Amok killings: How our media create new perpetrators
Until now, I have never commented on issues in the press. Today I do because I get more annoyed with every report. After the rampage in Munich, the media are once again busy researching the reasons for such acts. Experts are being interviewed and journalists are concocting their theories. Is it the computer games? Migration? A misunderstanding of masculinity, as Bettina Weber writes in the Sonntagszeitung? And what should be done? More police? More education in schools? The only thing that is not written about in the media: It is the media itself that contributes significantly to rampages.
While new details of the offence and the background are reported in detail and millions shake their heads, a few feel inspired. For them, the perpetrators are role models to be emulated.
While we all shake our heads when we read the newspaper reports, a teenager who has been bullied for years is sitting in someone's flat. Perhaps he has been toying with the idea of taking his own life and suddenly sees an opportunity to take revenge and cuts out the newspaper report.
We shake our heads at the details. But a few feel inspired by them.
In another flat sits a frustrated narcissist. A nobody who would like to be somebody and sees an opportunity to become famous or spread his «message». Perhaps he already sees himself on the front page of the newspapers. He begins to think about it and make vague plans.
Almost all perpetrators have something in common: before committing their offences, they studied media reports about other perpetrators for a long time and intensively. They allowed this to encourage them in their own plans and identified with the perpetrators.
Breivik, who killed 77 people exactly five years to the day before the attack in Munich, has his own fan club. He received fan mail and marriage proposals after his crime.
Bullying, computer games and the like all existed before the massacre at Columbine High School. But it is only since this first killing spree at a school and the detailed reports about it that the offences have become more frequent. Copycats have been found all over the world.
Eric Harris, one of the two perpetrators, wrote before the crime: «We will have successors because we are so damn divine.» He knew that he could rely on the press.
Suicides become more frequent when the media report on them. This is called the Werther effect.
Psychological research has repeatedly shown that suicides increase when they are reported in the media. This phenomenon is known as the Werther effect. The name goes back to Goethe's novel «The Sorrows of Young Werther». A book that triggered a wave of suicides after its publication that resembled the suicide of Goethe's main character. Several analyses of reports on the suicides of celebrities were able to prove Werther effects. Even the film «Death of a Schoolboy», which was actually intended as an educational film on the subject of suicide, led to a significant increase in suicides in both broadcasts. The fact that the people who killed themselves identified with the film's protagonist can also be established by the fact that they were people of a similar age and committed suicide in the same way.
I am almost certain that a similar phenomenon could be identified in the case of killing sprees, even if it is difficult to research scientifically due to the low number of cases. In this case, we could speak of a Columbine effect.
Dear journalists: Please realise that there is not only a freedom of the press, but also a responsibility of the press. In your reporting, also bear in mind those who sit at home in front of their PC and search for reports about people who have run amok, save them, feel inspired and encouraged by them. Don't feed these people unnecessarily.
