The copycat effect refers to the tendency of sensational publicity about violent murders or suicides to result in more of the same through imitation. It is also the name of a book on the subject by Loren Coleman. Loren Coleman in a photograph featured in his profile on Cryptomundo. ...
Newspapers sometimes avoid glorifying vandalism and other petty crimes because of the copycat effect.
Regarding the Virginia Tech shootings, social scientist and author Loren Coleman, The Copycat Effect (New York: Paraview Pocket-Simon and Schuster, 2004, ISBN 0-7434-8223-9), has written in some detail in his same-named blog and been extensively quoted by the media regarding the impact that the wall-to-wall coverage had in framing Cho's attack, and in the copycats in its wake. Wikinews has news related to: Shooting at Virginia Tech; at least 31 dead This article is about the April 2007 shootings. ... Loren Coleman in a photograph featured in his profile on Cryptomundo. ...
External links
Copycat Effect (Article that discusses how sensational coverage of violent events tends to provoke similar events).
The Copycat Effect (New York: Paraview Pocket-Simon and Schuster, 2004) [1]
Copycat has been in recorded use since at least 1896, in Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Country of the Pointed Firs" but the expression could be many decades older.
Copycat is also the name of a 1995 thriller starring Sigourney Weaver about a serial murderer in San Franscico whose MO is to copy the killings of high profile killers.
The Copycateffect is where reporting on a tragic event causes others to perform similar behaviour.
A copycat suicide is defined as a duplication or copycat of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media.
Examples of celebrities whose suicides have inspired widespread copycat suicides include the American musician Kurt Cobain and the Japanese musician hide.
The nature of copycat suicides suggests that it is a phenomenon that must have been with us since the development of civilization.
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