Great topic... I occasionally find myself thinking back to something that happened a long time ago. Maybe twenty-something years back? I was out at the time when this young guy brutally murdered his parents.
Every single media outlet, literally all of them, was all over it. You couldn't turn on any TV channel without seeing that case pop up. It felt like every psychiatrist and psychologist had their own take on why it happened.
That went on for nearly two months, and then, almost immediately after, two more similar murders occurred.
I remember they brought a psychiatric sociologist onto the nightly news to explain "behavioral emulation." Basically, if something is repeated constantly, people who are emotionally vulnerable might start mimicking those actions. A sort of imitation effect.
Does that apply to bad news as much as good news?
If the media keeps hammering home that something is wrong, someone might decide to fix it. Unfortunately, that often happens through violence, since just pushing those stories out is its own kind of mental assault.
Every single media outlet, literally all of them, was all over it. You couldn't turn on any TV channel without seeing that case pop up. It felt like every psychiatrist and psychologist had their own take on why it happened.
That went on for nearly two months, and then, almost immediately after, two more similar murders occurred.
I remember they brought a psychiatric sociologist onto the nightly news to explain "behavioral emulation." Basically, if something is repeated constantly, people who are emotionally vulnerable might start mimicking those actions. A sort of imitation effect.
Does that apply to bad news as much as good news?
If the media keeps hammering home that something is wrong, someone might decide to fix it. Unfortunately, that often happens through violence, since just pushing those stories out is its own kind of mental assault.