The periodic oscillation of the shock waves in screeching, underexpanded, supersonic jets, issuing from a choked, axisymmetric, nozzle at fully expanded Mach numbers (Mj) of 1.19 and 1.42, is studied experimentally and analytically. The experimental part uses schlieren photography and a new shock detection technique which depends on a recently observed phenomenon of laser light scattering by shock waves. A narrow laser beam is traversed from point to point in the flow field and the appearance of the scattered light is sensed by a photomultiplier tube (PMT). The time-averaged and phase-averaged statistics of the PMT data provide significant insight into the shock motion. It is found that the shocks move the most in the jet core and the least in the shear layer. This is opposite to the intuitive expectation of a larger-amplitude shock motion in the shear layer where organized vortices interact with the shock. The mode of shock motion is the same as that of the emitted screech tone. The instantaneous profiles of the first four shocks over an oscillation cycle were constructed through a detailed phase averaged measurement. Such data show a splitting of each shock (except for the first one) into two weaker ones through a ‘moving staircase-like’ motion. During a cycle of motion the downstream shock progressively fades away while a new shock appears upstream. Spark schlieren photographs demonstrate that a periodic convection of large organized vortices over the shock train results in the above described behaviour. An analytical formulation is constructed to determine the self-excitation of the jet column by the screech sound. The screech waves, while propagating over the jet column, add a periodic pressure fluctuation to the ambient level, which in turn perturbs the pressure distribution inside the jet. The oscillation amplitude of the first shock predicted from this linear analysis shows reasonable agreement with the measured data. Additional reasons for shock oscillation, such as a periodic perturbation of the shock formation mechanism owing to the passage of the organized structures, are also discussed.