Death, Grief, And Solidarity:

Following the massacre of fourteen women at Ecole Polytechnique, in December 1989, the content (affective, social, religious, feminist, and anti-masculinist) of 690 condolence messages written by the public at two French universities (Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal) were compared. The results show that this event did not trigger a homogeneous social reaction, but rather different ones, according to sex and university, suggesting that social investment factors play a role in the codification of events related to public deaths.