Mark Turner, Ph.D. – Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University

Dear Colleagues:

Audiences are increasingly familiar with shocking news reports of multiple murder by a shooter whose motives, actions, and goals seem strange, disproportionate, even unaccountable. The deep, sustained, almost unparalleled media attention is predictable, with elaborate analyses of cause, motive, and goal. Could it be that the attention we are giving these stories is backfiring, and itself becoming a causal factor in triggering these events?

Mark Turner, Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, will be joined through videoconference by Francis Steen, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, to present a case study of a shooter that suggests that this is a real danger.

In July of 2011, Anders Behring Breivik planned and executed a carefully laid out set of strategies that resulted in bombed government buildings, 77 dead, and 319 injured. Leading up to the events, Breivik prepared an elaborate press kit, including a manifesto and a YouTube publicity video. The media coverage predictably opens up a demand for an explanation; Breivik acted to create such a demand in order to fill it with his message. He studied how to increase his media reach by choosing multiple high-profile targets and combining an urban explosion with a lone shooter’s hours-long sustained massacre of innocents. His proactive use of media attention raises ethical questions, not easily answered, about the responsibility of viewers and the media. Steen and Turner co-direct the Red Hen Lab, which is dedicated to research on multimodal communication, using a vast and growing archive of recordings of international network news broadcasts. They were fellows of the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo during the Breivik events.

All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies

About Our Guest…

Mark Turner is Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University. He is the founding director of the Cognitive Science Network and co-director of the Red Hen Lab. His most recent book publications are Ten Lectures on Mind and Language 2011. Eminent Linguists Lecture Series. Beijing: FLTR Press) and two edited volumes, The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, from Oxford University Press, and Meaning, Form, & Body, edited with Fey Parrill and Vera Tobin, published by the Center for the Study of Language and Information. His other books and articles include Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science: The Way We Think about Politics, Economics, Law, and Society (Oxford), The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language (Oxford), Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science (Princeton), and Death is the Mother of Beauty (Chicago). He has been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Advanced Study of Durham University, and the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He is a fellow of the Institute for the Science of Origins, external research professor at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study in Cognitive Neuroscience, distinguished fellow at the New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology, and Extraordinary Member of the Humanwissenschaftsliches Zentrum. In 1996, the Académie française awarded him the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises.

Parking Possibilities

The Inamori Center is located in the lower level of Crawford Hall, which is the first building on your right if you enter the campus area from the west, driving on Euclid. There is a small pay-parking lot in between Crawford Hall and Amasa Stone Chapel, and a few spaces may be available there. Otherwise, it may be necessary to park further away, such as in the Severance Hall underground garage or Veale Center or one of the hospital garages. From Severance it would be simplest to go from the garage into Severance Hall and out the door on Euclid Ave; then cross Euclid and Adelbert, walk up the diagonal path into the Case Quad, and turn right to get to Crawford.

The entrance to Crawford Hall is at the plaza level, so uphill from the parking lot. It might be possible to enter from Crawford’s garage, but I don’t want to promise that. From the main entrance one can walk down the stairs or take the elevator to G to get to the Inamori Center.

Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:

April 26: From a Moment to a Movement for Children? Doug Imig, Professor of Political Science, University of Memphis
***Special Location: Spartan Room, Thwing Student Center**