@article{ref1,
title=""Our pain makes us family": March For Our Lives and the constitutive role of gun violence trauma in youth publics",
journal="Communication and the public",
year="2023",
author="Jensen, Kelly",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="This essay examines the dynamics of diverse youth public formation through analysis of the 20 student speeches delivered at the 2018 March For Our Lives rally. I argue that the collective identification as youth survivors of gun violence trauma functions to constitute this diverse youth public. I trace how the speakers' shared gun violence trauma enabled them to form a racially integrated coalition while not discrediting their differently positioned identities and disparate gun violence experiences. In doing so, I forward a conceptualization of how youth publics negotiate gun violence trauma, asserting that youth publics are characterized by both present constraints and a future-oriented agency, members of youth publics must account for tensions across racial differences in their gun violence prevention advocacy, and gun violence trauma functions as a shared basis for political participation. My analysis of the students' gun violence prevention discourse complicates this framework to reveal how gun violence trauma as a shared basis for youth public membership threatens their source of empowerment: ownership over their futures. Contributing to scholarship on the formation of publics, this essay demonstrates the significance of youth publics at the intersections of race, trauma, and gun violence.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2057-0473",
doi="10.1177/20570473231186839",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20570473231186839"
}