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Copyright © 2020 by Academic Publishing House Researcher s.r.o.
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Published in the Slovak Republic Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie) Has been issued since 2005 ISSN 1994-4160 E-ISSN 2729-8132 2020, 60(4): 597-608
DOI: I0.i3i87/me.2020.4.597 www.ejournal53.com
Phenomenology of School Violence in the Continuum of Contemporary Print and Electronic Media Texts in Russia
Olga Gorbatkova a , *
a Rostov State University of Economics, Russian Federation
Abstract
The problem of school-based violence is one of the most important, requiring an urgent solution, as it threatens the physical and mental health of people. Nowadays newspapers and their Internet versions represent aggression and cruelty, attacks and murders in school settings, as a rule, broadcasting to the public a detailed description of tragic incidents, thus leaving a reflection in the minds of the younger generation, shaping their values and attitudes, behaviour patterns, arousing their interest in imitation and transferring the image of violent scenes into the real world. The relevance of studying the topic of school violence in Russian print and Internet versions of the media is quite obvious, due to the fact that a wave of aggression and violence, armed attacks on students and teachers, mass shootings on school grounds swept Russian educational establishments.
In this article, the author attempts to carry out a hermeneutic analysis of school-based violence as reflected in print and online media from 1992 to 2020. The author's reflections on the representation of violence in the school environment are determined by the urgent need to reveal the specific character, structure, narrative techniques, gender, ideological aspects of violence against students and teachers in order to create a holistic vision and approach to the content under study.
Keywords: hermeneutic analysis, school-based violence, education, print and Internet media, bullying, school shooting.
1. Introduction
Today, the issues of school violence have become a cornerstone in the research context of the professional community involved in a wide range of sciences that still maintain a growing trend at the international level.
Nowadays the reflection of violent scenes in the media is a well-established constant characterized by a wide scale of distribution, thus causing concern that the audience is unaware of the problem depth and accepts media violence as an unshakable norm in the media space. We fully share the point of view of M.A. Abdrakhmanova: "According to experts, the majority of information consumers are not interested in publications on violence in the media and do not perceive this situation as a social problem" (Abdrakhmanova, 2018).
Today, there is no reason to assert that the media world saturated with violent content does not affect personal growth at all. The following question is very relevant: what are the reasons for
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (O.I. Gorbatkova)
transforming schoolchildren's behaviour and what effective measures are to be taken to reduce the level of imitating violent patterns reflected in print and audio-visual media texts in schools?
At the same time, our contemporary life conditioned by "seething media coverage" determines the study of school-based violence images in media texts as an urgent and important concept.
Newspapers instantly appear and get distributed on the Internet. The special functioning of Internet media in the continuum of the problem under study lies in the attention focused on extremely significant events associated with violence in school settings.
Today mass media, including the Internet media, penetrate into political and economic structures, thus acquiring the role of a powerful tool for influencing people's consciousness and shaping the global landscape.
The online content, like any other type of media texts, does not only get reflected in people's consciousness, but also affects their behaviour, develops their system of values and attitudes towards reality.
It is no longer a secret that present-day newspapers, including their Internet versions, represent aggression and cruelty, attacks and murders in schools, as a rule, broadcasting to the public a detailed description of tragic incidents.
In this regard, our appeal to modern Russian print and Internet media reflecting school-based violence is determined by the urgent need to reveal the specific character, structure, narrative techniques, gender, ideological aspects of violence against students and teachers in order to create a holistic vision and approach to the content being researched.
2. Materials and methods
The material of our research is based on media texts from Russian print and online media about school-based violence in the modern world (1992 - 2020): Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Interfax, NEWS.ru, RIA Novosti, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK), Bumaga newspaper - 234 news items.
The main research method is the hermeneutic analysis of print and online media texts relating violent events that occurred within the academic construct based on the methodology created by A. Silverblatt (Silverblatt, 2001) and U. Eco (Eco, 2005). As for the auxiliary methods, we used the sociocultural analysis, theoretical analysis of the pool of research literature focused on the problem under consideration. The emphasis on these methods in a complex made it possible to fully explore the image of school-based violence in the context of contemporaneous Russian print and electronic media texts (1992-2020).
3. Discussion
School violence is a major challenge in Russian schools that requires taking urgent measures. Very often, on-campus initiators of attacks increase public awareness from print and online mass media. It goes without saying, in recent years, Internet versions of the media have been in great demand, due to various reasons. Moreover, one cannot fail to notice that the coverage of this problem in online media leaves an "imprint" in the minds of the younger generation, thus shaping their values and attitudes, their model of behaviour.
In our opinion, when carrying out the research it is a very important to analyze the concepts of "violence" and "school-based violence".
The analytical study of scientific literature allows us to say that there is a rather broad meaning of "violence" which creates serious problems aggravated by media convergence.
The well-known researcher V.A. Sitarova defines "violence" as a form of coercion applied by a person to another person, and by a whole group to another group, while the goal is "to acquire or maintain certain benefits and privileges, to gain political, economic and any other domination" (Sitarov, 2005: 135).
In addition, A.A. Guseinov considers violence as a type of power-volitional relationship between people: "Violence is an external, forceful impact on a person or a group of people in order to subordinate them to the will of the one (or those) who exerts such an impact. It represents the usurpation of human freedom in its existence and / or external expression" (Guseinov, 1994: 22).
According to R. Harris, "violence" is understood as causing intentional physical harm to another person. He offers to exclude from violence accidental infliction of pain, - the so-called "psychological violence" and vandalism in relation to someone else's property. Aggressive motives
are always hidden behind the cruelty of behaviour. "When watching TV, we observe acts of violence directly and see their aggressive nature" (Harris, 2002: 160).
Thus, the numerous definitions of the term "violence" can be reduced to the following interpretations of "the use of force against someone", "causing physical, spiritual and property harm", "violation of someone's interests and rights", "usurpation of free will".
Next, we will focus on the concept of "school-based violence".
It is important to note that, of course, given the inferences regarding the above terminological vocabulary, it is clear that "school-based violence" is a broad terminology that includes many separate but closely interrelated individual measures.
At the same time, a number of Russian researchers define "school-based violence" as "a type of violence in which there is coercion, the use of force between children or teachers in relation to students. Obvious manifestations of violence can be directed not only against individuals who arouse the increased interest of others, but also against a whole group" (Bykovskaya, 2006: 221).
Alongside with this, the view of foreign scientists who offer a modern definition is valuable, for example T.W. Miller defines "school-based violence" as behaviour that includes "the victimization of children and teachers, crimes committed by children and/or teachers, physical and psychological exploitation, bullying, fights, riots in the classroom, causing physical and mental harm, causing injuries to teachers and students, cyber-victimization, cyber threats, sexual violence, and the use of weapons in school settings" (Miller, 2008: 15).
Within the framework of this exclusive definition, there are a number of components that have not been considered previously by researchers, in particular, such as victimization of peers, the use of weapons in schools. It can be emphasized that the definition proposed by T.W. Miller unites a set of characteristics that reflect the depth and comprehensiveness of this term, taking into account the socio-cultural and educational situation of the modern world.
Thus, it can be stated that school-based violence reflected in the media is the domination of one subject over another through aggressive influence using media channels and media technologies.
To the greatest extent, the problem of media violence was developed by foreign psychologists and sociologists in works aimed at researching the socio-psychological components of the phenomenon of media violence and assessing the phenomenon of media impact on the audience.
Examples of the most striking studies in the field of psychology devoted to the study of the impact of media violence and aggression are the works by J. Bryant and S. Thompson (Bryant, Thompson 2004), B. Krahé (Krahé, 2003), R. Borum and D. Cornel (Borum et al., 2010).
The analysis of violence in media texts by foreign scholars is more connected with cinematography, some works are devoted to this content analysis (Anderson, Bushman, 2015).
Recently, the problem of school-based violence abroad has been developed by such authors as L.E. Walker, D. Shapiro and S. Akl (Walker et al., 2020), J.S. Cawood and M.H. Corcoran (Cawood, Corcoran, 2019), G.D. Gottfredson, D.C. Gottfredson (Gottfredson et al., 2018), E. Cantone (Cantone et al., 2015), M.J. Elinoff, S.M. Chafouleas, K.A. Sassu (Elinoff et al., 2004), J. Page, J.A. Daniels, S.J. Craig (Page et al., 2015). In Russia, A.A. Guseinov has made a valuable contribution by focusing on the concepts of violence and non-violence (Guseinov, 1999).
In addition, analysing foreign researches on the problem, we managed to find out that in modern America the topic of teenage dating violence as a form of school-based violence has been hotly debated, since it often occurs on school grounds (Elinoff et al., 2004).
At the same time, a number of authors abroad have focused on systematic reviews and meta-analysis of measures aimed at preventing bullying and aggression among schoolchildren (Borum et al., 2010; Cantone et al., 2015; Chaney et al., 2008; Langford et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2015; Merrell et al., 2008; Polanin et al., 2012; Ttofi, Farrington, 2011; Vreeman, Carroll, 2007).
In Russia, the issues of violence have been reflected in the research space only since the late 1990s (Bashkatov, 2001; Bykovskaya, 2006; Fedorov, 2003; 2004; 2005; 2014; 2015; Glazman, 2009; Krivtsova, 2011; Potapova, 2016, Vishnevskaya, Butovskaya, 2008; Volkova, Grishina, 2013, etc.).
Let us emphasize that the topic of violence in particular, school-based violence, in the media, had a hidden character for a long time, only in recent decades the scholars' interest in these issues has grown (Fedorov, 2004; Sobkin et al., 2000; Tarasov, 1996, 2005, 2017), who tried to study, to one degree or another, the impact of the concept of "media violence" on the younger generation.
In addition, it is important to underline that, to a considerable degree, the research interest of Russian scientists was aimed at considering the problem of school harassment - bullying as a form of violence (Achitaeva, 2010; Glazman, 2009; Petrosyants, 2011).
Thus, it can be stated that in Russian and foreign researches, the manifestation of violence in different textual media formats and media channels of different types is not touched upon, and its specificity at the verbal and non-verbal levels is not investigated yet. The analysis of contemporary articles devoted to the issues of school-based violence shows the need for a deep and systematic study of this phenomenon. In addition, we failed to find a study of the concept "school-based violence" in the reflection of print and online media publications either in the foreign or in the Russian research field of the professional community.
However, addressing the problem of school-based violence reflected in print and online media outlets determines the increased attention to distinguishing between "traditional" (television, radio, newspapers, magazines) and "new" (electronic media, social networks, etc.) in order to designate a holistic vision of the object under study.
A colossal role in the functional support of media activities is assigned to the channels for distributing information content. According to I.D. Fomicheva, in the modern world the media are basic components of the public sphere where "the interaction of social actors - society, government, business, with the participation of journalists, is being transformed into discursive actual practices. An equally important factor for organizing effective participation of the state, business and the public in communication is the degree of inclusion in their general context of the information space, the degree of developed social technologies and bringing together the efforts of traditional and Internet media. Journalists themselves must be ready to organize and stimulate the informational participation of these three sectors through the media" (Fomicheva, 2005).
So, we can say that as a result of the media similarity, there occurred a conjunction of "traditional" and "new" media. This process caused the emergence of a common media stream. It is precisely in the media space that various relevant practices are closely intertwined, while not only professional journalists are involved in the process, but also the state, the public, and business. Of course, to a certain extent, these phenomena determine some functioning patterns of various media texts, in particular the widespread use of violent content in the media. Our research focuses on online texts containing violent scenes that occurred in school settings.
Therefore, while school-based violence is an emotional public issue and is becoming widespread in the media, coverage of events in Russia can be distorted.
Thus, mass media, in particular print and electronic media, are an important social tool for influencing individual and group consciousness, and act as a factor influencing the global landscape.
In this regard, one of the prime concerns of professional psychologists, teachers, sociologists and the public is the unregulated representation of school-based violent images in the modern media. Today, an active search is underway for the most effective approaches to the measures aimed at preventing school-based violence.
However, the media texts under consideration do not touch upon the potential of media education as one of effective measures to combat the imitation of violence patterns, broadcast by various media channels, in order to develop media competence of the younger generation.
4. Results
As part of our research, we carried out a hermeneutic analysis of the content of modern print and electronic media texts (1992-2020) containing images of school-based violence.
The relevance of researching school-based violence in Russian print and Internet media is quite obvious, since a wave of aggression and violence, armed attacks on students and teachers, mass shootings on school grounds swept Russian educational institutions.
After requesting the Yandex search engine for news containing the keywords "cases of schoolchildren attacking students and teachers" we got the result - 15 million articles. Obviously, most of the events were presented in a criminal informational spirit.
Headlines such as "A senior pupil opened fire in one of the schools of the Amur Region", "Bashkir Columbine", "A teenager brought pneumatic weapons and smoke torches to a Samara school", "A schoolboy attacked the students with an ax", "Schoolchildren had a knife-fight near Chelyabinsk", "Massacre at the Perm School", "Bombs to Classmates" and a number of others have recently filled the pages of online newspapers. Many newspaper headlines testify to the growing
role of the media in debates about the situation of school-based violence spread in Russia, prevention measures and control over weapons. The media have a huge responsibility for effective coverage of such tragic incidents on the school grounds.
However, many people are now concerned about the media reporting this kind of events, questioning their accuracy, the consequences of their reports and the bias in their stories. Due to the increased use of firearms in schools, print and online media outlets tend to use narrative methods and techniques to attract the attention of the general public. At the same time, we can talk about some doubts about how the electronic media outlets cover these tragic cases.
As part of our research, we carried out a hermeneutic analysis of media texts about school-based violence in Russian print media and their online versions (1992-2020): Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Interfax, NEWS.ru, RIA Novosti, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK), Bumaga newspaper - 234 news items.
Since the 2000s in Russia, the current problems of bullying and school shooting have been reflected in the print and online media.
One of the first episodes of school shooting in Russia was a tragedy that occurred on February 3, 2014. Since that day until January 19, 2018, about 22 incidents of weapon use in schools were registered in Russia - reports the Internet newspaper Bumaga (Antonov, 2018). Articles covering the events of that day were published under various headings: "Mystery of Grade 10-A. The school shooter went to the literature teacher to prove: evil is stronger than good. But at the last moment he changed his mind" in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, "An excellent student arranged hostage-taking and shooting in a Moscow school" in Nezavisimaya Gazeta; "A schoolboy staged a massacre at a Moscow school. Chronicle of events" in Moskovsky Komsomolets, etc. At the same time, the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets created a whole galaxy of events, releasing a reportage under the title "School shooter" quietly dreams of death".
So, the analysis of a number of articles covering the first school shooting incident shows that the news material was accompanied by drawings, photographs, a clearly described sequence of events, which, first of all, indicated an unethical coverage of the tragic event, perhaps such coverage of the event with a catchy headline will inevitably draw the attention of the adolescent audience. In our opinion, a certain risk of popularizing violence is clearly visible.
So, analysing the news of print and Internet media, we found that to a large extent the articles (26 %) in the sample were episodic reports, while the message was informative, excluding a detailed description of the incident, not going beyond the broader social distribution. The episodic coverage focused on personal tragedies, isolated from the social context.
However, the thematic coverage is typical for a smaller proportion of the analysed articles (16 %), which focused, in addition to individual aspects, on broader circumstances and the role of society.
In news reports, references to government officials prevail, such as the aide to the President of the Russian Federation, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, and the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma (18 %).
In addition, the most frequently cited sources come from the criminal justice system, courts and court proceedings, involving the statements of representatives of these structural units, for example, head of the Investigative Committee, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (30.4 %).
A number of the analysed articles (16 %), which reported on school-based violence, touched upon the measures necessary to reduce the level of violence in Russian schools; in this context, a more thematic coverage was demonstrated. For example, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation D. Peskov called on the media to accurately cover the tragedies in schools. He stressed that "the issue is exclusively the prerogative of the editorial policy of this or that publication".
TV presenter V. Pozner believes that federal channels should fully cover the emergencies that occur in the country. At the same time, according to the presenter, "these stories must be shown "correctly": as quickly as possible, more reliably and with an assessment that follows from the show. If you show attacks as a detective or a thriller, if it turns out that the people who participated in this event are cool, then, of course, such stories can involve other children in similar stories".
Few journalists attempted to portray incidents of violence from a variety of perspectives, including different source categories for information (parents, students, teachers, victims, law enforcement officials) in the news content (14 %).
As for solving the problem of school-based violence, a significant part of media texts did not touch upon the content of prevention and control measures, but a number of news reports still contained the reaction of the authorities to the tragic situations that had taken place in schools. It was found out that, since 2018, there has been a tendency of increased attention to developing and implementing measures to prevent violence in schools. A number of solutions included expanding school preventive activities with adolescents: developing new methodological recommendations; activation of mentors or home-school teachers; introduction of intra-school accounting in schools; introducing safety lessons in the school curriculum. As E. Minaeva, head of the department for procedural crime control of the Investigative Committee of Russia, notes, "the reports about the spread of the criminal subculture among teenagers, as well as the facts of attacks on educational institutions, look very alarming. Of particular importance is not only the restoration and further expansion of psychological services in schools, but also organizing the work of child psychotherapists in every children's medical institution, primarily in polyclinics. In addition, it is advisable to introduce the institute of tutors in schools, who would purposefully carry out the upbringing of adolescents and, in close connection with school psychologists, could promptly identify and stop problems in the relationships of children in society (Kozlova, 2018).
In the opinion of Deputy Chairman of the State Duma I. Yarovaya: "School students need to be told as much as possible about how to behave if they get alarming information, for this purpose it is necessary to introduce information security lessons in schools" (Yarovaya..., 2018). As RIA Novosti comments on I. Yarovaya's statement: "We are still waiting for the Ministry of Education, I have already sent requests to the minister twice so information security awareness training appears in federal educational standards".
Another solution to the problem concerns the reproduction and distribution of positive media content for children: "High-quality social advertising in the information field is an effective tool for positive impact on the broad masses of viewers. Moreover, it is necessary, among others, to use the main channel for obtaining information by contemporary children - the Internet and instant messengers" (Kozlova, 2018). The Investigative Committee proposed to consider the issue of introducing tutors or mentors in schools.
Moreover, it is necessary to expand the use of mass media for preventive purposes to keep children from getting involved in destructive or criminal activities, and to keep social networks monitoring. According to A. Kuznetsova, Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, "monitoring of the environment in which our children are being raised today can be very important, fundamentally important. Monitoring requests, monitoring the informational situation in which they are. What are they looking for on the Internet first of all and what do they find there? What is their request?". The Ministry of Communications has reacted to the situation of armed attacks on schools, having agreed with the Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) to block social networks of groups that encourage violence in schools.
Finally, it is vital to build up efforts in a law enforcement context. As reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, "A roadmap developed by a number of Russian structures, in particular, ombudswoman children's rights A. Kuznetsova, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Ministry of Health, the Investigative Committee, the General Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia will help to cope with the spread of attacks on schools and mass shootings. Law enforcement agencies, and above all the Ministry of Internal Affairs, are doing a great job to prevent crimes committed by teenagers. However, the basic elements of early crime prevention are based on proper upbringing of adolescents and their leisure activities, as well as attending to their problems and state of mind" (Lebedeva, 2018).
In addition, it was found out that the public is often informed about the long-term consequences of incidents of school-based violence and the people involved. For example, only the newspaper Izvestia presented 10 news items about the attack of schoolchildren in the city of Perm on January 15, 2018: "Unknown persons wearing masks attacked schoolchildren in Perm", "A massive knife fight took place in a Perm school", "The initiator in the fight in the Perm school fell for the video about the school terrorist attack in the USA", and so on.
In a number of newspaper reports, the authors of media texts emphasized that the attacking schoolchildren had a plan - attack schemes and guidelines for making improvised explosives, bombs, Molotov cocktails; publications on social networks prohibiting the attackers' materials, interest in the Columbine movement. However, the question regarding the method of obtaining
weapons by school students was never mentioned in the analysed media texts, only the fact of weapon availability.
In our opinion, the images created by the print and Internet media texts on school-based violence did not only bring a lively interest in the professional community, society, as an acute social challenge, but also encouraged the younger generation to implement the Columbine scenarios in life as a certain model of behaviour, including the image of a "hero".
Perhaps, it is worth mentioning that the tragic event associated with the Columbine massacre in the United States in 1999 played a colossal role in the spread of such incidents throughout the world. In Russia, the shooting at School №263 in Moscow that occurred in 2014 can be considered to be the starting point. According to American scientists, Harris and Klebold, the attackers on the school, achieved a mythical status in a society of certain subcultures. They were honoured and imitated in subsequent attacks and attempted attacks. In all cases, the perpetrators either admitted to being linked to "Columbine" themselves, or evidence of the Columbine influence was found by the police (Thomas, 2014).
Practically all the analysed news reports (73 %) mentioned some facts concerning children's interest in the Columbine events, for example, as the newspaper Izvestia notes: "In Russian social networks, there has been a surge in interest in the 1999 Columbine massacre in the American school. The name of this educational institution, as well as the name of one of the attackers, have been mentioned in VKontakte five times more often than usual. Interest in the tragedy that happened almost 20 years ago has grown significantly after schoolchildren attacked teachers and students in Perm and Ulan-Ude in 2018. Experts interviewed by the newspaper Izvestia noted that modern adolescents - imitators of mass murderers from the United States consider their lives to be insufficiently fulfilled, and therefore there is a real risk of emerging a "Columbine" subculture in the country (Grigoryan et al., 2018).
In turn, in online media there are a number of reports on preventing cases of violence in schools, thanks to an integrated approach aimed at identifying and preventing cases of a criminal nature (Savankova, 2020). In Volgograd, a teenager was detained for preparing an attack on a school (Merzlyakov, 2020). The court arrested a teenager who was preparing an attack on a school in Krasnoyarsk (Malkov, 2020).
As for the types of school-based violence, physical and psychological violence, of course, predominated.
Cases of physical violence, which ranged from fights to deaths, stabbing and shooting, were reported in the majority of the analysed media texts (84 %). Deprivation, classified as school violence, received the least attention in these articles (69 %). No articles reflected scenes of sexual violence on school grounds.
The dominant instruments of crime were the following: a knife, an ax, firearms, improvised explosives, Molotov cocktails, smoke-puff charges, torches.
Both schoolchildren and teachers were victims of violence or its source. Teachers often played the role of the main victims, in this regard, under the influence of the events, the teacher was frustrated and received serious harm to psychological / physical health.
In most cases, the participants of the events failed to cope with difficulties or to achieve mutual understanding, which led to tragic consequences. In some cases, owing to teachers' excellent professional skills and a quick response of the police, it was possible to prevent a tragedy.
Undoubtedly, the authors of print/online media texts stuck to documenting the violence, cruel scenes that had occurred on school grounds. The main result of such author's position was a media production in the form of a print or online media text containing a naturalistic display of scenes of violent content in its various manifestations. At the same time, we did not manage to find any open religious connotations in the studied news material.
The worldview component, mode of thinking, meaningful values, narrative structure, characters' conduct reflected in the analysed media texts of print and Internet mass media can be represented as follows: the main characters - school students mentioned in print or electronic media texts are focused on preparing and subsequent implementing the goals of a violent nature on the school territory. Anger, hatred, ruthlessness, aggression, ferocity, merciless cruelty are the basic value dominants of schoolchildren who initiate attacks in schools.
At the same time, in the majority of cases, a very small amount of attention is paid in the analysed news reports to the values of the participants in the events - teachers; though in some media texts we were able to find the following values: firmness, determination, courage and bravery.
The range of reasons for violent actions is determined by conflict situations in the school community, for example in teacher-student relations; unrequited love; students' desire to prove their worth in the class; interest in the Columbine movement.
The main zone where tragic events unfold is the school territory, which includes classrooms and school corridors.
The leading genres of the studied media texts are a news report, an interview, articles, a newsreel.
Methods of creating reality in the media texts are presented in different storylines, in particular, students and teachers are shown during lessons or exams, at breaks, in school corridors, on school grounds.
Types of the main characters: the initiators of the events - students of lower and upper secondary schools, who, as a rule, have negative thinking; teachers, school administration. Generally, tragic events are committed by under-age senior school students.
The appearance of the characters is rarely mentioned, only in some news reports, one can find information about their clothing, judging by the given photo or video material. Speaking about the image of the school student involved in the school-violence, the range varies from a quiet, calm and non-contentious boy to a strong-minded boy who is telling his classmates about prohibited weapons and the desire to attack the school on social networks.
Some media texts focus on the family status of the schoolchildren - initiators of school-based violence, these are either from complete families or incomplete families; as for the school teachers, there is no information concerning their marital status in the analysed media texts.
The plot of the reality of the school students who is an active participant of violence includes the schoolboy's transformation from a calm, peaceful and non-conflict child into a cruel, merciless teenager who has in his arsenal sometimes really terrible weapons such as an ax, a hunting rifle, a knife or homemade explosives; the school student's conflict with his fellow-students when he falls a victim to school bullying, rejection and ostracism.
At the same time, the solution to the problem is that most of the aggressors mentioned in the analysed media texts reached their intended plans to a certain extent and the event ended tragically (injury, murder, suicide), though a number of prepared attacks on schools were prevented and did not find its reflection in real life; in this regard, the worldview of schoolchildren, thanks to a complex of preventive measures was modified.
5. Conclusion
The results of our analysis allow us to draw a number of particular conclusions that are of interest for the theme being researched:
1. For a long time in Russia, the problem of school-based violence was not reflected in reality, which cannot be said about other countries such as the US, where the "growth point" of mass shootings in schools fell on the year of 1999 (mass shooting at the Columbine School). Nevertheless, today, unfortunately, various forms of violence in Russian schools are sporadic. The facts about violence committed by school students against school students or teachers on school grounds, as a rule, receive a wide resonance in print and online media and generate heated debates about taking preventive measures and the impact of the media space (cinema, TV shows, press, Internet, etc.) containing violent content on the viewers. In this regard, the phenomenon of school-based violence is very relevant, primarily due to the wide range of distribution and application in the interaction system of education participants.
2. There is a lack of scientific research concerning a clear understanding of "violence", "school-based violence"; specific personal traits of participants involved in school-based violence (victim, aggressor); effective measures to prevent and combat violence and cruel behaviour in schools.
3. Analyzing the news content of print and Internet media, we found out that most of the articles were episodic reports, while the message was informative, excluding a detailed description of the incident that had occurred, without going beyond wider social distribution. Moreover, it was possible to identify that the first case of mass shooting in a school was recorded on February 3, 2014 in Moscow, since that time, there has been an increase in cases of school attacks; the authors of the media texts emphasize that the attacking schoolchildren had a plan - attack schemes and guidelines for making improvised explosives, bombs, Molotov cocktails; they were interested in the Columbine movement; since 2018, there has been a tendency of increasing attention to developing
and introducing measures to prevent violence in schools, in particular, schools' anti-violence activities involving adolescents; expanding the use of mass media to prevent children from participating in destructive or criminal activities; monitoring of social networks; building up efforts in a law enforcement context. Moreover, the articles are accompanied by photo and video materials illustrating a clear sequence of events related to violence, which cannot but arouse interest and attraction in this kind of phenomena among teenagers.
4. The worldview of the authors of print and Internet media texts is sometimes reduced to mere documenting violence and cruel scenes the school territory. The main result of this is a print or an electronic media text containing a naturalistic display of various violent scenes. Modern media texts in the researched field create a picture of the world with school shooting as its pivotal component. The obvious feature of print and online media is a real event. In most of the events depicted, violent suppression, causing grievous bodily harm, is a form of revenge.
5. There is a clear relationship between the violent acts on the part of schoolchildren and the event that occurred in the US in 1999 - the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. Broadcast by various media channels, this tragic event triggered a wide range of imitators. In this regard, it is revealed that understanding of the media texts content is linked to specific real historic events.
6. The genre arsenal of the studied print and Internet media texts includes a news report, an interview, articles, a newsreel. The authors of media texts identified the leading forms of school-based violence: bullying, school shooting, predominating physical and psychological (emotional) violence. School-based violence concerned both student-student and student-teacher relationships.
7. The value dominants of the main characters - schoolchildren (aggressors) mentioned in the analysed print and electronic media texts are anger, hatred, ruthlessness, aggression, ferocity, merciless cruelty. Their activities are focused on preparing and subsequent implementing school-based violent goals. In the news reports, little attention is paid to the values of the other participants in the events - teachers, though in some media texts we were able to find: resilience, decisiveness, bravery and courage.
8. The range of reasons for committing violent actions is determined by conflict situations in the school community, defects of a teacher-student relationship; unrequited love; students' desire to prove their worth in the class; students' interest in the Columbine movement. The main zone where tragic events unfold is the school territory, which includes classrooms and school corridors.
9. The plot of the reality of the schoolchildren who are initiators of violence consists in a schoolboy's transformation from a calm, peaceful, non-conflict child into a cruel, merciless teenager who has in his arsenal sometimes really terrible weapons such as an ax, a hunting rifle, a knife or homemade explosives; the school student's conflict with fellow-students when he falls a victim to school bullying, non-recognition and ostracism. At the same time, the solution to the problem is based on achieving a set of goals or transforming the worldview of the protagonist.
6. Acknowledgments
The article is written as part of a study funded by the grant of the President of the Russian Federation for state support of young scientists - Ph.D. Project MK-1716.2020.6 "Problem of school violence in the mirror of modern Russian and American media: comparative analysis", carried out at the Rostov State University of Economics.
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