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Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
Monterey Park shooting: Ten dead and suspect at large - BBC News
My U of Denver Graduate Library school fellow alumna is Chinese-American and lives in the LA area. I used to visit with her when she worked in Northern CA and lived in Stockton, CA when I worked in Belmont, CA in Northern CA.
She married a Chinese-American who teaches in the LA area.
I have also seen first hand the grief and pain caused by these mass shootings as a Villages' neighboring couple lost their grand daughter in the Valentine's Day 2018 killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, FL. They eventually moved out of the Villages to be nearer to family.
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Tragic. But let's for once hope that common sense overrides media greed and the American public's insatiable appetite for sensationalism.
The phenomenon is called "media contagion effect" and is associated with suicides, terror attacks and mass shootings (center 4 research dot org, " "Does Media Coverage Inspire Copy Cat Mass Shootings?" Alex Pew, Lauren Goldbeck, Caroline Halsted, James Castro, and Diana Zuckerman, PhD, National Center for Health Research). This phenomenon has been known for decades. The numbers vary, but I've seen some estimates that three out of four of these mass shootings are copycat. Most seem to be in the 50% range.
Sooooo...Will the inevitable, relentless "coverage" inspire other off-balance types to go for their 15 minutes of fame by rounding up a gun and shooting up a dance studio, nightclub, school, or whatever? The numbers say yes. But maybe we as a society should start saying no to the sensationalizing and demanding sober, factual reporting. What, do you think, the media contagion effect be if these stories were reported on in the same vein as, say, the stock market reports?
Probably save a LOT of lives.