The Copycat Effect : How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines

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Summary: Cutting Edge Study of Media & Violence
Review: Loren Coleman's "The Copycat Effect" is a well researched and compelling account of how media accounts of suicide trigger off further deaths. Coleman, a well known and respected authority on suicides and the author of "Suicide Clusters" goes into exhaustive detail and carefully documents the phenomenon of copycat suicides, giving examples from Ancient World up to the Kurt Cobain, Columbine and "The Deerhunter".

After reading the extensive documentation that Coleman provides there can be no further doubt of the existence of the suicide copycat effect. What is interesting about Coleman's account is that he never descends into a polemic about media violence and it is clear that the media does not "cause" violence, but rather triggers off these occurrences in susceptible individuals.

The most intriguing part of "The Copycat Effect" is the penultimate chapter where Coleman begins to explore what he calls the magnetism of milieu and moment, delving into why certain places and times attract suicides. This "twilight language" once elucidated has the potential to explain why hundreds of people have completed suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge while ignoring the Bay Bridge and why suicides take place on particular dates.

Highly recommended!



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Summary: Loren Coleman sets up a provocative world view
Review: The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines, is an incredible read. I agree with Coleman that the world's always had its problems, it's just far more glamorous now when death is the main topic. However, on another note...not to start something, but I strongly disagree with associating Suicide Victims with being Cowards. I think a lot of people need to realize that those too sensitive to live in this world are not the problem, it's the mean, evil conspirators of the world who have nothing better to do than to make someone's life a living hell, who are to blame. It's the troublemakers who are the cowards. As a Catholic, suicide is percieved as a sin in my household, but everyday there are people taking drugs to cope with the nasties of the world. Everyday. Is it their fault they are born into homes of violence, are targeted in school as freaks, and grow up to become insecure, insular adults? I am speaking from experience. Being bullied by the world at large can crush a person who was never brought up with the right tools to cope. And there are many people like that. Instead of calling them cowards, people should realize that rather than caring about themselves, they should learn to reach out and care for others so that those lost people have someone to go to in a world when more and more everyday, noone wants to listen to another's problems. Granted there are the damaged individuals who'll jump off a roof if you say their shoes are ugly. But mostly, the victims are like you and me, but mostly alone, lonely and forgotten. I have known people like that, passing through the world unnoticed. I don't blame them. I blame the blind world at large that refused to see them.
Suicide is a huge problem, and dismissing it as something weak, cowards do is not alleviating the problem. It's just making it an even easier alternative to living in a world full of demons.



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Summary: Author uses sensitive language
Review: The reviewer E. Sena, who writes "I strongly disagree with associating Suicide Victims with being Cowards," is correct. But E. Sena does not appear to be talking about The Copycat Effect, but their own personal feelings. The Copycat Effect talks of "vulnerable" people, yes, but never, not once, labels anyone a "coward."

Just a clarification, as the book concerns itself with the triggering effect of contagion via the media, and only senstively discusses all people, whether the suicide victims, the shooters, the people left behind, or any others of those who are killed or survive.

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Summary: brilliant and crystal clear
Review: The role and function of our modern day mass media have often been discussed, but never before have the effects on our society, the way we behave and react, been explained in such crystal clear fashion. While the book gives irrefutable evidence that the darker side of our society is intertwined with the way we describe it in our media, it also helps to come to terms with this mechanism. Clearly, understanding is the first step on the road to betterment, and as such this book is highly recommended.

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Summary: Speak of the Devil
Review: There is an old folk saying:"Speak of the Devil and he appears".The mental mechanisms described at length in 'The Copycat Effect" by Loren Coleman are old hat in the same sense that the miter of a Bishop or the black hat of a Tibetan lama are ancient. These are described in folklore and ancient texts as being the situation of 'as above/ so below". This aphorism simply means that ideas held forcefully in the mind as part of an emotional dilemma, significant ritual or authoritative command tend to manifest materially. Author Coleman briefly alludes in one dismissive chapter to these basic mental mechanisms, prefering to focus on media coverage of violent events, and to advocate censorship of these events. It seems that Mr. Coleman in his fascination with media replication has become superficial in understanding the situation due to considering for analysis only the superficial manifestations. In a long and perhaps web-search gathered catalog we learn that various "copycat crimes" have occurred but we do not get a full analysis of any one of these situations which includes other possibilities of "copycat trigger" than the television, newspaper or radio. As any sociologist knows, the trigger may be a "cult" situation in several of these cases in the sense of an "in-group" with certain key words, inner behavioral rituals and emotionally held objectives, as in the Columbine school massacre. The "cult" need be no larger than two or three people or it may be "contagious" to more than one mini-cult situation.Perhaps this contagion is due in part to a "contact high" implimented by telepathic, cometimes drug induced resonance. For information on this aspect, interested readers should search for the article 'Cognitive Contagion' by this reviewer, which was published in a UK-based ezine When sociologists and/or psychologists start to manipulate paradigms instead of studying specific subjects in detail, they may see approximately similar topologies which do not exactly match specific details. Thus it may become important to notice that the "copied cat" is not exactly the same brindle color as the original.