Copycat killers: coverage makes things worse
Up to six people have died in the aftermath of the shootings at an Amish school.
A very gruesome state of events given it is such a law abiding and peaceful community. It is worthwhile noting that the shooting was not entirely without parallel.
Same day, different city, another kid with a gun at a school. Coincidence maybe, given guns are so prevalent in the USA, but only last week there had been a shooting at a school in Colorado, and two days later another one in Wisconsin. Still a coincidence?
Something similar happened after the Columbine massacre in 1999. Subsequent plots were foiled with kids bragging that they were going to “pull a Columbine”.
This phenomena of copycat killings is also explored in Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, a book I mentioned earlier when opening this chapter on understanding modern terrorism.
In it he says that if people were exposed to a gruesome act, it could become contagious in particular contexts and spread further.
The post-Columbine outbreak of school shootings is… happening because Columbine happened, and because ritualized, dramatic, self-destructive behavior among teenagers — whether it involves suicide, smoking, taking a gun to school, or fainting after drinking a harmless can of Coke — has extraordinary contagious power.
So what, you say, sometimes kids copy each other. Big deal? Bear with me there is a point to all this.
Writing in the Guardian in August, the writer Lionel Shriver made the same point:
The biggest drivers of America’s bizarre late-90s profusion of teenage kids suddenly razing their classrooms with semi- automatics were outsized media coverage and disproportionately hysterical preventive measures in schools. Kids saw photos of their peers plastered large as life all over the news, the long profiles on hitherto nobody misfits in their local papers, and envied the attention.
…
I’m no psychologist, but school shooters and suicide bombers surely have much in common.
Gladwell’s book also examined the sudden epidemic of copycat suicides in Micronesia and pointed out how it led to an ingrained culture of fatalism that exacerbated the situation.
He also cited the study of a University of California sociologist who found that, over a period of 20 years, suicides increased after reports of suicide appeared in the newspapers.
I believe there are some interesting parallels to be made between high-school killers and suicide bombers. Putting aside the global element to the latter aside for a moment, could it be that the media coverage, moral panic, wild statements by politicians and bungled police raids exacerbate the danger we face?
Think about it. Every time John Reid makes a bid for leadership with a speech telling us how suicide bombers are the greatest threat ever ever and ever, you can bet some kid is sitting there thinking of the potential power and attention they could be afforded.
Everytime George Bush says the threat of Muslim terrorists is greater than anything the west has ever faced before (put aside the absurdity of that statement for now) he only gives Osama Bin Laden and co-conspirators the encouragement they need.
Everytime the media release a poll showing how scared Londoners are of sitting next to brown kids on the Tube the discord that the terrorists wanted to spread is bearing fruition. Remember the four wanna-be suicide bombers of 22nd July? They saw the reaction to July 7th and wanted it for themselves.
Robert Baer’s ‘Cult of the Suicide Bomber’, a recent documentary showed how suicide bombers were regarded as celebrities in the Occupied Territories, as they do in Lebanon. This supports my point – propping up the suicide bombing ideology is a also desire for fame and glory. [hat tip: Graemewilliams from cif]
The problem is sometimes we inadvertently do their job in attaining that fame for them.
A measured response
A similar debate ensued when broadcasters were asking themselves last year whether airing videos by terrorists were playing into their hands in their desire for notriety.
I believe a similar debate should be had over the statements made by politicians and media moral panic. This does not mean the media should censor themselves but that coverage should be more measured and nuanced.
Politicians should be more measured when making statements. Let actions speak for themselves rather than telling us everyday how this is the greatest threat we have ever ever ever faced. That has the potential to make the threat worse.
[a shorter version is on comment is free]
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Filed in: Civil liberties, Media
Genuine question: who was the sociologist Gladwell quoted? I’m intrigued.
On this topic, Hakmao makes a very good point over here.
Good points seen Heathers recently. When the fat girl attempts suicide and fails she is later condemned by one of the cool kids for mimicing them. Hilarious. That film was made in 1989 i believe.
Can anyone remember the names of those evil fucks that shot up columbine?
Hmmm… I’m a bit worried people are mis-understanding my article on CIF, and reading your own blog Dan.
I’m emphatically not saying that we should try and make direct comparisons between high-school killers and suicide bombers, as Brendan O Neill apparently did yesterday (which I didn’t see until bibamejico pointed it out).
I’m saying there is empirical evidence to suggest that individuals, without any prompting from Al-Qaeda, may fall for copycat suicide bombings after watching the media coverage and political hyperbole.
There is a global element to their support and grievances but that does not discount kids being stimulated off their own accord.
America glamourises guns and violence. Whether it’s hollywood, nintendo, hip-hop, Fox news or the pentagon, the message kids get is pretty clear: guns are cool. We need guns to protect ourselves from the enemy
Sunny,
There was a guy who wrote ‘Stand on Zanzibar’, I forget his name, John Brunner or something like that. He made the point, a long time ago, about the ubiquitinous of individual violence ais a a means. At the time, I thought, it was fiction,and indeed his characters were more likely to pick up a sword and decapitate you, rather than blow themselves up, but the point was made. Some folk are willing to commit hari kari, without consideration of others.What was fiction is now a fact. He is dead now, but what he said is still true. There are nut jobs out there. We need to deal with them.
Kismet,
The truly horrible things about guns is how easy it is to think them cool. On the few occasions I’ve had to recreationally unload from a macho gun, I got a serious rush. And I’m a woolly liberal.
Doesn’t take the media; men love weapons, young men love them unwisely.
Another thing you could compare it to: duelling.
Duelling wasn’t a case of hundreds of mostly young men spontaneously deciding to settle a point of honour with pistols: an idea, once created, spread and was copied. People came to think it was an option, so sometimes they took that option, even if it made no obvious rational sesne. There were religious, political and even sexual aspects, but the none of those things you might have called the ‘root causes’ of duelling went away when dueling did. The option was just taken off the menu: noone these days is ever faced with the decision ’should I challenge him to a duel?’.
The interesting question is exactly how that change came about.
First things first Sunny.
Please, what’s the reference to that sociologist you cite? No pressure – I’m guessing you know as much as I do about the original research. It would help your case.
Secondly, regarding my comment: I’m certainly not accusing you of mbunderstanding – if you got that impression, read my post again.
Finally, your caviat about “Putting aside the global element to the latter” makes your analogy *almost* worthless.
Yes, there are probably “kids” out there who want to copycat suicide bombers for being suicide bombers and cool and whatnot. When some of those actually kill anyone, let me know.
With regards to the reasons behind nutjobs deciding to become suicide bombers, the copycat phenomenon is a minor factor. Religion and other social pressures play a far larger role, enough to make the copycat factor irrelevant. Unless you are claiming that countries such as Iraq and Israel suffer suicide bomb attacks because their media and politicians exaggerate the terrorist threat and their police bungle raids on extremists? I didn’t think so.
Your “empirical evidence” is based on a bunch of jokers on 22/7 who, as far as I am aware, didn’t kill or maim anyone.
There the analogy ends. Anyone reading your “edited” Cif post can see that.
Why bother with half your argument if you’re going to have to retreat and say “Oh, that’s not what I *really* meant” when you actually have a very valid point to make?
As an aside: why nick other people’s comments without crediting them? I see you’ve now changed the disclaimer on this post to stating it’s “A shorter version” rather than “An edited version” – but that’s not really telling the whole story, is it?
Either you’re intellectually dishonest or (and I’d like to think that this is the case as you generally have sensible things to say) you’ve never come across the blogger phrase “Hat-tip“.
Try it now.
No harm done.
Anyhow, why should someone who doesn’t include “Israel” as one of their specialist subjects be expected to know anything about Robert Baer off the top of their head?
Here’s how it works:
Hat-tip: graemewilliams
Easy, huh?
BTW: Anyone who thinks I’m chatting sh1te about Sunny’s plagiarism is welcome to pop over here and check the evidence out for themselves. It’s pretty embarrassing and he’d do better to give a belated hat-tip to whoever graemewilliams is than try to cover his tracks as he has done here.
BTW2: Until this evening I hadn’t read Brendan O’Neill’s piece either Sunny, and it’s a bit daft of bibamejico to accuse you of copying it. That still doesn’t get you off the previous charge though!
BTW3: More info required if possible on the three Hizballah Christian suicide bombers you mention at Cif, if you have it to hand. Google Search is bringing up nothing but irrelevant JihadWatch posts and the like. Not too useful. Ta.
Dan… I hate to break this to you but the lack of a hattip to graemewilliams is not really embarassing. I don’t have a problem acknowledging people’s contributions its just that I’d planned to update this article a bit more comprehensively and add the hat tip then. But I hadn’t had the time and you’re forcing my hand so I’ve added it. Happy? There is no ‘charge’ as such.
The guy mentioned in Gladwell’s book is: David Phillips, a sociologist at the University of California in San Diego.
You also say:
Religion and other social pressures play a far larger role, enough to make the copycat factor irrelevant. Unless you are claiming that countries such as Iraq and Israel suffer suicide bomb attacks because their media and politicians exaggerate the terrorist threat and their police bungle raids on extremists? I didn’t think so.
I’m wary of attributing the same factors to all. Religion plays a part, foreign policy plays a part, social pressures play a part, the company they keep and their backgrounds too play a part.
But the same applies to other people who commit suicide and go on shooting sprees too. They do not just go out on a whim and start shooting people. I refer you to the report mentioned on Wikipedia:
A thorough study of all U.S. school shootings by the U.S. Secret Service warned against the belief that a certain “type” of student would be a perpetrator. Any “profile” would fit too many students to be useful, and may not fit the potential perpetrators. “The researchers found that killers do not ’snap.’ They plan. They acquire weapons. They tell others what they are planning. These children take a long, planned, public path toward violence. And there is no profile. Some lived with both parents in ‘an ideal, All-American family.’
Sound familiar?
On the Christian suicide bombers, see this:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1838199,00.html
I quote:
Researching my book, which covered all 462 suicide bombings around the globe, I had colleagues scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and biographies of the Hizbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. We were shocked to find that only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.
Yes. Happy. Good on you Sunny. Took a while though.
Might have seemed pedantic but you were being accused of plagiarism over at Cif and *ahem* that really is the same paragraph rewritten again in your piece. So nice one. All clear. Sorry if “charge” sounded harsh. Will amend my post to make this clear. Still amused that you had time to change the end of your post *twice* but no time to add the hat-tip, but there we are. Far easier to rewrite someone else’s words I’m sure.
BTW Thanks for the Christian suicide bomber link and the sociologist reference. Will check both in the morning, no doubt interesting stuff – off to bed now…
Back to the post – with regard to suicide bombers, I find your wariness intriguing. Why you think copycatting might be an important contributory factor here (bar the four donuts of 22/7) but not in Iraq or Israel is unclear.
Why be wary when someone blows themselves up for “Islam” in London in exactly the same way as someone blowing themself up in Afghanistan, both having been on similar trips to training camps in the latter to sit Quran spelling bees and learn how to make bombs?
Your “Putting aside the global element to the latter” conveniently glosses over the common link between the two and the major difference between suicide bombers and school shooters: religion. There are no such training camps for school shooters that I’m aware of and yet attendance on these camps would seem to be a fairly important contributory factor to whether someone blows themselves up or whether they do little more than spout bile. I find it surprising that you consider this factor of similar importance to what John Reid or George Bush say at press conferences.
But the same applies to other people who commit suicide and go on shooting sprees too. They do not just go out on a whim and start shooting people.
Aha. Moving the goalposts! I never said they did. But what does this have to do with copycatting? Or are you effectively relocating to a position that suicide bombers and school shooters both have a “planning” aspect in common?
You may as well just say “both kill people” and be done with it. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether John Reid and co say they’re the most dangerous scummers on Earth or not.
I refer you to my earlier point *and the one your article is supposedly about*: kids copycat, adults tend not to.
Warped Muslim suicide bombers don’t need to – they have a fcuked up religious basis for what they’re up to that trumps any old cobblers that John Reid, George Bush, the Daily Mail or Express have to say. Yes, the latter *are* a factor, but so too is whether they get out of bed the right side on the morning of detonation. It’s about the relative weights you ascribe to these factors. And for school shooters, the weight you can attribute to overzealous reporting or political hyperbole is larger than it is for suicide bombers who have other reasons for doing what they do, which is why your analogy falls down.
Perhaps you don’t like the fact that religion can make people irrational. Nor do I. But it’s the way it is and no amount of “If only we didn’t go on about them so much!” is going to stop someone determined to blow themselves up in public. It certainly hasn’t worked anywhere else that suicide bombing is a problem.
Given that you are wary of generalisations, please could you show me one case of suicide bombing in the West that can be attributed either entirely or mainly to copycatting. 22/7 doesn’t count – it didn’t appear to involve any suicide from the news I saw.
Your argument on this is weak, but that still doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hold our media and politicians to account. The country would be a far more pleasant place for everyone to live if all Muslims weren’t viewed as latent terrorists. But I doubt even that would have any effect whatsoever on those convinced the West is immoral, intent on splodeydoping themselves for their skewed idea of religion.
Why be wary when someone blows themselves up for “Islam” in London in exactly the same way as someone blowing themself up in Afghanistan, both having been on similar trips to training camps in the latter to sit Quran spelling bees and learn how to make bombs?
I think you are making the same kind of category error as someone who, based on examples of some mercenaries, asks how capitalism can drive someone to kill.
A military unit is a military unit, whether it serves the Queen or the Qu’ran. A terrorist group is a terrorist group, whether it serves Marx or Mohammed. A lone nutter is a lone nutter, whether he dislikes Mondays or plans a Caliphate.
The ideology of a group has almost no effect on the details of its actions, only on its strategy, and the contents of the speeches the leader makes.
Hear hear Soru
Are we sure the 21/7 bombers were copycats? I thought the accepted theory was they failed because the explosives had deteriorated, suggesting they might have been made before the 7/7 attacks and possibly by the same people?
There doesn’t seem to be much news on those attacks that didn’t come out in the month immediately after – have I missed something?
I think I made the error of staying up too late!
Soru: I think you are making the same kind of category error as someone who, based on examples of some mercenaries, asks how capitalism can drive someone to kill.
I wasn’t clear enough. Sunny uses Robert Baer’s documentary to back up his theory about copycatting, but then claims to be “wary of attributing the same factors to all.
I should have been far more explicit – why is he not wary about this factor being applied in both the Middle East and the UK, but wary about applying the “religious camp” factor (for lack of a better phrase – although religious camp reminds me a little too much of Graham Norton in Father Ted) across the board for people who have had the same training and same religious brainwashing?
Unless he is claiming that the camps being run in Afghanistan or wherever have had no effect whatsoever on those who then go and blow themselves and innocent civilians up.
I’m certainly not asking “what is it about Islam that causes people to explode” – that’s as daft a question as the example you give. Several billion Muslims aren’t about to go blow themselves up, regardless of the scaremongering of the right-wing media and web.
So with regards to your comment I respectfully disagree. My error (if it is such) would not be to look at mercenaries and wonder how capitalism drives people to murder. It would be to wonder what it is about attending certain training camps that causes people to murder. There are plenty of blowhards (such as most of the Al Ghurabaa lot) who despite public pronouncements haven’t gone around blowing people up. My bet is they’ve not gone to dicey training camps in Afghanistan either. The question is whether attending such camps is a factor in convincing someone to go blow themselves (and innocent people) up or whether they’ve already decided to do it anyhow. Something that probably makes much of this debate irrelevant as it’s a bit hard to ask suicide bombers after the event.
The ideology of a group has almost no effect on the details of its actions, only on its strategy, and the contents of the speeches the leader makes.
Sure. Although the actions can be spun to reflect that ideology – e.g. head-chopping, suicide bombing being an example of using your body as a weapon and then getting your reward of 72 SunMaids (or whatever it is).
However, I would suggest that an ideology that condemns the act of suicide (and/or violence) is unlikely to generate suicide bombers – not “almost no effect” at all.
An interesting debate – in the process I’ve learned a bit about the effect of reporting on suicide (Sunny – there’s a BMJ review that is skeptical re: Phillips data you might want to read – interesting stuff though as it’s not clear cut either way) and been reaquainted with Pape. Cheers.
Apologies for not turning up yesterday to comment but I was out having fun.