An Interdisciplinary Experience in the Study of School Shooters’ Written Communication to Identify Markers of Warning Behavior

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Abstract

The paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary study that aims to identify markers of warning behavior of school shooters’ based on analyzing their written communication using computer linguistics methods. Characteristic features of school shooters’ texts include the presence of signs of cognitive distortion – “personalization” – as well as such emotions as “anger” and “sadness”. In the texts of shooters, along with asocial and destructive intentions, intentions with a clear positive connotation also occupy a significant place. Provided in the study are the results of comparative analysis of significant markers of warning behavior of school shooters that are intrinsic to their written communication, as well as the results of processing open text data sets that are not directly related to the topic of school shooting, such as: text data from Reddit, Twitter; sets of texts from blogs devoted to criminal topics; collections of BBC news texts, articles from Medium’s website; a collection of essays of psychology students from 1993 to 1996; a collection of works of literature presented on the Gutenberg project, etc. Significant features of the texts and inherent differences are emphasized. Directions are proposed for further research as part of solving the problem of identifying markers of warning behavior, using pre-trained models of natural language analysis.

About the authors

Anna Yu. Karpova

Tomsk Polytechnic University

Email: belts@tpu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7854-1438
SPIN-code: 9274-2660
ResearcherId: R-4472-2016
Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Professor Tomsk, Russia

Aleksei O. Savelev

Tomsk Polytechnic University

Email: sava@tpu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7466-6142
SPIN-code: 7576-7564
ResearcherId: E-9905-2017
Candidate of Technical Sciences, Associate Professor Tomsk, Russia

Dmitri A. Tretyakov

Tomsk Polytechnic University

Email: dat32@tpu.ru
postgraduate student Tomsk, Russia

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