Dawson College Shooting

What Happened?
On September 13, 2006, Gill arrived at Dawson College in Montreal and opened fire on students within the main building, killing Anastasia De Sousa, 18, and wounding nineteen other people before officer Denis Côté and other police officers shot him in the arm. Gill then turned his gun on himself and committed suicide, according to witnesses, authorities, and the autopsy report. Authorities concluded the attack was premeditated, after a short suicide note was found on Gill's body

The Killer
Kimveer Gill received military training. He did not complete his basic training for unknown reasons. He was deemed unsuitable for military service and agreed to leave before receiving extensive weapons training. Gill's mother, Parvinder Sandhu, told a South Asian radio station that Gill regularly spent time practicing his shooting.

Kimveer Gill described himself in his profile on VampireFreaks.com: "His name is Trench. You will come to know him as the Angel of Death ."He is male. He is 25 years of age. He lives in Quebec. He finds that it is an O.K place to live. He is not a people person. He has met a handful of people in his life who are decent. But he finds the vast majority to be worthless, no good, kniving, betraying, lying, deceptive, motherfuckers. Work sucks..........School sucks..........Life sucks..........What else can I say. Metal and Goth kick ass. Life is like a video game, you gotta die sometime." He also wrote, "I hate this world, I hate the people in it, I hate the way people live, I hate God, I hate the deceivers, I hate betrayers, I hate religious zealots, I hate everything ... I hate so much ... "

Most people from his high school years remember him having friends and certainly never being bullied. His friends say that near the end, Kimveer Gill had a fascination with 9/11 conspiracy theories, the war in Iraw and the 1999 Columbine massacre. He liked Jack Daniels and the odd hit of ecstasy.

"People kill each other Rape women Molest children Deceive and betray Destroy lives Bullying and torturing each other at school What kind of world is this? What the fuck is wrong with people. This world….this life, is worst than hell.

Kimveer Gills dislikes, as stated in his vampirefreaks.com profile, are: THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING IN IT. But to be more specific: Jocks, Preps, Country Music, Hip Hop, Posers, Wiggers Chavs, Normal people, Anything And Everything Hip Hop, All Those Who Oppose My Rule, People who pretend to be your friend, but they're not, Traffic, American Government, Animal Cruelty, Anyone Who Supports The American Government, Politics, Comedy Movies, The Police, Law Enforcement, Religion, All The Governments On Earth, God, Stress, Really Hot and Humid Summer Days, Lies, Betrayers, Deceivers, Manipulators, Lawyers, Anyone Who Has Anything Against Metal Or Goth, Capatalists, People Who Think They're Real Smart Asses But Who Are Really Just Motherfuckers, People Without Manners, Downraters, Rude People, People In General, Anyone Who Has Ever Said Or Done Anything Bad To A Goth Girl, Sunlight, Goody Two Shoes, Fucking Religious People Who Think They Know Everything.....And Then They Stick It In Your Face Cuz' They Think They Know Everything (They Don't Understand That They're Just A Bunch Of Little Sheep), Catholics, Society, Traffic, When My PC Crashes Or Freezes, Cheerleader bitches, Teachers Who Try To Be Like The Students So They Can Be ^popular^....Instead Of Doing Their Job The Way They Should...And TEACH, Fuck, Just Fucking Writting This Stuff Is Pissing Me Off, People Who Talk With Their Mouths Full, Bullys, Smartasses, When my contact lenses don't go in my eyes on the first try, Normal human behaviour, People who drive too slow in the fast lane, People who judge others, When My Rifle Misfires And I Gotta Stand There For 60 Seconds Waiting For It To Fire, Or Not, The Universe, Anyone who doesn't like VF, Church Going Assholes, The World, Bible Thumpping, Know-It-Alls, Damn I Gotta Lot Of Dislikes, Child Molesting Priests, All Priests, Republicans, Racists, Homophobes, Did I Mention That I Hate The World, Pitbulls (They're Too Dangerous), Waking Up, Life, The City It's Just So Damn Crowded, Warm Beer, The Human Race, When A DVD I'm Watching Skips Or Freezes, Dogs, GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING JOCKS.

Media Links?

Gill referenced more than 50 movies, and 3 TV shows on his Vampire Freaks profile.
The game Super Columbine Massacre RPG is not mentioned on Kimveer Gill's Vampire Freaks profile amongst his list of favorite video games, nor in his online journal.

Aftermath: Other Media Controversies

An immediate controversy arose about an article regarding the Dawson shootings by journalist Jan Wong, of the Toronto-based Globe and Mail. Three days after the event, Ms. Wong wrote a front-page piece titled Get under the desk, in which she drew a link between all three school shootings in Quebec history (the École Polytechnique, the Concordia University and the Dawson College killings) and the nature of the Quebec society and its protective language laws.
Wong suggested the fact that the three perpetrators were not old-stock French Quebecers (the shooters were Algerian, Belarusian, and Indian in descent) was related to their murderous actions since, she claimed, they were alienated from a Quebec society concerned with "racial purity." Accused of "Quebec bashing,"

In 2007, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council faulted CKNW, a radio station in Vancouver, British Columbia for airing "potentially dangerous information" during the Dawson College shooting. During the incident, CKNW had simulcast content from its sister stations in Montreal which included students speaking by cellphone from inside the school. A Vancouver man complained that the content could have told the gunman where the students were. The council said that as a result of modern technology reducing geographic distance as a barrier, CKNW had breached Section 10 (coverage of violent situations) of the broadcast code.

Teacher Feedback

It was suggested to me that, although Jamie Bulger and Columbine are good case studies, they are both quite dated and over-done, with the examiners looking for fresher material. The Wales suicide rate and a more recent school shooting were both cited as examples that would be seen as more original. However, I researched recent school shootings, and found that all of the 2008 examples had little information (what I thought to be too little to be able to cover them accurately and draw any conclusions from them), with the Wales suicide rate having a similar problem. I thought that for my 5 case studies, I would use:

The Jamie Bulger case
Because this was such a huge moral panic, it was also very well documented, and there is a huge amount of material available. This makes me think, that despite it being quite an old case which has been done before, it would still be a valuable example, as long as I attempt to look at it from a different angle (for example focusing on the killers troubled backgrounds rather than just trying to prove the link between Childs Play 3 and the murder

The Columbine Massacre
While this has similar problems to the Jamie Bulger case, again there is a huge amount of material available. Also, I think this is a really interesting case study, as it is quite unusual. The use of journals, blogs and online videos from the killers would allow me to research another aspect of this topic; the ways in which killers use the media to almost create a name for themselves, to publicise their crimes. This could be compared to the ways that established media (such as newspapers) also does this, albeit unintentionally

The Virginia Tech Massacre OR The Dawson College Shooting
These are both more recent case studies; the most recent school shooting case studies that have an acceptable level of material available. There is also scope for writing about different elements of the media for this case study, and they both have particular elements about them that make them interesting.

The high suicide rate amongst young people in Wales
This is a very recent example as it is still being covered in the news now, and will continue to be if the trend continues. However, this is the case study with the least material available for it, which could make it harder to use effectively. It would allow me some scope to theorise around it though, which is a positive.

I have not yet decided on my 5th case study, but it will be fairly recent, and hopefully covering a different subject area (ie not school shootings, suicide, or, if I can help it, murder)

Wales: Teenage Suicides

I am interested in looking at the increasing suicide rate in Wales, which has been covered a lot in the news recently. It seems like there is not that much information available, but I thought I would look at it anyway.

I compiled the factual information from
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2008/02/19/4859704-ap.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4673920.stm

- 17 young suicides in just over a year near one town in South Wales
- No evidence of a suicide pact or cult - “Our review is ongoing but so far there is absolutely no indication of any criminality or of any suicide pact,”
- Police complained about “sensational” media reporting adding to the problems, specifically newspapers
- Police did say that a number of the victims used a social networking Web site that is popular with young Britons.
- The parents of one of the children who committed suicide said their son may have been influenced by media reports they believe glamorized earlier suicides, and called for press restraint.
- “We feel media coverage could trigger other young people, who are already vulnerable and feeling low, into attempting to take their own lives.”

This case study seems like it could be important in relation to my enquiry into whether sensationalist media is linked to crime rates. In my online survey, a high percentage of people said they believe newspapers do exaggerate and sometimes glamourise crimes such as this, which can have a very negative effect, especially on young people, who are perceived as being the "vulnerable" in society.

Type of source: Secondary news websites

Benefits of source:
- From news websites, including the BBC site, suggesting the information is quite trustworthy
- Good factual information

Limitations of source:
- Not much insight into why this is happening

Survey

I created a simple survey about the media effects debate, and I will try and get as many people to do it as possible.
The link is:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=T4uaz6El38TSl_2f1MSVim6g_3d_3d
Any responses would be welcome :)

The purpose of this survey:
My aim was to use this survey as an introduction; something which allowed me to gather a feeling of the general consensus. There are 7 questions on the survey; the first two are statistical, asking age and gender. Then there are 4 other questions, which are in essence closed questions but allow the respondant to go into more detail if they wish. 1 question asks if there is awareness of the phrase 'copycat crime,' and if there is, how they would define it.

Benefits:
- The results are easy to understand, and on the whole can be put into graphs fairly easily
- There is a mix of genders and backgrounds
- As a general introduction, this survey worked fine, helping me to establish some initial hypotheses such as 'newspapers exaggerate the effect media can have on crime rates' and 'exposure to violent material causes people to become desensitised'

Limitations:
- As it was an internet survey, which I linked to on MySpace and my blog, the results I got were almost exclusively from people aged between 16 and 18, which is a clear limitation, although there were a few responses from people of other ages.
- The use of mainly closed questions meant the data was qualitative rather than quantative, which is not necessarily a limitation, but means the level of response was basic, and didn't give me, for example, any quotes that I could use. However, as I plan to conduct 1 on 1 interviews as well, this seems like a fairly minor limitation
- Although I did a pilot survey, a few people told me they still found the wording hard to understand. This could be due to me piloting the survey on people from Latymer, and on mainly other media students as well, who would have a greater understanding of the topic area to begin with.

Action Plan

Is there such a thing as copycat crime?

Specific targets:

Week 7
- Define copycat crime
- Discuss Jamie Bulger case
> the facts
> the killers' background
> media links
> content analysis of sequences from Childs Play 3
- Define other relevant theories, including the hypodermic needle model and the Cause and Effect argument

Targets completed? Yes. Blog posts discussing my definition of copycat crime, as well as the Jamie Bulger case. Later on (around week 10) will look at newspaper coverage of the case when I am looking at media response to moral panics.

General target: Make sure to keep a record of all sources, noting where I got the information from.

Week 8
- Discuss Columbine or Virginia Tech case
> the facts
> the killers background
> media links: identify what, if any specific films, had an effect
- Identify other famous examples of copycat crime

Targets completed? Yes. Blog posts containing as much information as I could find about these case studies. Other examples of copycat crime noted, such as The Exorcist suicide link, and the Dawson college shooting.

General target: Start to analyse sources as I go along

Week 9
- Initial questionnaire asking for very basic views
- Make notes from some books

Targets completed? Yes. I created my internet survey (there is a link on the blog) and 15 people completed it. I will analyse the results in weeks 10 and 11. I also made some notes on books during our BFI library visit.

General target: Continue to do background reading

Weeks 10 and 11
- Conduct one-to-one interviews asking a large range of people (of different ages, genders and ethnicities) whether thet believe there is a link between the media and between certain crimes, and if they do, what evidence they have of this
- Analyse existing research studies, including Bandura's 'Bobo doll' study and Buckinghams interviews with children
- Make some reference to BBFC policy regarding copycat crime. Mention imitable behaviour and also BBFC reaction to moral panics over film
- Identify the ways in which certain types of media (ie the Daily Mail) sensationalise the link between media and crime, creating moral panics.
- Conclude research, both primary and secondary, and try to answer my proposed question as far as I can, bringing in my own personal views as well

Targets completed?

Childs Play 3

The incident that inspired the media to link Childs Play 3 to the Jamie Bulger case was the judge of the case saying "Whilst there has been no actual evidence of this, I suspect that exposure to violent movies had something to do with your actions". It was said that Jon Venables father had rented the film, but the police confirmed that this film had never been rented by either family, and that it was unlikely either child had even seen it.



I looked at the websites http://website.lineone.net/~darkangel5/moral.htm
to help summarise the link between Childs Play 3 and the Jamie Bulger case

Type of source: Secondary popular

Benefits of source:
- Offered some insight into the roots of the moral panic

Limitations of source:
- Not academic or professional, someones personal blog so information is probably not neccesarily that trustworthy

The Jamie Bulger case: the killers

Robert Thompson
Robert’s personality was constructed for defense.
Robert’s father beat his wife mercilessly, and then abandoned the family for good. He was an aggressive alcoholic. He beat Ann in front of the boys and Ann hit her sons with sticks and belts. She attempted suicide with pill overdoses, but eventually turned to drinking as her means of escape. The elder brothers beat the younger.

One sibling became a master thief, taking little Robert with him on his adventures. One brother was an arsonist and suspected of sexually abusing young children (Robert may have been a victim himself.) One of the brothers left to stay in a voluntary care center. Others attempted suicide. The police and social workers knew the Thompson boys well. All of the Thompsons were truants and learned to despise authority.

For all of Robert’s toughness, he still exhibited childish tendencies for which he was teased. He played with troll dolls and sucked his thumb. Molded into hardness beyond his years and forced to repress his own childishness, it is possible that Robert took out his aggressions on an innocent baby, something Robert himself was never allowed to be.

Jon Venables

Jon was attention-seeking at school, cutting himself with scissors. In one incident, he approached another classmate from behind and began choking the boy with a wooden ruler. It took two adults to pry Jon off of the boy.

His father Neil was often unemployed. Jon was the middle child, and both of his siblings had developmental problems. Jon was stuck in the middle, feeling ignored, and perhaps resentful of the attention his siblings received. Sometimes Jon would mimic his older brother’s tantrums.

Susan and Neil Venables had a tumultuous relationship, splitting apart, and then reuniting. The instability affected all three kids. Both parents had histories of clinical depression, and Susan was particularly prone to hysterics. She had been observed physically and verbally assaulting Jon. At the age of seven, Jon was showing signs of anti-social behavior. He hated the neighborhood children who would tease him and his siblings.

Detailed Proposal

I don't think I'm quite ready to fill this out yet but I thought I'd see what I could answer and then that would give me a better idea of what I should focus on in the week before half term.

1. Topic Area
Crime and the Media

2. Proposed title, question, hypothesis
Is there such a thing as copycat crime?

3. Teacher approval granted, in principal?
Yes

4. Principle texts (if text based study)
The Jamie Bulger Case
A school shooting case, either Columbine or Virginia Tech

5. Reason for choice
After completing the film censorship unit, which covered many of the same areas of theory, for example the hypodermic needle model as well as just the overall concept of copycat crime, I knew I was very interested in this topic and have a good level of background knowledge to work from. The theory is understandable as well as interesting, and I think I would be able to cover it in more depth . There is a good amount of research and resources to help me, yet it is not an area that has already been done so much that there is nowhere further to go.

6. Academic context for this study (similar research, relevant theory, named theorists)
Many research studies done in this area
Focus on David Buckinghams research which involved holding focus groups with children and asking them what they thought
Also Bandura and the Bobo Doll Study, which is widely known as being 'proof' of the for side of the media effects debate

Relevant theory will include:
- Cause and effect debate
- Hypodermic needle model
- Just in Case argument
- Passive and Active viewing theories

7. Institutional context for this study (industry focus, other texts for comparison, named practitioners, relevant theory, issues, questions)

Industry perspective on the debate, including the opinions of filmmakers such as Ken Russell and Roman Polanski
This section needs work...

8. Identify the audience context for this study (audience profile, access to audience, potential sample)
Audience profile is very wide, almost copletely unlimited as everyone will have their own views on the power that the media has to influence opinions. Key groups will be children (aged between 8 and 16) and adults ages between around 40 and 50, as I think it would be interesting to see whether different generations have different views.
However I will ask a wide range of people, of all ages and both genders and see what patterns I will identify.
Audience research will be conducted mainly using one-to-one interviews, as this allows more detailed answers, and as this issue is quite complex, I think it would be hard to acheive useful material in a group situation.

9. How will the 4 key concepts be relevant to your study (audience, institution, forms and conventions, representation)?
Audience: Audience is key to this study, as everyone consumes media texts and has views on the issue of media effects. It is the general public that reads newspapers, watches films and listens to the radio, and so asking audience opinions is something I will draw many of my conclusions from.

Industry: Industry is also important, as they present almost the other side of the debate. The majority of filmmakers believe in freedom of expression, which comes into the debate of how important censorship is in minimising media effect.

Forms and conventions: ???

Representation: Representation comes into my study in different ways. It could be discussed in the way that how violence, sexual violence or imitable techniques are represented on screen changes the effect it has on the consumer. Equally it could be looked at by researching how media is represented in newspapers etc - ie, it is said to have a negative effect, and is overexaggerated at times, creating moral panics.

10 Potential research sources (secondary): secondary academic books and websites, secondary industry books and websites, secondary popular criticism. Please identify specific examples you have come across.
Books
'Crime And Law In Media Culture' - Sheila Brown
'Film Censorship' - Guy Phelps
'Classified! A Teachers Guide To Film Censorship And Classification' - Richard Falcon
'Crime And The Media' - David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne

Websites:
To be added

11. Potential research sources (primary): audience reception research, your own content/textual analysis etc
Audience research collected, in the form of questionnaires as well as notes from interviews
Content analysis of sequences from Childs Play 3, in relation to the Jamie Bulger case

12. Modifications agreed with your lead teacher
tbc

13. Potential limits/obstacles/problems?
none that I can think of at the moment

14. Teacher concerns
tbc

15. Teacher approval
tbc

After completing this, it seems the main areas I need to work on are the industry context, as well as relating my study to forms and conventions. I also need to start adding websites and other primary and secondary sources to my lists.

Books to look at

'Crime And Law In Media Culture' - Sheila Brown
'Film Censorship' - Guy Phelps
'Classified! A Teachers Guide To Film Censorship And Classification' - Richard Falcon
'Crime And The Media' - David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne

Type of source: Secondary academic

Benefits of source:
- Material can be trusted, has been written and edited by professionals
- Has a bibliography so I can do further reading if necessary

Limitations of source:
- Takes a lot of time and effort to find the material needed

David Gauntletts Argument against the Media Effects theory

Theorist David Gauntlett compiled a list of 10 problems he found with the Media Effects argument at http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm. This article was published (as 'Ten things wrong with the "effects model"') in Roger Dickinson, Ramaswani Harindranath & Olga Linné, eds (1998), Approaches to Audiences – A Reader, published by Arnold, London. I have picked the 4 that I find the most important to summarise in my own words and go into more detail about.

1. The effects model tackles social problems 'backwards'
Researchers should start with the person who comitted the crime and work backwards, finding out what triggered them, rather than starting with a media text and attempting to create links. Criminologists tend to cite social factors such as poverty, unemployment, housing, and the behaviour of family and peers as reasons for teenage crime rather than media influence.

In a study interviewing 78 violent teenage offenders and then tracing their behaviour back towards media usage, in comparison with a group of over 500 'ordinary' school pupils of the same age - Hagell & Newburn (1994) found that the young offenders watched less television and video than their counterparts and had no particular interest in violent programmes. The offenders were asked, 'If you had the chance to be someone who appears on television, who would you choose to be?': The response was often that they could not understand why they would want to be a television character, or simply that they could not think of anyone to name.


2. The effects model is often based on artificial studies
As a means of saving money, research studies into this area are generally simplified and have artificial elements to them. For example, studies typically take place in a laboratory. Instead of a full and naturally-viewed television diet, research subjects are likely to be shown selected clips which lack the context of the text, showing them gratuitous violence. They may then be observed in simulations of real life presented to them as a 'game,' in relation to inanimate objects such as Bandura's 'bobo' doll, which will not be taken as seriously by children.

Effects studies also assume that the children will not alter their behaviour in response to being interviewed. This has been proven wrong by researchers such as Borden (1975) who have demonstrated that an observer can affect children's behaviour.

3. The effects model is selective in its criticisms of media depictions of violence

Violence in media as taken into account by effects studies is almost always in fictitious texts, rather than in real-life examples such as news.

Violent behaviour in fictional programmes is said to have the greatest effect, even though consequences are often shown, and moral endings are common. The effects debate offers not reason why images shown in the news should not have a similar, or even greater effect. Studies have shown that even children have an inherent ability to tell the difference between real and fictional violence, and have cited that real-life violence has more of an effect on them.

4. The effects model assumes superiority to the masses
Research suggests that while some of society feel that the media may case violent behaviour, almost no-one says they have been affected themselves. Researchers who encounter violent material on a regular basis remain unconcerned for themselves as they believe the effects will only be on others. This highlights one of the key double standards in the media effects debate, and while it could be argued that the ones we should be looking out for are children and the mentally unstable, the research also suggests that anyone watching a large amount of violent material will be affected and this view seems almost hypocritical when you consider the huge amount of violent or 'controversial' material that a researcher or media theorist consumes.

Type of source: Secondary academic

Benefits of source:

- Written by a well-known and respected author

- Acknowledged in more than one book

Limitations of source:

- Very long and quite hard to sift through and summarise

Media Effects - An age old debate

Researcher Leonard Eron estimated at a 1993 conference that 10% of violence in the USA was due to television

Had he looked back past the birth of television, he might have seen similar claims about film in a 1933 report by Blumer and Hauser who found that ‘motion pictures created attitudes and furnished techniques conducive to delinquent and criminal behaviour.’

Further back, he might have referred to the 1888 Punch attribution of crimes in Whitechapel to ‘highly coloured pictorial advertisements’ to an 1841 Inspectors of Prisons report claiming that theatres, if not corrupting the mind, ‘tend to its vitiation by familiarising it with scenes of grossness, crime and blood’; or to a 1776 claim by Hanway that newspapers and amusements were to blame for ‘the host of thieves which has of late invaded us.’

Can we take it, then, that a society free of television sets, cinema screens and the printing press* was safe from media effects? Apparently not! Socrates worried about the possible effects of the discovery of the alphabet and he wrote nothing, though reading and writing had been widespread in Athens, at least for administrative purposes, for over 100 years by the time of his birth in about 470 B.C.

Compiled from http://www.theory.org.uk/effec-tg.htm
This article is copyright © Tom Gormley, 1998

Type of source: Secondary popular

Benefits of source:
- Has a bibliography, which suggests it's quite academic, and also allows me to follow up the links
- Strong argument on the against side of the debate

Limitations of source:
- Not by a recognised author (About this article: Tom Gormley lives in Dublin and sent me this paper which, he says, "I wrote as an assignment for a distance-learning MA in January 1998, which you might find amusing". It's good. )

Hypodermic Needle or Magic Bullet Models

The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behavior change.

The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.

Both images used to express this theory (a bullet and a needle) suggest a powerful and direct flow of information from the sender to the receiver. The bullet theory graphically suggests that the message is a bullet, fired from the "media gun" into the viewer's "head". With similarly emotive imagery the hypodermic needle model suggests that media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message. They express the view that the media is a dangerous means of communicating an idea because the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message. There is no escape from the effect of the message in these models. The population is seen as a sitting duck. People are seen as passive and are seen as having a lot media material "shot" at them. People end up thinking what they are told because there is no other source of information.

Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman is a theorist I have found who deals specifically in the area of copycat crime; he has written more than one book on the subject. The website http://www.copycateffect.com// provided me with some interesting case studies and thougts on crime as a result of media.

The Copycat EffectHow The Media and Popular Culture Trigger The Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlinesby Loren ColemanParaview Pocket Books - Simon and Schuster, 2004, 308 pages

Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - Montreal, Quebec - Kimveer Gill, the 25-year-old shooter came to Dawson College, fully armed. He appeared to target what students call the "Jew Caf" and opened fire, killing Anastasia de Sousa, 18, and wounding 19 other students. Gill was obsessed by the Columbine massacre. He mentioned online being a fan of several computer games (e.g. Super Columbine Massacre) and movies (e.g. Natural Born Killers, Matrix) with violent themes that have been played out in several school shootings.

In keeping with the literary roots of Young Werther one of the most striking accounts describe the many suicides inspired by the Oscar-winning film, The Deer Hunter.


Type of source: Secondary popular

Benefits of source:
- Published 2004-2006 so quite up to date
- By a recognised author
- Again gives specific case studies

Limitations of source:
- Personal opinions - made and edited by one man
- Also fails to name the case studies

Notes from criminology website

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/learning.htm
From: Greek, Cecil. 1997a. Copy-cat crimes. In Rasmussen, R. Kent (ed.). Ready reference: Censorship. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press.

Until the 1980s there was little empirical research dealing exclusively with copycat crime.
For example, an Australian study used a 3-year timeframe to compare police data on bank and other armed robberies with local newspaper stories on robberies during the same period. Robberies were compared for two 7-day periods immediately before and after the date of any newspaper story reporting a successful robbery. There was no evidence of any copycat effect following newspaper stories or after possible word-of-mouth communication about the commission of high-value bank robberies. Research results did not support the idea that newspaper reports of successful bank robberies stimulate copycat robberies of banks or other targets.

Ray Surette has done extensive research on copycat crimes since the mid-1980s. He argues that copycat crime is a persistent social phenomenon, common enough to influence the total crime picture, but mainly by influencing crime techniques rather than the motivation to commit a crime or the development of criminal tendencies.

In some cases, alleged copycats have stated they knew nothing of the previous publicized incident.

In 1995, a group of Tampa, FL teens bragged to police they stole cars and
shoot at robbery victims because earlier in the same week a 12-year-old
repeat robber had been granted probation rather than prison. The case had been given major media attention. Since terrorism is partially driven by media attention, it is not surprising that terrorists choose to repeat methods that have produced high media ratings in the past.

(This post isn't finished, I'm planning to refine and use this research)

Type of source: Secondary academic

Benefits of source:
- Academic, so more trustworthy than some websites.
- Relates copycat crime to other sources of media - ie newspapers, makes the link that if criminals receive publicity for something, it is likely to be repeated
- Use of examples, ie of research studies/theorists

Limitations of source:
- Published in 1997, so quite out of date
- Examples aren't named, so I cannot do much further research

First Thoughts

After reading some of the posts on the main critical research blog, I think the area I am most interested in is 'Crime in the Media,' and specifically the notion of crimes as a result of media, or copycat crimes. This links quite closely with the censorship unit we have just finished, which could be seen as a plus or a minus, but it is definitely one of the topic areas I think will be quite interesting and something I could go into a lot of depth about.

I tried to answer the initial proposal questions

1. Which topic area is this proposal for?
Crime and the Media

2. What is the suggested focus?
Copycat crimes, and specifically as a result of film. Specific examples will include 'Childs Play 3,' and a more recent example about college shootings such as Columbine or Virginia Tech

3. Do you have an idea for a question/problematic?
Is there such a thing as copycat crime?

4. Why would you choose this?
It is an area I have a lot of thoughts about, and think it would be interesting to discuss the perceived view and then use facts to try and prove or disprove this. There is a lot of opportunity to use theory effectively, as well as presenting a balanced argument.

5. Do you have any concerns or are there any limitations to this proposal?
I'm not sure if it's a bad thing that we have just finished the censorship unit that deals with this exact subject. Although that was only in film, so I could look at video games, magazines etc and give a wider scope.

6. Can you rate it on a sliding scale 1- 5?
4