The MSM driven Mass Shooting Contagion Effect - The Most Diabolical 'FAKE NEWS'

Given how much the MSM exposed themselves with their handling of the election, especially how the Wikileaks caught them with their pants down given their collusion with the Clinton Campaign, it's rather shocking that instead of back peddle and try to strive to regain their lost confidence instead they're going balls to the wall with their new FAKE NEWS push.

The more they insist on pushing it, I argue the more it's up to us to further analyze and expose everything that's wrong with them and their wicked ways.

In this post I'd like to call attention specifically to the Mass Shooter Contagion Effect (think Copycat Crime). This is something I've touched on in previous posts, and have made it a point to to point out in other debates, but here I need one spot with the goods right up front (for reference) while the MSM truly needs to be nailed to the wall for their active role in perpetuating active shooter events.

In my older "BREAKING NEWS: Someone Somewhere Is Shooting Somebody... WITH A GUN!" piece I had set about breaking down the demographical realities of how in a nation of over 300 million people, the actual annual mass shootings aren't anywhere near the extinction level events the MSM would have us believe. I also got quite a bit into the 'Copycat Effect' in the 'rant'. Because of the thread title the ensuing debate became all about the merits of the 2nd Amendment, which kind of ruined the larger point: the role of the Social Contagion / Emotional Contagion Effect on societies and the MSM's role in perpetuating never ending active shooter copycat cycles in the specific way that they report the events.

The Contagion Phenomenon
Two centuries ago, a wave of suicides swept across Europe as if the very act of suicide was somehow infectious. Shortly before their untimely deaths, many of the suicide victims had come into contact with Johann von Goethe's tragic tale "The Sorrows of Young Werther," in which the hero, Werther, himself commits suicide. In an attempt to stem what was seen as a rising tide of imitative suicides, anxious authorities banned the book in several regions in Europe (Phillips 1974, Marsden 1998).

During the two hundred years that have followed the publication and subsequent censorship of Goethe’s novel, social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious. Simple exposure sometimes appears to be a sufficient condition for social transmission to occur. This is the social contagion thesis; that sociocultural phenomena can spread through, and leap between, populations more like outbreaks of measles or chicken pox than through a process of rational choice. web.stanford.edu...

To be clear: them reporting the events isn't what inherently causes the copycat effect. Instead, its the way that they report the events that ensures it. And it's all been going on long enough they have no excuses anymore for their part in the countless kids and other innocents that get gunned down.

Because of them there has been an annual mass slaughter scenario unfold across the nation. In this light the demographics actually ARE a Big Deal.

And because of so many events having their hands stirring the pot, I argue this whole affair is bonafide FAKE NEWS. I argue there should be criminal class action lawsuits by the families of the victims. I argue they should be CENSORED, especially if people online are to be censored for basically just being trolls, or for having different views than them are to be censored as is the language already spewing out of their datastreams at us each day.

So I will try to keep the citations & content from my old OP to a minimum in this post, as my old one is pretty good as a supplemental to this one I think. That piece was actually more centered around the Social Psychology science subject, the "Politics of Fear", a most important subject when it comes to understanding how ruthless of purveyors of FAKE NEWS that the MSM truly are a study which I highly recommend everyone understand).

Now before we dig in, I need to point out that while this effect is most studied with school shootings, it can apply to any type of mass slaughters along such lines. Note that the school shooter trend is purely an American reality (which helps argue the case of so much of it being the MSM's fault). Over in Europe we're seeing a similar trend play out into craze levels with the lone wolf Islamic extremist attacks which from what I can tell have been in increasing frequency and brutality over there the past couple years. This falls in line with how we've seen the active shooter events here rise and evolve. Over there them seem to be getting the same kind of media coverage that helps spawn copycats (which mostly centers around turning them into celebrities). Note tat back in the day here in the US, back int eh 70's hijacking airplanes was the 'norm' for these kinds of attention seekers. Then in the 90's, out in California, high speed chases became the trendy thing to go to jail for. Look that stuff up and you'll see all about all that.

In fact, I will try to let 'all new' citations do the rest of the talking from this point...

In July, researchers presented a terrifying idea: mass killings and school shootings may be contagious. Using a mathematical contagion model typically applied to the spread of diseases, the study found that 30 percent of mass killings and 22 percent of school shootings appeared to have been inspired by previous events. One possible reason, says lead author Sherry Towers, is media coverage.

“What we found was, in ones that didn’t get a lot of media attention there was no contagion, and in the ones where we did see a lot of media attention, that’s where we saw the contagion,” Towers says.
www.newsweek.com...

Here's the paper: Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings

We find significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incented by similar events in the immediate past. On average, this temporary increase in probability lasts 13 days, and each incident incites at least 0.30 new incidents (p = 0.0015). We also find significant evidence of contagion in school shootings, for which an incident is contagious for an average of 13 days, and incites an average of at least 0.22 new incidents (p = 0.0001). All p-values are assessed based on a likelihood ratio test comparing the likelihood of a contagion model to that of a null model with no contagion. On average, mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the US, while school shootings occur on average monthly. We find that state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings, and mass shootings.

Copycat Crime
The copycat effect is the tendency of sensational publicity about violent murders or suicides to result in more of the same through imitation.

The term was first coined around 1916 due to the crimes that were inspired by Jack the Ripper. Due to the increase of replicated crimes, criminologists soon began to realize that media coverage played a role in inspiring other criminals to commit crimes in a similar fashion.

There is also a book written by Loren Coleman called The Copycat Effect that describes the effect that the media has on crimes and suicides, which are inspired by crimes that have been widely covered across the media. Coleman's view on the media is that the constant coverage of these events, rather than the events with a positive message, gives these criminals a type of fame. The five minutes of fame, book or movie that is dedicated to these criminals provokes individuals with a tendency to behave in a similar way. Due to this type of fame, the "copycat effect" takes place.

How The Media Inspires Mass Shooters
"STAGECRAFT":

Since the 1980s, forensic investigators have found examples of mass killers emulating their most famous predecessors. Now, there is growing evidence that the copycat problem is far more serious than is generally understood. Ever since the 1999 massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been studying what motivates people to carry out these crimes. Earlier this year, I met with supervisory special agent Andre Simons, who until recently led a team of agents and psychology experts who assist local authorities in heading off violent attacks around the country, using a strategy known as threat assessment. Since 2012, according to Simons, the FBI's unit has taken on more than 400 cases—and has found evidence of the copycat effect rippling through many of them. Evidence amassed by the FBI and other threat assessment experts shows that perpetrators and plotters look to past attacks both for inspiration and operational details, in hopes of causing even greater carnage.

COPYCATS:

As part of our investigation into threat assessment, Mother Jones documented the chilling scope of the "Columbine effect": We found at least 74 plots and attacks across 30 states in which suspects and perpetrators claimed to have been inspired by the nation's worst high school massacre. Their goals ranged from attacking on the anniversary of Columbine to outdoing the original body count. Law enforcement stopped 53 of these plots before anyone was harmed. Twenty-one of them evolved into attacks, with a total of 89 victims killed, 126 injured, and nine perpetrators committing suicide.

CELEBRITYDOM:

"A lot of times they thrive on posing," says Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist at the University of California-San Diego and a leading researcher on targeted violence who has interviewed and evaluated mass killers. He cites the police booking photo of Jared Loughner, who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. "He's got that contemptuous smile, like it's a great pose. The savvy of these individuals to capitalize on visual exposure should not be underestimated."

INCREASING INTENSITY:

"They don't just want to be like them—they are envious and want to one-up them," Meloy explains. Copycats will aim to accomplish that either by going for a higher body count, he says, or, as in the Virginia case, killing in a more sensational way.

DELIBERATE POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP:

Meloy argues the media should also rethink some of its language. "Stop using the term 'lone wolf' and stop using 'school shooter,'" he says. "In the minds of young men this makes these acts of violence cool. They think, 'This has got some juice behind it, and I can get out there and do something really cool—I can be a lone wolf. I can be a shooter.'" Instead, Meloy suggests using terms such as "an act of lone terrorism" and "an act of mass murder."

Listen to National Public Radio's Robert Siegel interview Mark Follman about this investigation:

Changing how the media covers these stories may be especially important when it comes to preventing gun rampages in schools, according to John Van Dreal... "I hear how all the kids talk about it," Van Dreal says. "When it gets played up so much in the media, it becomes heroic to the kids who are thinking about doing it." No one can control what explodes across social media platforms. But news organizations remain powerful magnifiers of content and could work toward "an ethical best practice to leave out the imagery and the name as much as possible," Van Dreal says.

Whenever there is a mass shooting, the media covers it 24/7, replaying frightening scenes and interviews for days. What kind of psychological effect does this non-stop coverage have on the viewing public? Joseph Haraszti, MD is a renown Pasadena, California Psychiatrist and expert on mood disorders says it can play a role in copycat situations. Are you feeling overly-saturated with non-stop news coverage of mass shootings?

And here goes a complete documentary about it:
Mass Murderers and the Media Outlets That Love Them


The film maker was on campus during the Santa Monica CC Campus shooting, and has first hand account of how callously vulturistic the media crews were at that 'venue'. He goes on to show clips from the US and the UK, where even some other newscasters were blasting how the other newscasters were handling the coverage. A big thing he does well pointing out is how the coverage is hardly ever about the victims. If they simply covered the victims, instead of celebritize the killers, then the Contagion Effects would hardly be the same.

Given these shootings are the BIG thing all the time, and tend to have kids getting killed, I fail to see what other social issue is MORE important than the Medias role in driving an endless train of new mass murders.

Keep taking the bait, there's a reason they've gone 'balls to the wall' about fake news, it's because they know you will be angered by it.

Theyve gone balls to the wall with the "fake news" thing because it scares them to death that Americans will actually look into things for themselves and decide what they believe after personal investigation rather than taking what the news says as the truth and the whole truth and the only truth.

Thats what the "fake news" hysteria is all about. Consider when and where the "fake news" thing originated... and who is pushing it hard.

a reply to: Advantage

"Fake news," is a buzzword that originated on the corporate-owned mainstream media.

If one watches the TV for "news," one doesn't think for themselves.

Recent mass shooting in the Tver region near Moscow, Russia was orchestrated by the EU. The guy wasn't drunk, was under effect of MKULTRA manipulations from EU secret services.

Hussein Barack has the nerve call for gun control now: www.foxnews.com...

But simply shrugged his shoulders when White Supremacist Dylan Roof murdered 9 Black churchgoers in cold blood in 2015.

Obama Did NOTHING: en.wikipedia.org...