The article I found is titled “The Poetics of a School Shooter: Decoding Political Signification in Cho Seung-Hui’s Multimedia Manifesto” by Edward J. Carvalho. This article is published in The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies journal. The topic centers around the Virginia Tech school shooting and the social, political, and cultural factors involved. The research question is “What socioeconomic factors contributed to Cho Seung-Hui’s violent response at Virginia Tech, including the creation of his manifesto?” The article discusses Cho Seung-Hui’s familial background of emigration and how the class tensions led to his identity formation, isolation, alienation, bullying, and rage. His manifesto illustrates the failure of society to listen and understand the disaffected youths. This research question requires descriptive research to understand the dynamics of the situation and to describe the event in detail. A case study was utilized by Carvalho to focus on the details and examine a single instance to shed light on a wider social trend. Since the research requires the understanding of how general social processes work in a particular setting, the type of data utilized by Carvalho are reports of acts, behaviors, events and hidden social patterns. The data collection methods of content and discourse analysis provide an examination of the text in the manifesto, interviews, and other media sources to identify patterns in the way the violent act is portrayed to analyze the implicit cultural assumptions. The way the interviewees and Cho-Seung-Hui himself describe the violent act reveal how Cho-Seung-Hui is shaped by systems of social and political power. Therefore, the data collection sites include Cho Seung-Hui’s 23-page PDF manifesto, follow-up reports, televised interviews, documentaries, and other mainstream media sources. The research suggests that the data analysis method is coding because the researcher analyzes interviews and transcripts to discover patterns. I think the research is thorough and provides a detailed account of the factors that led Cho Seung-Hui to commit a tremendously violent act. It is interesting that Carvalho attempts to apply social and cultural logical to a seemingly indiscriminate and illogical action.

Carvalho, E.J. (2010). The Poetics of a School Shooter: Decoding Political Signification in Cho Seung-Hui’s Multimedia Manifesto. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural    Studies, 32(4-5), 403-430. Doi:10.1080/10714413.2010.510355.