Product Of The Copycat Phenomenon

I think that once there is a successful procedure done there will initially be a very small market for human

Hollywood scripts and television programming are filled with storylines of crime and criminal justice. The viewing public consumes crime

When a crime is so deviant that it far exceeds society’s tolerance, it triggers public alarm and outrage[7] that draws the

The psychological approach is made up of many theories. The social learning theory, the social control theory, and the social identity theory. They all apply to The Columbine Shooting. According to Ronald L. Akers and Robert L. Burgess’s Social learning theory differential association is learned criminal behavior. Criminal behavior is often learned from interacting with certain social groups in person or via the internet. Criminal behavior is easily learned by individuals being introduced to techniques of committing the crime and specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes. According to with today’s technology on the rise school shootings can be understood by societal concern of the increase of violent video games

Over the past couple of decades, school shooting have seemed to occur often-- continuously shocking the nation and reminding everyone that no community is exempt from such horror. One main contributor of this hysteria is found within the media. At the catalyst of this hysteria, lies the horrific Columbine shooting in 1999. Since then, school shootings have received ample coverage-- some argue that this has romanticized school shootings, others argue that is has provided condemning coverage of the often insane perpetrators. In the first year after the Columbine shooting, over 10,000 articles were written about the event, likely setting the stage for the nationwide desire for constant coverage of such events (Elsass et al, p. 445-446).

The media constantly covers school shootings and in return, school shootings gain followers who become admirers of the offenders. A network of school shootings do in fact exist and a majority of these followers are dedicated to the Columbine shooters. The Columbine shooters were the first of school shooters to distribute and broadcast information online. Since then, many school shooters have used social media sites, including YouTube, to upload images and/or videos prior to going out and shooting individuals in schools. School shooting fans on YouTube have created a small-world network in which they use the Columbine shootings as a uniting factor of their network, write short positive statements on school shootings, and partake in long discussions about school shootings. These small-world networks for school shooting fans are easy to find but hard to control or eliminate. Due to this, the existence of these networks increases a possibility of support and justification for potential offenders and provides potential offenders with ideas and plans for future

Since people are mostly only able to participate in catastrophes such as this mass shooting at a distance, news media is the primary source of information, which therefore creates the audiences’ reality of the events that occur.(Wheeler 80) With this, the mass media has the control of what people are exposed to, and the choice to amplify awareness to what they choose as important. In an interview conducted with Sarah, an undergraduate student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, she recalled her exposure to the news of the shooting: “The only reports I had access to, was what I saw in the news”. When asked how she thinks the media had an effect on her perception of the shooting, she stated: ”Well I believe that since the only information I was able to get was from news sources, what I saw in the news is what I believed. So I really do think the media had a strong effect since I was exposed to mainly what they chose to present to me.” With this, media messages, such as the reporting on the Las Vegas shooting, exert a strong influence on audiences and the cultivation of people’s perception. The frequent exposure to these stories of mass shootings and the use of descriptors based on race are fed to the audience and become a common knowledge. Ultimately, the promotion of racial stereotypes through the disproportionate representation of perpetrators of mass shootings influences public opinion and perception.(Lankford) With the strong effect that media has on the people, it is

Society is frequently subjected to moral panics when any crime is committed. Humanity repeatedly blows crimes and incidents out of proportion until the entire society is somewhat controlled. Stuart Hall, in his book, ‘Policing the Crisis’ explained that “the media, in conjunction with the bourgeoisie, create moral panics in order to perpetrate fear and maintain control over society, as a whole.” (Hall, 2013, s. 1) Moral panics are created as a hazard and rising threat to shock both society and culture into changing the way it thinks and acts about problems in the real world. In this essay, moral panics will be looked at in detail with a specific interest in the case of James Bulger. There will too, be a focus on the influence the media,

Huntsville shootings. The occurrence of these terrible incidents have driven more and more of the public to take sides in the

Throughout my research I found that the book Criminology A Sociological Understanding, did a great job of listing the way media overdramatizes crime. The first way that the media does this is through something called crime waves. These crime waves pay close detail to a small number of multiple crimes which leads to a public panic that the crimes may keep occurring (Barkan, 26). One example in local media is something I saw on the local news tonight. 2 bodies were found today in Omaha in separate parts of the city

Viewers across the nation are affected by the social media causing stress on the subject by bombarding the public with media stories, rumors and “a sense of mass panic”. Victims have to relive that horrible moment because the media wants to

In “ Generation Plagiarism” by Sarah Wilensky argues that stealing others work it’s wrong and it shouldn’t be permitted. The article is mostly about being against cheating, and by using strict ways young people will start writing originally. One evidence is that” We write papers with our sources open in neighboring windows on the same laptop screen, and we have access to more of other people’s ideas than ever before-without even getting off the sofa.”(par 5). Wilensky’s purpose of writing this is that she wants to show how easy is to steal others work just with other windows open and not even getting up from the sofa. We have access to a lot of other ideas and work so it’s so easy for us to copy and paste. Wilensky’s solution is that” if a professor or teaching assistant actually gave the big old F every time they wondered about a very familiar paragraph in a paper, our copy-paste generation would quickly learn how to write originally and cite appropriately.”(par 11). What this solution means is that if a professor gives an F whenever he or she notices that this paragraph is familiar, so they can teach the copy-paste generation how to use and write their original work and ideas. In “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age “ by Trip Gabriel mostly have the same point of view as Wilensky’s. Gabriel also argues that when you write a paragraph with a bunch of ideas and mixing them it doesn’t mean that you have a new idea. One evidence is that “ Now we have a whole generation of students who’ve grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn’t seem to have an author.”(par6). What this evidence is showing is that now we have a generation that believes they can use anyone's articles and information as it has no author. Internet is making the world easier for people just to copy and put no

to pop up, Coincidence? There is some evidence that shows there might be a connection and some that shows that there isn’t. One school massacre that really started this trend the all known too well Columbine Highschool Massacre. Where two seniors at the school Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot multiple students and a faculty member. Even in recent instances there have been multiple school shootings like one a couple years ago, the sandy hook shooting where a 20 year old male named Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 individuals including his own mother.

Moral panics have been a topic of interest by those who are concerned with criminal and deviant behavior for many years. The term first appeared in criminology in a book written by Stan Cohen, in 1972 and involved a general misinterpretation of the situation, with an exaggerated reaction to a perceived threat, when the actual threat that is being offered (Cohen, S., 1972) (Walters, R., & Bradley, T., 2005). This essay will attempt to explore this concept in further detail, with regards to the literatures findings and explanations of the motives, processes and finer details of a moral panic. It will then explain the media’s role in perpetuating the cycle that is involved with a moral panic. This will include the justification that is used by those in media roles, and the “melodrama” (Anker 2005) (Wright, S., 2015) that is often used in the reports of the issues that give rise to the panics. Lastly, the outcomes of the media’s influential role in the process will be examined through the literature, and also through examples of moral panics in recent settings. This will hopefully provide an overall understanding of the development, perpetuation, and lasting effects that are involved in a moral panic.

Moral panics take place when the media outlets take a fairly ordinary event and turn it extraordinary. Cohen states that in a moral panic the media identifies a particular group as a folk devil (1972). Essentially folk devils can be identified as a threat to society's values. This is see when the media presents the group in a negative stereotypical fashion and again exaggerate the scale of the problem. Moral panics have three distinguishing characteristics. In Bonn’s article, Who Benefits From Public Fear, he states that one characteristic of moral panic includes a focused attention, whether real or imagined, of certain individuals or groups that are transformed into what Cohen referred to as “folk devils” by the mass media (2015). Additionally there is a noticeable gap between the concern and object risk poses. Typically this threat is less than generally perceived because of how the media outlets represent the threat. The level of concern over time fluctuates greatly. The usual pattern begins with the introduction of the threat, followed by an increase rise and then peak in public concern, which then therefore, and regularly unexpectedly, dies down. _________________________