Both popular media and research often frame mass shootings as an individual issue having to do with mental illness or other individual differences. This work has unfolded in much the same fashion as that on other negative or anti‐social behaviors—such as the individual pathologization of suicide or rape. However, what this work has shown empirically is that there are often a set of circumstances that are uniquely social that motivate such actions. Following work in sociology, which offers social psychological and cultural explanations for gun violence, we argue that mass shooter motivations reflect social conditions—especially those that instantiate toxic masculinity, social exclusion, and racism—conducive to these events. This article uses a computational textual modeling approach to analyze the distinct social logics that motivate mass shooters. To do this, we identify a sample of 27 publicly available mass shooter “manifestos,” or documents left behind by shooters following their actions. Using topic models, we show that mass shooters exhibit a variety of preoccupations that underlie their actions. While shooters can exhibit a multitude of possible motivations, we find that expressions of masculine overcompensation, ritualistic responses to exclusion, and racialized status threat are prominent features of mass shooter manifestos, corroborating recent sociological explanations of mass shootings.

中文翻译：

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男子气概，仪式和种族地位威胁：使用结构主题模型检查大规模射手宣言

流行媒体和研究都经常将大规模枪击案定为与精神疾病或其他个体差异有关的个人问题。这项工作的展开方式与其他负面或反社会行为（例如，自杀或强奸的个别病态化）的展开方式大致相同。但是，这项工作从经验上表明的是，常常有一些独特的社会环境会激发这种行为。在社会学方面的工作为枪支暴力提供了社会心理学和文化的解释之后，我们认为大规模射击者的动机反映了有助于这些事件的社会条件，尤其是那些实例化有毒男性气质，社会排斥和种族主义的社会条件。本文使用计算文本建模方法来分析激发大规模射击者的独特社会逻辑。为此，我们确定了27个公开发布的大规模射击者“宣言”的样本，或射击者在其行动后留下的文件。使用主题模型，我们证明了大规模射击者表现出各种各样的关注点，这些关注点是他们行动的基础。尽管射手可以表现出多种可能的动机，但我们发现男性过度补偿的表达，对排斥的礼节性反应以及种族地位的威胁是大规模射手宣言的突出特征，从而证实了近期有关大规模枪击的社会学解释。