen recounting their experiences at Columbine and
their plotting of and explanation for the events of April 20, 1999;
3. March 12, 2000the day when the media published leaks about the
content of the not-yet-released Columbine Report containing conclu-
sions drawn from the Columbine investigation;
4. April 1921, 2000the first anniversary of the shootings; and
5. May 16, 2000the day after the Jefferson County Sheriff s Office
released the Columbine Report.

Next, articles and editorials related to appearance were identified, and

appearance-related text was excerpted and transcribed for analysis. The result-
ing sample included text from 142 articles (75 from the DP, 67 from the RMN )
and 13 editorials (10 from the DP, 3 from the RMN).
6 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach and the constant
comparative process (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990). Data
were coded, or broken down, conceptualized, and put back together in new
ways (Strauss and Corbin 1990, p. 57). First, the researchers engaged in con-
cept identification, searching for varied and discrete meanings among the data.
These concepts were then compared against one another. Through this com-
parison process, the researchers were able to discover similarities among concepts
and group them together under higher-order, more abstract concepts referred to
as categories (Strauss and Corbin 1990). These categories were developed
into a coding guide that was then applied to the data during the process of
open coding (Strauss and Corbin 1990).
This research was conducted to discover theoretical conceptions emerging
directly from the data and also to explore the relevance of an existing theoretical
perspectiveconstructionismto the data. In keeping with the constructionist
tradition, coding and analyses focused not only upon the content of claims
presented, but also upon the process by which these claims were made, includ-
ing who made them and for what possible reason. For the purposes of this
research, primary claims included quoted information attributed to a specific
individual or group. Examples of primary claims-makers included students
(witnesses, victims), parents of victims or Columbine students, law enforce-
ment officials, members of subcultural groups linked to the shootings, and
citizens who wrote letters to the editor. Secondary claims were defined as those
made by journalists, including professional media writers such as reporters and
editorialists.
During the final stages of analysis, the researchers used axial and selective
coding processes (Strauss and Corbin 1990) to explore (a) relationships among
themes discovered within the data and (b) the fit between the constructionist
perspective and the data. To facilitate the coding and data-analysis processes,
the researchers used the Nonnumerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching
and Theorizing (NUDIST) computer program (1997).
To establish the trustworthiness and dependability of data coding and ana-
lysis, the researchers met throughout the coding process. At these meetings,
meanings of and relationships among various concepts and categories were
discussed and explored until mutual understanding was achieved. During the
open coding process, an additional coder audited category assignments of text
to review the fit between the categories composing the coding guide and the
data. Disagreements regarding application of the coding guide were negotiated
between the authors and the audit coder. Due to the high interrater reliability
coefficient (94.8 percent), the review process was terminated after approxim-
ately 20 percent of the data (32 randomly selected newspaper features, including
articles and editorials) had been audited.
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 7

Results
What follows is a discussion of themes that emerged from this rhetorical
analysis. Themes are presented as they relate to the stages of the problems
construction in the media, or how it was that appearance became part of
the Columbine problem. Throughout the discussion, attention is focused
upon both the form and the content of claims made. Where appropriate, the
use of counterclaims is discussed. Table 1 presents a summary of the themes
discussed.
Bringing Appearance into the Discussion
Reconstructing the Crime. Within hours of the Columbine shootings, the
medias construction of the crime as an appearance-related social problem had
begun. The initial media reports related to this incident were rife with quotes
and interpretations focusing upon the appearances of both the gunmen and their
victims. By April 22, 1999 (two days after the shootings), the DP and the RMN
had published 31 and 22 references to the appearances of the gunmen and their
victims, respectively.
The majority of the initial references to the appearances of the gunmen
were made by primary claims-makers, particularly Columbine students, who
provided first-hand accounts of the shooting. At the time, little was known
about the incident, and the gunmen had yet to be identified. Media writers
apparently invoked these accounts to assist in reconstructing for their readers
the details of this mysterious and horrific event. For the most part, these earliest
accounts were descriptive in nature, yielding little explanation for the gunmens
dress:
Sophomore Amanda Stair, 15, was in the library when the shooting started. She also heard
what sounded like grenades going off. We hid under different tables, Stair said. Two guys
in black trench coats walked in. They said Get up, or they would shoot us. ( RMN 4/20/99)

Numerous witnesses (i.e., primary claims-makers) who were quoted in the two
newspapers echoed Stairs account of two gunmen, each wearing a black trench
coat. Within days, however, a discrepancy emerged among the witnesses stories:
some reported seeing a gun-wielding youth in a white T-shirt. This claim moved
the content of claims-making beyond description to a new levelthat of
theory-building. Soon, media writers staged secondary claims in which they
referenced the notion, apparently proposed by law enforcement officials, that a
third gunman might have been involved in the incident:
Some students reported seeing two gunmen in black trench coats. Others said one of the teen-
agers wore a white tee-shirtlaunching speculation that at least one person besides Harris and
Klebold was involved. One of the two dead teenagersit wasnt clear which onewas wearing
a white shirt and did not have a trench coat on when officers found his body Tuesday. He

Summary of Themes Related to the Construction of the Columbine Shootings as an Appearance-Linked Social Problem
Role of Primary Claims-Maker
Students make claims about
appearances of gunmen
(trench coats, tee) and victims
(white hats, skin color).
Students make claims asserting
(a) their fear of gunmen and
(b) that gunmen wore trench
coats regularly.
Table 1
Stage in Problem Construction
I. Bringing Appearance
into the Discussion
A. Reconstructing the Crime
B. Moving beyond
Reconstruction: Building a
Foundation for Further
Hypotheses
II. Locating Cause: How
Can Appearance Explain
Why This Happened?
A. Subcultural-Group Claim
8
JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.
Role of Secondary Claims-Maker
Media writers (a) cover/validate
primary claims to reconstruct crime,
(b) begin to theorize about crime, and
(c) magnify claim that ethnicity was
used to target victims.
Media writers make claims (a) that
trench coats are symbols of
violence/the profane and (b) that
the gunmen wore symbols of violence
regularly.
Media writers make claims (a) that link
gunmen to Trench Coat Mafia and the
Trench Coat Mafia to Goths,
neo-Nazis, etc. and (b) that validate
appearance as a cue to violence.

Role of Primary Claims-Maker
Students make claims (a) that
gunmen disliked and were
teased by jocks and (b) that
teasing may have led to violence.
Subcultural groups make
counterclaims after media links
them to crime and they face
harassment. Counterclaims
made: (a) Trench Coat Mafia/
Goths are not violent and
(b) appearance cannot be used
as a cue to predict violence.
Table 1 (continued)
Stage in Problem Construction
B. Social-Tensions/Revenge
Claim
C. Dress-as-Facilitator Claim
III. Staging a Backlash:
The Media as Forum for
Counterclaims
Role of Secondary Claims-Maker
Media writers cover/validate primary
APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH
claims to explain actions of gunmen.
Media writers make claim that
trench coats facilitated crime
allowed gunmen to hide weapons.
Media writers cover/validate
primary claims, and also present
claim that gunmen may not have
been active in the Trench
Coat Mafia.
9
 10
JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.
Table 1 (continued)

Role of Primary Claims-Maker Stage in Problem Construction Role of Secondary Claims-Maker

IV. Proposing Solutions to

the Columbine Problem

Parents and schools propose Media writers cover/validate

student dress regulation. Parents, primary claims.
school officials, and students
make claims for and against the
proposal. Employees of Colorado
High School Association propose
RESPECT patches in response
to social-tensions claim.
V. Clarifying and Revising
the Issues: The Columbine Report
Interviewees make claims to Media writers draw from
revise prior claims. Report contents and interviews
to revise prior claims.
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 11

may have shed the coat during the attack, Davis [a law enforcement official] said.
(RMN 4/25/99)

Once the possibility of a third gunman was made public, the newspaper media
became a venue for musing about who else might have been involved in the
crime. In this vein, hypotheses (i.e., claims) about additional suspects were posed
in the form of secondary claims. As we will discuss, these claims were often
based upon perceived similarities between the appearances of the gunmen and
the appearances of those identified as additional suspects in the shootings.
Early news reports concerning the victims appearances also featured
claims made by witnesses to the crime, once again in an apparent attempt to
describe for readers the events of April 20, 1999. Several students, most of
whom were in the Columbine library during the shooting, were quoted as
saying that Harris and Klebold had targeted athletes or jocks in their shooting
spree. According to these primary accounts, the gunmen had ascribed jock
status to students who were wearing white baseball hats:
Meanwhile, Brittany Bollerud, 16, hid under a library table and saw only the gunmens shoes
and long trench coats. They yelled, This is revenge, she said. They asked people if they
were jocks. If they were wearing a sports hat, they would shoot them. (DP 4/21/99)

They said, All jocks are dead. All jocks stand up. Any jock wearing white baseball caps
stand up! said sophomore Joshua Lapp, who was in the library [during the shooting]. (RMN
4/27/99)

In one article, a student was quoted as suggesting that ethnicity had also played
a role in the gunmens selection of victims:
They shot a black kid. They called him a nigger. They said they didnt like niggers, so they
shot him in the face. (DP 4/21/99)

Quotes from three other students supported the claim that the shooters had
made racial slurs during the shooting, but these students did not intimate that
the killers used ethnicity as a mechanism with which to select their victims.
Intermingled with and alongside of the student accounts of the gunmens
actions were the interpretations of media writers. In the days following the
shooting, comments made by several media writers reiterated the notion that
Harris and Klebold had targeted both athletes and ethnic minorities in their act
of violence, despite the fact that only one witness had indicated that ethnicity
played such a role:
The masked shooters first targeted specific victims, especially ethnic minorities and athletes
and then randomly sprayed the school hallways about 11:30 a.m. with bullets and shotgun
blasts witnesses said. The bloody rampage spanned four hours. (DP 4/21/99)

That at least some readers embraced the claim that appearance cues, such as
white hats and skin color, were used by the killers to target victims is clear from
12 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

the following quotes, published nearly a year apart. The first remark was made
by the father of a Columbine student and was published two days after the
shooting. The second comment was made on the anniversary of the shooting by
a grade-school child.
Im just glad that Valerie didnt have her cheerleading uniform on, he said. . . . I know
they would have targeted the cheerleaders. (RMN 4/22/99)

Does anybody know what happened last year? [said a teacher to her class]. I know
what happened, two boys shot some kids. . . . They shot Isaiah because he was black.
(DP 4/21/00)

Moving beyond Reconstruction: Building a Foundation for Further Hypo-

theses. Soon after the media had established what the gunmen had looked
like on the day of the shooting, they began to focus more and more attention upon
both the meanings of these appearances as well as the everyday appearances
of the two boys. At this stage, which was still within days of the shooting,
media writers played an active role in establishing or validating the black
trench coat as a symbol of violence and the profane. This end was accom-
plished through a variety of claims-making activities. As we will discuss,
these early claims were important because they provided the foundation for
subsequent claims made about the role of appearance in the shootings.
In some cases, trench coats were imbued with negative meanings merely
by linking them with Harris and Klebold, who in turn, had been characterized
by media writers as somehow antisocial or deviant:

Trouble at Columbine. Gunshots. Suddenly, existence boiled down to what mattered most.
And strange kids in trench coats were threatening to yank it away. (DP 4/21/99)

The story is tragic and its heartbreaking and its got kids wearing trench coats who spout
German and who are called Goths and who kill their classmates. (RMN 5/2/99)

In other instances, claims were used to project assumed negative character-

istics of Harris and Klebold onto the garments cloaking their bodies during the
rampage. For example, on both April 21, 1999, and April 22, 1999, DP writers
invoked a quotation from Columbine senior Wade Frank, whose reference to
one of the killers as the trench coat personified trench coats, imparting a
sense of malice and evil to these inanimate objects:

The trench coat walked up and shot the boy point blank in the back. ( DP 4/21/99, 4/22/99)

In discussing the dress of Harris and Klebold, media writers also drew
upon pre-existing meanings that had been linked to trench coats in other
cultural contexts. Several reporters suggested that Harris and Klebold might
have chosen to wear trench coats on the day of the shootings because characters
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 13

in films such as The Matrix or The Basketball Diaries had donned similar
garments to commit acts of gun-related violence:
The Columbine shooting suspects, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, favored trench coats like
the one DiCaprio wears [in The Basketball Diaries]. (RMN 4/23/99)

In the enormously popular new movie Matrix, Keanu Reeves wears a black duster and battles
the forces of evil with two-fisted bursts of gunfire. He stages an attack on the conspiracy
that has turned his life into a living hell. The movie already is being mentioned as a possible
source of influence on the Trench Coat Mafia, two of whose members entered Columbine
High School Tuesday carrying weapons and wearing long black coats. (RMN 4/22/99)

Similarly, another media writer suggested that Harris and Klebold had modeled
their April 20 appearances after Kip Kinkel, an Oregon boy who had worn a
black trench coat while killing one classmate and injuring 23 others on his
school campus in 1998. Here, then, media writers presented trench coats as
props already suffused with dark meanings and selected by the gunmen to
help them take on their roles as adolescent killers, much like a recent col-
lege graduate might use an interview suit to help him/her fulfill the role of
interviewee (see Wicklund and Gollitzer 1982). The following text, which
describes Harris entry into the school immediately before the rampage, imparts
this notion of the trench coat as a role dress for violence:
As [Brooks Brown, a Columbine student] stood outside a door that leads to the cafeteria, Eric
Harris came up the walk. Gone was the flannel shirt [that Harris had been wearing earlier that
day], replaced by a long, black trench coat. (RMN 4/25/99)

In addition, references to the everyday dress of Harris and Klebold began

to appear in the news within a week of the shooting. Media writers infused their
reports with claims that Harris and Klebold had regularly sported not only
trench coats, but berets and T-shirts emblazoned with swastikas and German
slogans as well. Although media writers often cited students as the source of
this information (students said), these claims were secondary in that they
were not the direct words of a primary claims-maker (i.e., a student). Some
students, however, were quoted as saying that they had been frightened of
Harris and Klebold, in part because of their dress. Further, media writers
referenced student comments that demonstrated a pattern in the dress of the
gunmen and a linkage of this dress to the act of violence they committed:
Junior Chris Reilly said when he heard that the two gunmen wore black trench coats, he had
five students in mind. Eric and Dylan were two of them, he said. (RMN 4/22/99)

Taken together, then, these media reports created an image of two young
men who routinely adorned themselves in symbols of violence, both before and
during the shootings at Columbine. These (largely secondary) claims seemingly
established a pattern of potential for violence that led up to the shootings. And
14 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

it was this association between the gunmens dress and violence that provided
the platform from which media writers began to construct more speculative
claims in which appearance was presented as a cause of the shootings.
Locating Cause: How Can Appearance Explain Why This Happened?
Within the first week after the shooting, entire articles were devoted to
the appearances of the gunmen and related others. References to appearance
were no longer provided simply as details germane to the Columbine incident;
appearance had become a media story in its own right. The apparent thesis of
many of these appearance-focused reports was the location of cause for the
shootings: media attention had switched from what the gunmen and their
victims were wearing to why they were wearing it and how it might have
contributed to their act of violence. In seeking to understand and/or explain the
shootings at Columbine, three claims were invoked with respect to appearance:
the subcultural-group claim, the social-tensions/revenge claim, and the dress-
as-facilitator claim.
The Subcultural-Group Claim. Soon after the shooting, claims made by
media writers linked Harris and Klebold to a variety of adolescent subcultures
whose membership was symbolized in part by appearance cues. Most often,
these secondary claims identified the gunmen as members of the Trench Coat
Mafia, a group of Columbine outcasts who were said to wear black trench coats,
embrace violence and hatred, and worship death. In several instances, secondary
claims also drew linkages between the Trench Coat Mafia and other subcultures,
primarily the Goths, Marilyn Manson fans, satanic cults, and neo-Nazi groups.
Frequently, media writers augmented their claims with loose references to
information sources (e.g., fellow students, experts), perhaps in an attempt
to add credibility:
Fellow students describe the shooting suspects as part of a clique of generally quiet, brood-
ing outcasts with penchants for dark trench coats, shaved heads, and militant armbands.
By several accounts, the group also is interested in the occult, mutilation shock-rocker
Marilyn Manson and Adolf Hitler, whose birthday was Tuesday [the day of the shooting].
(DP 4/21/99)

Masked gunmen Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, are said to have hung out with
the so-called mafia, a small, self-styled group drawing on the satanic Goth scene and
neo-Nazi paramiltarism. Underlying both those subcultures, experts say, are preoccupation
with death, feelings of being misunderstood and isolated, and often unspeakable anger.
Classmates say Klebold and Harriswho apparently killed themselveswore swastikas
and worshipped Adolf Hitler. Some say their clique drove hearses, tested friendships by
cutting each other with knives, engaged in endless hours of macabre Internet chatter and
relished a bloody fantasy game called Doom on their computers. Several Columbine
students say the group idolized Marilyn Manson, who claims to be a satanic priest. ( DP
4/22/99)
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 15

By drawing these sorts of linkages between the gunmen and subcultures

associated with interests and appearances outside of the mainstream, media writers
offered one explanation as to the why behind this shooting. In effect, the associ-
ation of the gunmen with these groups necessarily cast them as outside of the norm,
or, more specifically, as not normal or as deviant. Implicit here was the notion
that normal kidsthat is, those who did not associate with these underground
cultures and who did not embrace antisocial values such as hatredwould not or
could not commit the acts of violence undertaken by Harris and Klebold. Perhaps,
however, kids drawn into the violent underworld of the Trench Coat Mafia or the
Goths could do such a thing. This conclusion and the constructed discrepancy
between normal and not normal that likely fed into it was underscored by
media writers, who drew contrasts between appearance norms embraced by the
Littleton community and those exhibited by the gunmen and their clique:
Indeed, the communitys corporate office parks, its strip malls, bike trails, and housing tracts
contrast with the nefarious, nonconformist image the clique chose. [Littleton], if it were an
article of clothing, would be a pastel sundress or Pat Nixons respectable Republican wool
coat compared to the dark trench coats the mafia took as its moniker. (DP 4/22/99)

An important implication of claims alleging that Harris and Klebold were

affiliated with groups who embraced violence and who adopted group-specific
appearances was the suggestion that appearance could be used as a reliable pre-
dictor of ones proclivity for violence. The validity of the appearance-violence
correlation may have been underscored by secondary claims providing cover-
age of incidents in which law enforcement officialsperhaps acting upon the
belief that a third gunman was still at largearrested, detained, or questioned
innocent citizens whose appearances were similar to those of Harris, Klebold,
or subcultural group members with whom the two had been linked:
A teenager was sent to the police station for wearing black clothing. (DP 5/10/99)
A riveted nation watched Tuesday as heavily armed police descended on three teens dressed
in black coats and boots near Columbine High. While two gunmen shot students inside the
school, the three teens were handcuffed as suspects. (RMN 4/26/99)
Investigators said they havent cleared three boot- and black-coat-clad teenagers detained in
the confusion after the shooting. (RMN 4/27/99)

The supposed usefulness of appearance in recognizing potential danger or

violence was further highlighted when the media published checklists to
admonish readers to be on the alert for the warning signs of violence such as
the wearing of trench coats, the adoption of nonmainstream appearances, or
general changes in childrens appearances. The following comments of a DP
media writer were characteristic of this sort of claim:
Think of this as a new school supply checklist for parents, guardians, and anyone who is
keeping watch over a child or several children. Forget the notebook, pencil, calculator, book
16 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

bag kind of supplies. . . . Have your childrens personalities changed in troubling ways? Have
you dismissed these changeshow they look, act, as just normal changes that come with
being a child? (DP 4/26/99)

Indeed, the notion that potentially violent youth could be recognized or

identified by something as readily apparent as appearance may have provided
some sense of control for a community anxious to understand and remedy a
very disconcerting situation. That the public policy proposed in response to the
shootings was rooted in this claim (i.e., the assumption of an appearance-
violence linkage) supports this notion of a desire for a clear and controlled
answer to the Columbine problem. However, as we will discuss, the use of
certain appearances as a cue to violence was not embraced as appropriate by
all, inciting a backlash by subcultural group members and youth whose appear-
ances lay outside the norm.
The Social-Tensions/Revenge Claim. The claim that the gunmens involve-
ment in the Trench Coat Mafia contributed to their act of violence spawned a
second, related explanation for the Columbine shootings. This line of reasoning,
the product of claims made by both primary and secondary claims-makers,
suggested that the shootings were the gunmens response to social tensions
between the Trench Coat Mafia and Columbines athletes. In effect, this claim
identified the shootings as an act of revenge undertaken by the gunmen to
pay back Columbines athletes for past trespasses against them.
The roots of the revenge hypothesis were planted when the DP and the
RMN published the previously discussed claim that Harris and Klebold had
targeted jocks during the shootings. Comments made by students and media
writers also established that Columbines athletes had teased the gunmen and
members of the Trench Coat Mafia, often about appearance:
Everywhere they went, they were taunted and teased about how they dress . . . says Typher,
the girl Harris went out with briefly after his freshman year. (DP 5/2/99)

That this taunting contributed to the gunmens dislike for the jocks is reflected
in claims staged by both students and media writers about comments made by
the gunmen during their shootings:
[During the shootings, Harris and Klebold] kept saying jocks made them feel like outcasts.
Then they said they were going to the cafeteria to get more people, said Todd. (RMN 4/22/99)

This is for all of the people who made fun of us all these years, the two boys in trench coats
said, laughing as they opened fire. (DP 4/23/99)

The revenge hypothesis was further substantiated by more causal claims

drawing a direct linkage between the teasing experienced by Harris and Klebold
and the violent acts that they committed. These claims seemed to justify the
actions of the gunmen, or at least to place them in the context of taunts that the
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 17

boys had endured. The following claims, indicative of this rhetoric, were made
by a Columbine student and an employee at a coffee house catering to the Goth
crowd:
They [Harris and Klebold] seemed to have their own way of doing things. People made fun
of them, and when I heard someone say they wanted revenge, I said, That makes sense.
(DP 4/21/99)
But employees and patrons of the Rising Phoenix coffee house in Arvada also tried to
understand how teenage outcasts can feel persecuted by a mainstream culture that cannot
tolerate their dress, hairstyle, or other statements of individuality. The kids who did this,
something had to push them, said David Hundley, a disc jockey at the Rising Phoenix.
(DP 4/22/99)

Finally, a (primary) claim made by Harris himself in the Columbine tapes

and published posthumously in the DP verified the proposition that feelings
of insecurity and hatred induced by peer teasing may have incited Harris acts of
violence against his Columbine peers. A media writer describing the content of
the tapes wrote:
Harris talks of always being the new, white scrawny kid. I had to go through that s so
many times, Harris says. (DP 12/14/99)

The Dress-as-Facilitator Claim. The final claim offering an explana-

tion for the role of dress in the Columbine shootings concerned the gunmens
trench coats. As noted, claims made early in the investigation attributed
negative symbolism to these garments, worn by the gunmen during the
shootings. Not all claims related to trench coats, however, referenced the
meanings that they conveyed before or after the shootings. Shortly after
the incident, claims were made about the instrumental role that the boys
trench coats had played in facilitating this crime. These claims were advanced
by media writers, who charged that the boys had used their outer garments
to hide their contrabandincluding guns and bombson the day of the
shootings:
The two came to school Tuesday in fatigues, pipe bombs strapped to their chests and
shotguns and high-powered pistols under long black coats. (RMN 4/21/99)
Several months later, the release of the Columbine tapes renewed the
discussion concerning the use of clothing to hide weapons. According to media
writers reports, the tapes included two separate segments in which Klebold
experiments with the use of his trench coat to hide his gun. One of these
experiments, dubbed a dress rehearsal by the media, occurred three days
prior to the shootings:
During Klebolds dress rehearsal on April 17, in the only piece of the tapes made at the
Klebold residence, he worries that his gun is making his black trench coat look bulky. (DP
12/14/99)
18 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

As we will discuss, the claims that the boys had concealed weapons underneath
their coats would play a key role in the shaping of public policy aimed at remedy-
ing the Columbine problem.

Staging a Backlash: The Media as a Forum for Counterclaims

As mentioned, shortly after the shootings, adolescents whose appearances
resembled those of Harris and Klebold were targeted as additional suspects in
the Columbine investigation. Although each of these students was eventually
cleared of wrongdoing by the police, the claims published within the media
had cast them and others who looked like them or who associated with the
same adolescent peer groups as scapegoats for the crime. According to primary
claims published in media reports, some individuals associated with the Trench
Coat Mafia or the Goths (or believed to be associated with these groups) had
become the targets of harassment by others:
There are a lot of us [people who dress in Goth-style clothing] who are starting to get afraid
of the people who think we were part of [the Columbine shootings], he said. The jocks
and yuppies are constantly driving by, calling us faggots or yelling, Im going to kick your
asses. Its happening a lot more now after Columbine. We cant let our girlfriends or our
sisters walk out alone anymore. Were scared of drive-bys. He said his group is not about
violence or killing. (DP 4/24/99)

Further, claims made by members of the Goth and Trench Coat Mafia
communities and other primary claims-makers (e.g., school employees, business-
people serving the Goth community, representatives of the American Civil
Liberties Union [ACLU]) suggested that individuals in these groups were
alarmed and angry that others would implicate them as involved in the
shootings. To defend the honor of and to protect individuals who had
been implicated as somehow involved in the Columbine shootings, a variety
of counterclaims were submitted by varied claims-makers to challenge
previous accusations of guilt by association. For instance, counterclaims
were made to distance subcultural group members from Harris and Klebold
and their act of violence. To this end, members of the Trench Coat Mafia
denied the claim that Harris and Klebold were actively involved in this
clique. Typically, these counterclaims were presented as secondary, in that they
represented a media writers version of a primary claim but not the primary
claim itself:
The teen said Harris and Klebold were less socially active than other mafia members. From
the outside, he said, they must have seemed part of the group because of their black trench
coats and their similar Goth style of dress. But, speaking from the inside, he said they really
werent members [of the Trench Coat Mafia]. Although they sometimes hung with the mafia
in Columbines commons and shared sneers at the jocks, he recalled, they ate at a separate
lunch table and led separate lives. (DP 4/24/99)
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 19

Several claims-makers disputed the allegation that members of the Trench Coat
Mafia and/or the Goths embraced violence or the hatred of others. These claims
were often submitted by members of these groups or by those who associated
with them. However, as in the second quote below, secondary claims-makers
also offered their version of this claim:
Theyre [the Goths] not violent. Theyre not racist. Theyre not into the whole hate mental-
ity, said Sweet [a researcher who had studied Goth culture]. (DP 4/22/99)

The two Columbine gunmen embraced some Goth trappings but also embraced racism and
violence that most in the Goth world reject. (DP 5/10/99)

Finally, counterclaims were made to challenge the attribution of immoral

or unseemly qualities (i.e., violent tendencies) to an individual on the basis
of his/her appearance. Although many such counterclaims were submitted
by subcultural group members and their associates (e.g., individuals who
owned businesses serving these groups), school employees, child psycholo-
gists, law enforcement officials, and members of the ACLU also staged such
claims:
Just because black clothes were involved in the shootings, it doesnt mean that everybody
with black clothing is a white supremacist wacko with a gun, said Bob Alberti, who owns
the Rising Phoenix, which hosts Goth Night dances twice a week. (DP 4/22/99)

We have three or four kids who wear the long black trench coats, but they are actually great
kids. Its a fashion thing, said Ann Bailey, principal at Jefferson High School in Denver. (DP
4/21/99)

Further, some claims-makers suggested that the inordinate amount of attention

focused upon the appearances of the gunmen (and others linked to them) rep-
resented a misguided investigative effort that should be focused upon variables
other than appearance. This sentiment is reflected in the following comments
excerpted from a letter to the editor of the DP:
Harris and Klebold didnt try to blow up Columbine High School and slaughter its students
because they wore black clothes and listened to German music. They did it because at some
point their minds curled in the heat of high school social pressure and because they could
get guns and because their parents apparently didnt notice that anything was amiss. To make
this an issue of deviant dress is a counterproductive effort on the part of the mainstream . . .
(DP 4/24/99)

Proposing Solutions to the Columbine Problem

The Columbine problem was constructed as appearance-related. Thus, the
solutions advocated by claims-makers as remedies to the problem often focused
upon appearance as well. Two solutions in particular involved modifications in
appearance management: (a) the adoption of school dress codes or uniforms
and (b) the adoption of RESPECT patches.
20 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

The Adoption of School Dress Codes or Uniforms. Within two days of

the shooting, claims-makers proposed the implementation of dress codes or
school uniforms as a solution to the Columbine problem. Proposed dress codes
entailed the banning of certain types of apparel, particularly trench coats and
to a lesser extentbaseball hats and dress associated with the Goth movement
(e.g., leather collars). In turn, the suggestion of dress regulation as a solution to
Columbine sparked a dialogue in which claims-makers divided themselves
along two lines: those for and those against school dress codes and uniforms.
Claims made to support school dress codes or uniforms were made by
primary claims-makers, including parents and school officials. In addition, media
writers frequently highlighted the pro-uniform view by describing policies
adopted by area school districts. These claims-makers offered a variety of justi-
fications in support of dress codes and uniforms. Implicit in each of their
justifications were the assumptions (a) that dress can shape the behavior and
thoughts of wearers and/or perceivers (i.e., those who view wearers) (see Lennon,
Johnson, and Schulz 1999) and (b) that dress codes or school uniforms were an
appropriate response to prior claims locating cause of the incident. Specifically,
dress-code/uniform advocates presented claims that the regulation of student
appearances had the potential to (a) decrease gang activity and school violence,
(b) increase student achievement, (c) create an environment that facilitated
learning, (d) assist in identification of school trespassers, (e) deter students
from hiding weapons in their clothing, and (f) deter students from expressing
class divisions or hatred against others. Further, school and law enforcement
officials suggested that banning trench coats would (a) protect students who
might find trench coats frightening given the events at Columbine and (b)
safeguard students who might wear such coats from others who might
(mis)interpret the garments as indicative of violence:
We have excluded the long black coat because it makes it hard for us to guarantee the
safety of our students, said Susan Carlson, spokeswoman for the Adams 12 schools. Wearing
such a coat, she said, can also be alarming enough to others that it disrupts the educational
environment. (RMN 4/22/99)
I would also like to suggest we revisit the idea of school uniforms that take away the oppor-
tunities to hide weapons and express rage and class divisions within our schools. (Excerpted
from a letter to the editor, RMN 4/22/99)
Claims-makers opposing the adoption of school dress codes or uniforms as
a solution to the Columbine problem were afforded less media coverage than those
who embraced this solution and included students, parents, civil liberties experts
(e.g., ACLU officials), and media writers. Typically, the claims of this con-
tingent concerned three issues. First, these claims-makers argued that the regula-
tion of dress or appearance represented harassment of ones person and the
violation of ones freedom of speech and right to self-expression. Often, these
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 21

claims were advanced by students (or their parents) whose dress had been
regulated after the Columbine shooting:
Neil [an Englewood student who was ticketed for the wearing of Gothic-style accessories],
for his part, said, I should be able to express myself however I want, to wear whatever I
want, as long as its not hurting anybody. (DP 4/23/99)

Second, anti-dress-code/uniform claims-makers challenged the logic that

dress can be used to infer that a wearer may behave in a certain way (e.g., viol-
ently) or hold certain attitudes (e.g., hatred toward others), an argument that
was also drawn upon to counter the claim that individuals with specified
appearances were somehow involved in or responsible for the Columbine shoot-
ings. The student comment below offers a critique of such logic:
One [student] statement read: I wonder how long itll be before were allowed to wear our
trench coats anymore. You know those screwed-up kids in Colorado were wearing them, so
that means I will also kill someone and so will all my friends. (DP 5/10/99)

Finally, those opposing dress codes intimated that such a solution was a
superficial and unrealistic way to address the acts of violence executed by
Harris and Klebold. As suggested by the following excerpt from a letter to the
editor of the DP, these claimants perceived that a real solution to the Columbine
problem would need to address more serious issues than appearance (this
sentiment also was used as a counterclaim in the backlash against the con-
struction of Columbine as an appearance problem):
If Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had been wearing Denver Broncos jerseys with No. 7 on
the back, would school systems be so quick to ban those? This banning of trench coats is a
ridiculous response promoted by people who refuse to deal with the real underlying causes
of violence. (DP 4/24/99)

The Adoption of Columbine RESPECT Patches. Media coverage also

focused upon a second appearance-related solution to the Columbine problem:
the adoption of RESPECT patches. According to media writers and individuals
affiliated with the Colorado High School Activities Association, the association
created the patches to be worn by student members of athletic, music, speech,
and student-government groups. Claims such as those below suggested that the
patches were developed as a response to the claim that the shootings were a
product of disrespect and tension between adolescent cliques at Columbine
High School:
The [Colorado High School Activities] Association, which sanctions thousands of events at
hundreds of Colorado schools, hopes to convey a simple but vital message with the Respect
patches. . . . I think the theme were stressing is that in order for us to move on as a soci-
ety, we have to respect each other, said Bert Borgmann, an assistant commissioner for the
association.
22 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

The new patches are meant to spotlight a critical concept that emerged from the
Columbine siege and to promote it universally, in a way that speaks to all students and all
adults, officials said. (DP 8/4/99)

Clarifying and Revisiting the Issues: The Columbine Report

In May 2000, the Jefferson County Sheriff s Office released The Colum-
bine Report, an official summary of conclusions drawn from the 13-month
investigation into the crime. However, as early as March 2000, the DP and the
RMN published primary claims drawn from interviews with employees of the
sheriff s office and focusing upon the reports contents. In several instances,
claims made with respect to the contents of the report and the interviews about
it served to clarify and, in some cases, rectify claims made at an earlier stage in
the construction of the Columbine problem. For example, despite prior claims
by student witnesses that they had observed three gunmentwo in trench coats
and one in a white T-shirtclaims made in the report and covered in the media
drew upon ballistics evidence to confirm that only two gunmen had been
involved. According to secondary claims published about the report contents,
the confusion concerning the dress of the gunmen was attributed to the fact that
Harris had shed his trench coat before entering the school, a piece of informa-
tion that law enforcement officials had learned by viewing surveillance tapes of
the crime.
Further, although media coverage of the report did verify the primary
claims that during the shooting Harris and Klebold made remarks about getting
the guys in the white hats (DP 5/16/00), media writers also forwarded the
(revisionary) claim that Harris and Klebold did not use appearance as a cue
with which to select their victims. To support this claim, media writers sum-
marized and/or quoted comments made during the interviews about the report
contents. It is interesting to note that the media labeled the earlier claim that
appearance was used to target victims as MYTH and the revised claim as
FACT:
MYTH 6: Harris and Klebold targeted blacks, Christians, and jocks. FACT: No one group or
individual was sought out, Battan [a detective with the Sheriff s Office] said. For example, if
the two were really looking for jocks, they wouldnt have gone to the library, she said. This
was not about killing jocks or killing black people or killing Christians, Battan said. It was
about killing everybody. Said Kiekbusch [the Sheriff s Division Chief ]: They put them-
selves above everybody. They hated everybody. . . . Nor did Harris and Klebold seek out
Isaiah Shoels, the only black student killed, although they did make a racial remark about
him, Battan said. (DP 3/12/00)

Finally, the media content about the report validated counterclaims ques-
tioning not only the gunmens involvement in the Trench Coat Mafia but also
the claim that members of the group behaved violently or advocated the hatred
of others:
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 23

MYTH 3: Harris and Klebold were members of the Trench Coat Mafia. FACT: The Trench
Coat Mafia was a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing, Kiekbusch said, not an organized group
or clique. The group was composed of about a dozen students, mostly social outcasts who
hung out together. Their picture appeared in the 1998 Columbine yearbook. But Harris and
Klebold werent in the picture and they werent part of the group, Battan and Kiekbusch
said. They did wear black, Western-type dusters into the school, but only as a way to hide
their weapons. (DP 3/12/00)
In fact, according to secondary claims made about the report, Harris and
Klebold did not regularly cloak themselves in symbols associated with violence
or the Goth culture; rather, they appeared outwardly normal, [sharing] their
dark side only with each other (DP 5/16/00). This claim seemingly under-
mines earlier (secondary) claims suggesting that a childs appearance can be
used as a reliable indication of his/her proclivity to behave in an antisocial or
violent way.
As such, through media coverage, both primary and secondary claims-
makers were able to amend their previous claims about what happened in
Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and why it happened. As a result of
these amendments, the overarching claim that appearance had played a key role
in the Columbine shootings was perhaps diminished to the acknowledgement
that the gunmen had been teased by other students, sometimes about their
appearances, and that they had hidden their weapons underneath their trench coats
during the siege. However, it would seem that by the time the Sheriff s Office
released the report, Columbine had already been constructed as an appearance-
related problem; in the months prior, multiple reports had confirmed claims that
appearance had, in fact, contributed to the crime. Further, the solutions pro-
posed and adopted to resolve the Columbine issue were based upon these ini-
tial claims that crime was an appearance-related problem. As such, for at least
some readers or claims-makers, the relative impact of the Columbine Report in
constructing the Columbine problem may have been somewhat overshadowed
by the initial claims that were deconstructed within the Report.
Discussion and Conclusions
Constructionism was an effective framework for analyzing media repres-
entations of the Columbine shootings as an appearance-linked social problem.
As the data in Table 1 indicate, claims made by both primary and secondary
claims-makers drew linkages between this incident of youth violence and
appearance. The content and nature of these claims varied according to the
stage of the problems construction. For instance, in stages I and II, primary
claims-makers provided eyewitness accounts of experiences related to the
Columbine incident or observations about the Columbine gunmen. In stages III
and V, primary claims-makers launched claims and/or counterclaims to dispute
allegations or to revise prior claims about the problem, and in stage IV, these
24 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

claims-makers proposed appearance-linked solutions to prior claims presented

in the media.
In turn, secondary claims-makers covered, validated, and transformed the
content of primary claims. Although media writers highlighted the claims of
primary claims-makers by offering them coverage within the media, media
writers decisions about which primary claims to cover and how to cover them
simultaneously and necessarily transformed these primary claims. Thus, even
primary claims presented in the manufacture of this social problem were media
constructions or rhetoric, shaped and tailored by media writers as they staged
secondary claims. For instance, media writers played a key role in promulgating
the claim that the gunmen used ethnicity to identify their victims, despite the
fact (as presented by the media) that only one primary claims-maker had
made such a claim. Similarly, both primary and secondary claims-makers
addressed the everyday appearances of the gunmen and the meanings of these
appearances. Often, secondary claims-makers even invoked student comments
in support of their claims. However, media writers claims were considerably
more speculative than those of students. Students claims asserted that the
gunmen wore trench coats on a regular basis and that they (i.e., the students) were
afraid of the gunmen, but media writers claims went one step further, suggest-
ing that the gunmen regularly wore symbols of violence and the profane. Like
those of Best (1989) and ONeal (1997), then, our findings support the notion
that although the content of primary and secondary claims may overlap
(ONeal 1997, p. 348), the claims made by these different claims-makers are
not synonymous.
Presumably, the medias coverage and presentation of primary claims was
also shaped by the logic of the media and the need for media writers to stage
secondary claims about the Columbine shootings. We can draw from previous
work to speculate about why media writers presented appearance as part of the
Columbine problem. To this end, we turn our attention to two issues: the
medias framing of Columbine as a frightening social problem and the medias
presentation of Columbine as a problem that could be regulated and prevented.
Media coverage concerning the Columbine shootings was rife with themes
of fear and intimidation. In this vein, several secondary claims intimated that
the lives of readers could be touched by youth violence like that exhibited by
the Columbine gunmen, a strategy that Best (1989, p. 264) has referred to as
personalizing the issues. For instance, media claims suggested that parents
observe their own children for appearance-linked warning signs that might
allude to violent tendenciesany child with an affinity for black clothes could
be the next Harris or Klebold. Further, appearance-related media claims pointed
to the Columbine shootings as an example that even unlikely placessuch
as affluent and suburban Littleton (where people typically wear respectable,
 APPEARANCE CUES AND THE SHOOTINGS AT COLUMBINE HIGH 25

Republican clothes)were not immune from the toxicity wrought by youth

affiliated with antisocial subcultures such as the Trench Coat Mafia; any
school campus, anywhere, could be at risk. This seeming attempt to render the
Columbine shootings as personal and as scary may reflect the news medias
alleged entertainment orientation: Altheide and Michalowski (1999, p. 479) have
argued that media writers may invoke themes of fear in their news coverage to
create satisfying or interesting (i.e., entertaining) news stories.
Although media writers constructed Columbine as a personally threatening
issue, they also presented it as a social risk that could be kept at bay through
proper policing, control, and/or prevention (see Ericson and Haggerty 1997;
Staples 1997). To this end, appearance was presented as both a scapegoat for
and a solution to the Columbine problem. The notion that a readily identifiable
and malleable characteristic such as appearance could be at the heart of the
Columbine problem may reflect an attempt on the part of the media to reassure
readers by offering them a ready and tidy solution to a problem that had been
presented as scary and threatening. Further, presenting simple explanations for
and easily implemented solutions to complex issues is consistent with an enter-
tainment orientation of the news media; entertainment has been said to abhor
ambiguity, relying instead upon neat and unequivocal claims (Altheide and
Michalowski 1999, p. 499).
Finally, it is important to consider the possible implications of claims
made within the media and related to the role of appearance in the Columbine
shootings. Granted, primary and secondary claims-makers eventually recanted
or minimized the scope of claims casting appearance as cause of and solu-
tion to the acts of violence perpetrated by Harris and Klebold. However, these
corrective claims were published more than a year after the original claims
were made. In the months between the media coverage of the initial claims and
the revised claims, the reality of Columbine as an appearance problem was pro-
duced in the eyes of the public; meanings about the appearances of the gunmen,
their victims, and their alleged associates were negotiated in the forum of the
print media. As an apparent result of this dialogue, innocent individuals
perceived themselves as unjustly implicated in the crime on the basis of their
appearance and were moved to stage counterclaims defending their innocence.
Further, by constructing Columbine as an appearance-related problem and
formulating appearance-based solutions accordingly, the media may have
5
shortchanged the discussion of an opportunity for real social change as a
way to prevent future school shootings. In their analyses of media coverage
related to threats to children and killing for clothes, Best (1989) and ONeal
(1997) discovered similar patterns in which the location of cause for a problem
shaped the resultant public policy and precluded discussions necessary for true
social change.
26 JENNIFER PAFF OGLE ET AL.

Indeed, the growing body of evidence that claims highlighted and created
by the media may have an impact on public policy constitutes a call for continued
research related to the medias role in the construction and explanation of
issues as social problems. Further work might focus upon other issues, such
as the role of appearance in date rape cases or the use of appearance cues to
ascertain a criminal suspects possible guilt or innocence. An exploration of the
relevance of constructionism to other issues negotiated within the context of the
media may further illuminate the process by which claims may shape audience
perceptions of social reality as well as public policy proposed or adopted in
response to these claims. In turn, building such a body of empirical findings
would facilitate further theory development related to the medias role in the
social construction of reality.

ENDNOTES

* Direct correspondence to: Colorado State University, 150 Aylesworth SE, Fort Collins,
CO 80523-1575; e-mail: ogle@cahs.colostate.edu.
1
Some claims made by Harris and Klebold were published posthumously in the Denver Post
and the Rocky Mountain News.
2
Tuchman (1973) describes three different types of news stories: hard news (the presentation
of facts about events perceived as newsworthy), continuing news (continued coverage of an event
or series of events that take place over a time period), and feature stories (human interest stories).
3
Circulation figures were taken from DP and RMN listings on the Nationwide Newspapers
E-Commerce Website.
4
The DP did not feature coverage of the Columbine shooting in its April 20, 1999 edition; the
DP is a morning paper, and the shooting occurred after the April 20, 1999 edition was published.
The RMN, an afternoon paper, did feature coverage of the shootings in its April 20, 1999 edition.
These RMN features (i.e., those dated April 20, 1999) were included in the present analysis.
5
Unlike Best (1989) and ONeal (1997), we do not argue that the medias construction of
the Columbine shootings as appearance-related totally precluded dialogue related to social change;
the media did feature primary and secondary claims related to gun control and made in response
to the shootings. We suggest, however, that the medias focus upon appearance shaped some of the
solutions offered and may have diminished attention allocated to other issues that may contribute to
youth violence.

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