Made popular by the work of John B. Watson in the 1920's, the 'hypodermic needle' model, referred to in media effects literature, is the idea that media descriptions and depictions have such an extensive impact on some people's behaviour. This model focuses on the relationship between people's behaviour and their environment. In terms of stimulus and response, this suggests that social behaviour is powerfully influenced by external factors; the mass media is one of these stimuli.
Like a drug injection, the intake of antisocial or even violent actions may lead to repeating the behaviour.
People are passive recipients. The Copycat Syndrome questions whether there is a direct causal link between media portrayals of violence and these portrayals influencing people to act in a violent manner.
Marsh and Melville (2009) exemplify a number of copycat crimes that have occurred, but upon researching this topic, many more can be found.
When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold massacred Columbine High School in 1999, many people
attributed factors of their crime to popular film The Matrix. The criminals themselves were said to of modelled their black mafia trenchcoat costumes on Neo, lead character of The Matrix. But this is where the similarities ended. In the film, Neo practices martial arts, not gun weaponry, and his targets are computer-generated images, not school children.
In cases such as these, parents of the criminals attempt to sue the companies that produce movies such as The Matrix, claiming they are responsible for the crimes their films inspired. Not surprisingly, most of these claims fail as a causal connection cannot be made. But recently a new form of causal connection is emerging-the philosophy of The Matrix interacted with the psychology of the mentally ill, causing them to commit these crimes. So are these criminals 'not guilty by reason of the Matrix'?The most disturbing part of this emergence is that two defendants have successfully asserted pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity, as the judge accepted the 'Matrix bases' plea.
In November 2008, Canadian filmmaker Mark Twitchell was charged with the murder of a man in a crime that police believed was "life imitating art". Twitchell was an obsessed fan of tv series Dexter, and had also writ en a screenplay, which his murder had copied a scene from.An executive of Dexter responded to suggestions that their hit show could provoke people to commit copycat crimes by including a copycat criminal, who's crimes come back to bite him, in the storyline of the second season. The shows producers had begun to worry that they were making a skilled serial killer a modern-day hero. "That's our way of saying, 'Don't try this at home,' " Cerone said.
More recently though, certain individuals have employed the media for good rather than evil. In April of this year, Judge Bell in Westmoreland County USA ordered Tyler Gorinski, a 23 yr old on repeat offender on criminal trespassing charges, to watch 2005 film Cinderella Man. The judge has sentenced many juveniles to watch the film with their parents and write him a letter explaining what it meant to them. "It's like chicken soup. Can it help? Maybe. Can it hurt? No," Bell said.
In May this year, the Sydney Morning Herald told of an 8 year old boy in America that knew to scratch an attacker, attempting to kidnap his younger sister, to attain DNA evidence from watching tv show NCIS. A short video listed below shows the boy explaining:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-little-nathan-nailed-his-sisters-wouldbe-abductor-20100519-vd14.html
Through providing a vast catalogue of connections and interpretations between events and a range of violent acts depicted by the media, it would appear that the evidence is circumstantial. Little research has been done on copycat crime, yet empirical evidence doesn't support the anecdotal evidence. It is impossible to prove that a particular media depiction that is followed by the occurrence of a similar act of behaviour actually caused that behaviour.
References
Cholodofsky, R 2010 'Westmoreland County Judge orders young offenders to watch inspirational film', Tribune, April
Greek, C 1997, Copy-cat Crimes, Salem Press, Pasadena California
Hilden, J 2003, 'Murder and the Matrix', Counterpunch
'How little Nathan nailed his sister's would-be abductor', Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May, 2010,
Marsh, I & Melville, G 2009, Crime, Justice and the Media, Routledge, Oxon.
Fantastic blog posting Danielle! I really love all the examples you use, both fiction and non-fiction, to discuss this copycat idea. Great work :)
ReplyDeleteAlyce
This blog posting was quite interesting to read because the whole idea of copycat criminals is such a fascinating subject. The media crave crime and death as all of this sells and makes them a lot of money. As many media outlets say "death sells...if it bleeds, it leads". So sensationalising murders and suicides, the media kind of encourage people to imitate and recreate such destructive crimes.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that the media is to blame for certain people's behaviours but constantly reporting on something can often lead some already disturbed individuals to copy and commit horrendous crimes they have seen on television or in the media. For example, the media's heavy reporting on the Washington area snipers in 2002, John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo spiralled a massive amount of sniper killings around the USA.
The media always have a hidden agenda when reporting on certain types of crimes and I personally think by sensationalising these crimes they often perpetuate the reconstruction of these crimes. Human behaviour is quite unpredictable at times and adding a little media coverage of murders, television crime dramas and access to the internet about serial killers can equal in a disastrous result where innocent lives are taken.