Key Themes (Synthesized Perspectives)

The main themes that people were worried about following the Iowa shooting, as reflected through multiple platforms

After systematically synthesizing different themes from comments on articles written by liberal and conservative media outlets, as well as social media, we extracted twelve main themse that people were most worried about after the Iowa shooting.

We looked at multiple sources to ensure diversity:

• Comments to a New York Times article covering the shooting (134 comments total)
• Comments to a Fox News article covering the shooting (over 1.8 k comments, of which 550 analyzed)
• Comments on a Reddit thread initiated by a pro-gun rights author on January 8th, 2024 (104 comments)
• Comments on a Twitter thread initiated by the Governor of Iowa and reproduced below
• We focused on sub-conversations to capture antagonistic arguments (70 comments out of several thousands)

Percentage of comments (excl. "other" category) falling into each of the main topics, by source

View decsription of each topic and select comments

We extracted the essence of the comments under each theme and pulled out a few unfiltered quotes that highlight the themes we examined. These quotes represent popular sentiment in plain, sometimes strong, language.

Choose topic

Scroll below to read selected comments:

Unfiltered Perspectives

Relevant Tweets

Click "Read replies" below to get a sense of citizens' moods and opinions following the Governor's first online comments after the Perry shooting

Our hearts are broken by this senseless tragedy. Our prayers are with the students, teachers & families of the Perry Community.

I have been in contact with law enforcement agencies & am continuing to monitor the situation. I will be joining their press conference today.

— Gov. Kim Reynolds (@IAGovernor) January 4, 2024

Tip: for additional perspectives, try searching key phrases like "Perry shooting" or browse comments on Governor Reynolds' other posts regarding the shooting