SMAC Lab Research Group
The SMAC Lab Research Group offers Manship School students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with social media data collection and research. Each semester, the Lab’s directors collaborate with interested students on group projects that tackle pressing issues in today’s society. Students are invited to share their scholarly interests and the research group collectively develops projects based on what students are most passionate about. This keeps the research group relevant and student-driven.
‘We demand answers, solutions, and results’: A comparative discourse analysis of institutional versus student responses to a local sexual violence crisis
During the spring 2023 semester, the SMAC Lab Research Group focused its work on a local sexual violence crisis. The project examined the institutional and student responses to the death and sexual assault of Louisiana State University student Madison Brooks. Drawing on crisis communication theory (Ashby-King and Aragón, 2022), the group examined how institutional and student responses differed in their conceptualization of the Madison Brooks sexual violence crisis.
The group conducted a critical thematic analysis of three institutional statements and three student organization statements and their accompanying 1,836 social media comments. The findings show that the institution adopted an image repair strategy focused on combating underage drinking and presenting the campus as a safe place for students, while student organization statements placed Madison’s sexual assault front and center and called out the university’s victim-blaming behavior and lack of accountability.
This work was presented at the inaugural LSU Pinkie Gordon Lane Graduate School Graduate Research Conference, where it won second place in the Business and Mass Communication poster presentation group.
Recent Comments