Senior Honors College Fellow Abigail Bordelon
Author: Abigail Bordelon | Major: Public Health, Spanish | Semester: Spring 2025
During my sophomore year, I met who would soon become my research mentor, Dr. Bart Hammig through one of his current public health masters students, Sydney Haldeman. From there I went on to assist Dr. Hammig with a study examining media reports of unintentional pediatric firearm deaths for prevention messaging. Prevention messaging is common in the field of public health as a tool to help the general public take steps to avoid tragedies. I worked alongside Dr. Hammig and a masters student to analyze around 300 media reports from 2021-2022 that pertained to an unintentional firearm death of a minor zero to eleven years of age. What we found became the inspiration for my Honors Thesis: the overwhelming majority of these reports did not include a prevention message. I’ve always loved reading and the power words can hold, so I gravitated towards how word choice could promote positive health behaviors and be used to avoid these preventable tragedies.
Upon this discovery I instantly began to think about how to correct for this deficiency. Working to reduce gun violence of any kind will always be a conglomerated approach, but one aspect must be public education. I quickly learned that media toolkits are often used to help guide journalists when reporting on sensitive issues such as suicides, mass shootings, SIDS, and other tragedies. I decided that when it was time to embark on my Honors Thesis I would craft a media toolkit with the aim of instructing journalists on how to include prevention messaging in articles on the unintentional firearm deaths of minors. However, what I imagined to be a straightforward endeavor quickly proved to be filled with challenges and endless nuances.
Due to previous legislative prohibitions on gun violence prevention research, that are quickly resurging, there was not a wealth of literature on unintentional gun violence, the effectiveness of safe firearm storage, attitudes surrounding safe firearm storage, or how prevention messaging can be utilized to prevent safe firearm storage practices. My thesis ended up taking on a unique form of two literature reviews resulting in the creation of two deliverable final products. My first literature review examined the prevalence, attitude towards, common misconceptions, and effectiveness of safe firearm storage in the United States. This allowed me to form a rough idea of how safe firearm storage is currently practiced and thought of by caregivers in the United States. My second literature review was infinitely more challenging for me because it examined how the mainstream media reports on unintentional pediatric shootings. I explored broad concepts such as how the mainstream media affects individuals’ perception of risk as well as why journalists choose to include or exclude prevention messaging. I also delved into the concept of media framing and used this concept to explain how the mainstream media is currently framing unintentional pediatric shootings. By identifying the gaps and problematic aspects in the current media frames, I was then able to produce my deliverables: a media tip-sheet and a media resource guide.
The Honors College Research Grant allowed me to study a topic that is relatively untouched and that I believe has potential to contribute to saving the lives of children. I am grateful for the flexibility it has granted me to grow as a researcher as well as to learn that I can persevere in the face of projects that become more difficult than anticipated.