Revisiting Local Responses to Mass Violence After the School Shootings in Finland

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Abstract

This study examined to what extent individual and sociological factors relate to worry about the recurrence of school shootings. Individual factors included socio-demographics, incident related factors and general subjective anxiety. Sociological factors included perceived social solidarity and perceived risks to Finnish society from social change (e.g. eroding moral values) and crime (e.g. terrorism). Two independent mail surveys were conducted among the residents of the small town of Jokela six (N=330) and eighteen (N=278) months after the school shooting of November, 2007. Linear regression was used as the analysis method. After 6 months, knowing a victim of the incident and decreased perceptions of social solidarity were associating with more worry about the recurrence of school shootings. After 18 months, knowing a victim and having school-aged children within one’s household explained even more of the variation in worry, while perceived social solidarity was no longer a statistically significant predictor. Surprisingly, the association between subjective anxiety and worry about mass violence did not reach statistical significance. Finally, at both 6 and 18 months, the higher the perceptions of risks to Finnish society from social change and from crime were, the higher was the worry about mass violence.

Author

• Miika Vuori, University of Turku (Finland)