Summary
This study examines how the murder of women by a lone gunman at the École Polytechnique in Montreal was presented to the public via media publication over a two-week period in 1989. All that the public came to know and understand of the murders, the murderer, and the victims was constituted in the description and commentaries produced by the media. What the murders became, therefore, was an expression of the methods used to describe and evaluate them, and central to these methods was membership category analysis: the human practice of perceiving people, places, and events as "members" of "categories," and to use these to explain actions. This is evident in the various versions comprising the overall story of the Massacre: it was a crime; it was a tragedy; it was a horror story. The killer's story is also based on his own categorical analysis (he said his victims were "feminists"). The media commentators formulated the significance of the murders in categorical terms: it implicated a wider problem, that of violence against women, and thus the reasons for the murders were shown to be categorical matters.
Contents
1. Ethnomethodology, crime and the media. -- 2. The story characters appear on cue. -- 3. The stories of crime, horror, tragedy, gun control, and the killer. -- 4. The killer's story. -- 5. The story of violence against women. -- 6. Accounting for the massacre: categories and social structure. -- 7. The functions of the massacre: categories and consequences. -- 8. Conclusion: ethnomethodology, moral order, and membership categorization analysis.