“Road Warriors” on “Hair‐Tragger Highways”: Cultural Resources and the Media's Construction of the 1987 Freeway Shootings Problem*

Media constructions of social problems usually rework the claims of activists and other primary claimsmakers. However, the news media acted as primary claims‐makers in discovering and reporting the 1987 Los Angeles freeway violence problem. The press drew upon cultural resources in constructing this problem, applying a conventional template for social problems stories and using familiar imagery to depict freeway shootings. The social organization of claimsmaking, as well as contingencies in the histories of individual campaigns, affect the choice of cultural resources used to construct social problems.