DEATH, GRIEF, AND SOLIDARITY - THE POLYTECHNIQUE CASE

Following the massacre of fourteen women at Ecole Polytechnique, in De cember 1989, the content (affective, social, religious, feminist, and anti-masculinist) of 690 condolence messages written by the public at two French universities (Universite de Montreal and Universite du Queb ec a Montreal) were compared. The results show that this event did not trigger a homogeneous social reaction, but rather different ones, acc ording to sex and university, suggesting that social investment factor s play a role in the codification of events related to public deaths.