Media, Self, and Society Research Project
America's Epidemic
Mass Media and Mass Shooting Contagion
Background
There is an epidemic of mass shootings in the United States. We all know how tragically prevalent these horrific events are. Just this week, we have had 7 mass shootings in 7 days. No other nation experiences massacres as frequently and deadly as the U.S.. In context, the U.S. has 5% of the world's population but 31% of the world’s mass shootings have occurred in the United States, with a mass shooting occurring roughly every 12.5 days (Ivy, Meindl 2017). We see it on the news all too often: massacres at places of worship, schools, shopping centers, restaurants, airports. Just this week we witnessed innocent lives be lost on trips to the grocery store and while working a normal shift at a salon. When will it end?
Attacks occur and the following media coverage is extensive. News outlets often repeatedly present the shooter’s image, manifesto, life story and the details of the event to an exhaustive extent. The disturbing frequency of these shootings has caused our society to grow accustomed to the site of “several killed in school shooting” headlines appearing on our television screens, newspapers and other news sources. Hand-in-hand with these headlines comes the face of the shooter- a face the public won't be able to avoid seeing for months following the shooting.
Through their in-depth coverage of the attack, unnecessary focus on the shooter, and prolonged coverage, journalists essentially glorify mass shooters and encourage future attacks. The media is causing mass shooting contagion.
Media's Impact
We need to stop making celebrities out of mass murderers.
Shooters get a significant sense of fame through news organizations’ coverage of the massacres. There is such extensive coverage and media attention on these shootings. In the United States, the 1999 Columbine school shooting was one the most highly media covered events of the entire decade, receiving larger CNN audiences than both the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, the Rodney King verdict and Los Angeles riots, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa (Muschert, 2002). Similarly, in 2012, the Associated Press year‐end poll ranked mass shootings as the leading news stories for that year and the New York Times ranked mass shooting stories among its 100 most read stories in 2015, 2017, and 2018 (Croitoru, et al 2020).
The American Psychological Association highlights "fame" as what most mass shooters desire, inspiring imitation (Pew, et al). University of Alabama professor Adam Lankford documented 24 shooters between 1966 and 2015 who explicitly mention acquiring fame and media attention as their objective.
Desire for fame has fueled the shootings we’ve seen in the last few decades. The shooters aim to be broadcasted all over national television and to become household names.
The Columbine shooters fantasized about the movies that would be made about their lives. The Virginia Tech shooter sent his martyrdom video and manifesto to NBC News. The Tucson shooter posted online saying "I'll see you on National TV" before committing the attack. And the Orlando shooter called a local news station to get more attention and then checked social media to see if he was "going viral” while in the middle of murdering 49 people (Lankford 2017). We need to stop making celebrities out of mass murderers.
The "Columbine Effect"
The Columbine Effect describes cases in which mass shooters and potential shooters have been influenced by the 1999 high school massacre. Psychologist Peter Langman has documented 32 attackers who referenced the Columbine attackers as role models and eight who viewed the Virginia Tech shooter to be a role model (Lankford 2017). There have also been over a dozen cases that involve perpetrators with the specific ambition to surpass Columbine’s death toll (Follman 2017).
Two Oklahoma brothers stabbed five of their family members to death and aimed to continue murdering enough people to become “more famous” than the Columbine shooters.
A man threatening to attack a California school vowed “to make Columbine look like a f**king tea party.”
A teenager who plotted to blow up his Utah high school, told police he was offended that they compared him to the Columbine killers as they “only completed one percent of their plan” and he was smart enough to be more successful.
A potential-attacker planned to bomb and shoot up a Florida high school, desiring to “break the record” of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings.
Conclusion
I know media coverage of these attacks are important and I am not suggesting that all coverage stops. Journalists need to publish this information for law enforcement agents and mental health experts who investigative journalists’ work in their research of the convoluted events leading to these attacks. I am suggesting, however, that the media finds a new approach to their coverage of mass shooting events. Campaigns such as "Don't Name Them" and "No Notoriety Campaign" have been established as a way to convince media outlets to no longer focus on the shooter. This is just the start.
We have lost too many lives be lost to senseless gun violence. We should not have to fear for our lives. We should not need to fear that at our trip to the grocery store, our date night at the movie theater, our high school, we could become another headline. Instead of plaguing the public with the shooter’s image, manifesto, plans and name, the media must honor the lives lost. The innocent civilians who lost their lives to senseless violence deserve to be immortalized, not the murderer. We don't need to lose any more people. We need change. Let’s put a stop to the epidemic of mass shooting contagion. And that starts with the media.