P-31 An Exploratory Study into the Effects of Crowd Funding for School Shooting Victims and Survivors on Existing Social Inequalities and Prejudices

Buller Hall Lobby

Americans are rapidly turning to crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe.com to pay for medical bills and funerals. Scholars have cautioned that medical crowdfunding could deepen existing social inequalities, while drawing attention away from systemic problems in the welfare state. Few studies have systematically examined the effect of race/ethnicity, gender, or age on crowdfunding success because these variables are not explicitly reported on most crowdfunding platforms. The present study on crowdfunding for victims of school shootings addresses this gap by using court records and news articles to gather demographic data about victims to compare with campaign outcomes. This data will give us some insight into the effects of crowd funding on existing social inequalities.