Mediated Ritual on Academic Ground

In the days following a gunman’s rampage in April, 2007, departments at Virginia Tech convened to discuss the losses of students and colleagues, the upcoming resumption of school, and requests from journalists to bring cameras to class. This last choice evoked a ceremonial language among faculty who usually discuss their work in more instrumental terms. Some dismissed journalists as parasitic intruders and demanded that classrooms be treated as “healing,” “sacred space” free of their taint. This short essay ponders the souring of a collegial relationship among storytelling professions in the aftermath of an event that drew wide coverage. The eruption of violence left university members scrambling for news, first about the nature of the incident, and then about the fates of people they knew. Broadcast, cable, and internet outlets assumed more central places in our lives than they usually enjoy. Though the campus newspaper provided a clearinghouse for announcements, its server crashed under the pressure of global demand, leaving private news companies, with their greater resources, to supply news even to those who worked where shots were fired. The speed at which commercial reporting conveys images and relays statements made it useful to locals as events unfolded. The incident was mass mediated for those nearby because fast capitalism trumped state channels and friendship networks. But the reporters who respond to these demands compete for advertisers’ dollars, which dangle before them in such huge numbers that journalists approach survivors en masse. Virginia Tech sprouted forests of satellite dishes; cameras surrounded survivors; and reporters inundated relatives with requests for their time. Many locals developed a siege frame of mind; so that by the time national politicians gathered for a local memorial, ambivalence about exposure had begun to rise. Handwritten signs told camera crews to leave (“Hokie Nation needs to heal. Media stay away,” said one version); and the administration followed suit with requests that reporters stay out of campus buildings. Though the ceremonial language of “sacred space” inspires speculation at the end of the essay, much of the offense taken by educators to journalists seems easy to explain. In the aftermath of group death, professional norms require reporters to swarm the living and shoot footage of anyone choked with emotion. The rapid progress of events impels them to gain access quickly, via entreaty and intrusion. Famed anchors left phone mail for grieving kin and sent flowers (and lackeys) to homes at all hours. Many locals spoke in grim humor of the cameras and boom mikes that hovered when mourners neared tears. Reporters grew aware of this reaction to their work and made enquiries in the hushed tones of undertakers.[1] In search of footage not facts, would-be interviewers were easily dismissed by agreements to talk off camera; but the courting of kin of the fallen was harder to avoid. Some surviving families had friends run interference, standing watch over houses to intercept callers. Others abandoned their homes. Such coverage of disaster can outrage those who feel their grief made spectacle for distant masses, even if they value the more caring attention that the exposure makes possible. During the reporters’ visit to campus, group boundaries clarified and many faculty began to express an oppositional logic: Mediated Ritual on Academic Ground