Copycat Crimes Research Articles

Media Narrative of School Shooting in Russia

School shootings, defined as acts of mass armed violence perpetrated within educational institutions, elicit significant media attention. This extensive coverage, however, raises concerns regarding its potential contribution to the “copycat effect”, where subsequent crimes are inspired by media portrayals of previous incidents. Furthermore, media narratives can significantly influence public perceptions of both the victims and the perpetrators involved. This study aims to analyze the narrative of school shooting within four key categories: victim portrayal, perpetrator description, perceived motives, and the act itself. The results reveals a dominant narrative structure that closely follows the chronological sequence of the perpetrator’s actions. This mirroring effect, likely driven by the inherent demands of streaming media formats, results in a construction of victim narratives “through the lens” of the perpetrator. Consequently, information regarding the perpetrators and their actions tends to dominate the media landscape, potentially overshadowing the experiences and perspectives of the victims. These findings carry significant implications for the development of ethical guidelines within journalism and professional standards for reporting on mass gun violence in schools. Moreover, the identified patterns in media narratives could serve as valuable input for developing mathematical models that explore the potential link between media representations of school shootings and the occurrence of copycat crimes.

Perspective on the Prevention of Suicide among School Learners by School Management.

Adolescents in South Africa have higher suicide rates than older people. A suicide or unexpected death of a fellow student can result in increased copycat behavior. Previous studies have placed emphasis on the significance of school involvement in the prevention of suicide. The study sought to explore the perspective on the prevention of suicide among school learners by school management. A qualitative phenomenological design was applied. The study used purposive sampling to select six high schools. In-depth interviews were conducted with six focus group discussions comprising fifty school management. A semi-structured interview guide guided the interviews. Data were analyzed using a general inductive approach. Findings revealed that school management should be supported through workshops to increase their skills in handling stressful situations at school. Support for learners through audio-visuals, professional counseling, and awareness campaigns also emerged. Parents-school partnership was said to be effective in preventing suicide among learners as both parties will be free to discuss the problems faced by the learner. In conclusion, empowering school management in the prevention of suicide is critical for Limpopo learners. Awareness campaigns conducted by suicide survivors where they can share their testimonies is necessary. School-based professional counseling services should be established to benefit all learners, particularly those experiencing financial challenges. Pamphlets in local languages should be developed for students to convey information about suicide.

Role of Social Media on Deviance and Crime: A Study on Content Creators of Tiktok

During this time of globalization, the mode of recreation and communication has dramatically changed and is oriented around social media. People are finding themselves glued to the screen both for work and entertainment. Like every coin has two sides, these virtual deviances and crime in a society. TikTok is such social media platform that enables us to produce and share short videos and explore ourselves in front of global and local audiences. Recent crime news related to TikTok and the new popular culture of such micro-entertainment prompted this study to add to the literature of cultural criminology. The study aims to scrutinize the uses, features, and contents of the TikTok app to understand its role in crime and deviance in society. It also sheds light on characteristics of crimes and deviances that emanate from TikTok in Bangladesh. The study’s methodology is Case Studies of fifteen crime cases related to TikTok, and Qualitative Content Analysis of ten top profiles of TikTok in Bangladesh, and the ‘For you’ page of TikTok with specific hashtags following convenience sampling. The study found distinct characteristics of crime and deviance related to TikTok, such as performance crime, copycat crime, and fame-driven crime. The study attempted to identify specific crimes such as rape, murder, sexual assault, fraudulence, etc., that have already been committed using this app.

Beyond the visuality of Western architecture. The Chinese home from inward haven to outward representation

This paper aims at discussing the recent evolutions experienced by housing in Contemporary China through the study of the living habits of wealthy families in the fringes of Shanghai and Chongqing. The copycat phenomenon widespread across Chinese cities is one example, on the one hand, of the transformations of social uses of the house which gains a dimension of visibility; and, on the other hand, of an object that so far has been studied only through Western-centred conceptions of visuality and materiality. This research offers a different perspective, one of the inhabitants of neighbourhoods with exotic atmospheres. The analysis of the discourse of the residents as well as their daily practices of space appropriation and home decoration reveals that the house plays a new role in social interactions. As a social mean of representing the status of its occupants, the outside part of the building, its surroundings and some of the interior are assigned a visual dimension destined to the outside viewers and guests of the family, transforming the relationships between the public and private spheres which duality do not match the one of what is visible and what is invisible. Contrariwise to general views about the Western style neighbourhoods, what is offered to the view does not convey a process of westernisation or acculturation of the daily life, but expresses the will for a liberation from certain social constraints experienced in the former place of residency. The Chinese contemporary home is then, among this wealthier part of the population where domestic space is a valuable resource, the place of production of a new urbanity where different forms of sociality and representations coexist.

Copycat CNN: Are random non-Labeled data enough to steal knowledge from black-box models?

Convolutional neural networks have been successful lately enabling companies to develop neural-based products, which demand an expensive process, involving data acquisition and annotation; and model generation, usually requiring experts. With all these costs, companies are concerned about the security of their models against copies and deliver them as black-boxes accessed by APIs. Nonetheless, we argue that even black-box models still have some vulnerabilities. In a preliminary work, we presented a simple, yet powerful, method to copy black-box models by querying them with natural random images. In this work, we consolidate and extend the copycat method: (i) some constraints are waived; (ii) an extensive evaluation with several problems is performed; (iii) models are copied between different architectures; and, (iv) a deeper analysis is performed by looking at the copycat behavior. Results show that natural random images are effective to generate copycats for several problems.

The Association Between Suicide-Related Media Coverage and Suicide: A Cross-Sectional Observational Study

Objective To examine the association between the publication and content of suicide-related media reports and actual suicide in Noord Brabant, a province of the Netherlands. Method Between April 2017 and March 2018, a retrospective cross-sectional observational study was conducted on suicide-related media reports and incident data regarding suicides. Linear regression, Mann-Whitney U and negative binomial regression analyses were conducted. Results In Noord-Brabant, a total of 352 people died from suicide during the observation period and 440 reports were identified by using the search terms “suicide”, “self-killing”, and “self-murder”. No associations between media reports and actual suicides were found for any of the analyses performed. Conclusions No indications were found for an association between media coverage of suicide and increases or decreases in actual suicides in Noord-Brabant. The descriptive statistics of this study reveal that the regional and national Dutch media are doing well with respect to not including elements in their reports that could encourage copycat behavior, such as simplifying, romanticizing or dramatizing. They could improve on including protective content, for example, providing supportive background information. A recommendation for further research is to evaluate causal relationships between media and actual suicide. A stepped wedge trial might be needed, as this provides an ethical research design to investigate this issue in a controlled setting. Also, in such a study, other variables influencing the decision to attempt suicide should be taken into account as much as possible.

Female Copycat Crime: An Exploratory Analysis

Although much has been written concerning female delinquency and criminality, little has been forwarded about female copycat crime. Utilizing four data sets from surveys collected over the past dec...

Redesigning Public Libraries in Flanders: Triggering the Societal Context Awareness of Interior Students

Developing societal context awareness in interior architecture students is one of the main objectives of the bachelor thesis at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). By means of a 2–year project on public libraries (2014–2016), the coaches of the design studio initiated research into the changing role of public libraries and the societal embedding of interior architecture, as well as the empathic role of the designer. The article is based on data acquired by the use of various qualitative research techniques, such as focus group debates with the studio coaches, analysis of the coaching sessions with the students, and analysis of the comments of the expert jury in the first research year, supported by half–structured individual interviews with students in the second research year. Based on an initial explorative evaluation of this research project it is clear that the development of societal context awareness in students is hindered by three phenomena: an activated selective perception, a dominant comfort–zone reflex, and copy–cat behavior. The article subsequently reports on (a) the subject of the bachelor thesis (i.e. Flemish public libraries and their societal challenges), (b) the pedagogical design of the renewed bachelor thesis, (c) the ex–ante and ex–post perceived societal awareness of the students, and (d) an initial set of identified enablers and disablers of the learning process. The article concludes that interior educators should continue to invest in triggering and developing societal awareness in their students if the interior discipline aspires to “the social compact to do good.”

종합격투기 프로그램 시청 대상별 스포츠 가치관에 미치는 영향

With the economic development in the modern society thus leading to people increasing their incomes, they are enjoying more diverse leisure activities, of which sports-related leisure activities represent a large portion. Of sports-related leisure activities, the viewing of sports has recently been widespread, and the development of community technology has helped increased the opportunities for people to be exposed to sports and naturally the people are taking more interest in sports. Socially, the weekly 52-hour work system is now put in place, allowing people to have more enjoyable night time, and increasing the number of company workers who enjoy a variety of hobbies (Kim Ji-hye, 2019). Along with this trend, the past perceived fact that more housewives enjoyed watching TV has now changed, leading a growing number of male company workers to enjoy sports on TV thus indirectly getting satisfaction. Of sports, the mixed martial arts (MMA) involve fierce competition and entertainment features, thus giving the watchers an indirect satisfaction for doing violence (Kim Yeong-yun, 2003). MMA is a sport that must be attractive to modern people who are more likely to take on new challenges to pursue stimuli. However, “Copycat crimes are recently being committed by the influence of violent materials on TV or social media, thus leading to violent crimes, and thus homes and schools are required to provide preventive guidance.

A copycat crime meme: Ghost riding the whip

A 2006 US copycat crime wave came into being, surged with thousands of crimes committed, and dissipated without substantial news media attention. The development of this early copycat crime meme is traceable to the nature of the crime, “ghost riding the whip,” and the social media and popular music communication channels associated with it. Ghost riding the whip involved traffic violations where drivers exit their cars and dance atop or alongside the moving driverless vehicles. Social media allowed the widespread diffusion of detailed instructions that spread this crime from a single minority community to the middle class within a 3-month period. The study of this copycat crime meme examined four types of data: Google Trends, rap songs, ProQuest news media data, and YouTube videos. The examination of the crime wave suggests how Gabriel Tarde’s 19th-century ideas operate in the contemporary social media era. However, unlike pre-social media-based crime waves that were launched via interpersonal and legacy media communication pathways, for ghost riding, rap songs, YouTube postings, and Google searches spurred its growth. Legacy media were found to be most important during the crime wave’s decline, but not during its diffusion. For this copycat crime meme, social media’s influence flowed in a unique upward and outward pattern and the results raise the research questions as to how social media have changed the dynamics of crime waves and how important legacy media will be in future crime waves.

Copycat crime among non-incarcerated adults

ABSTRACTWith the emergence of copycat crime as a criminal justice concern, its prevalence is of current interest. This study estimates copycat crime’s prevalence among an adult non-incarcerated population. Face-to-face guided interviews were conducted with 601 respondents with measures of copycat crime consideration and attempts collected. Comparisons with prior copycat crime estimates and exploratory correlational and logistic regression analyses were conducted. The results show that the prevalence of copycat crime among non-incarcerated adults was significant but substantially lower than levels previously reported for incarcerated populations. About 1 in 10 non-incarcerated general population adults reported having considered committing a copycat crime and 1 in 20 reported having attempted one. Similar to prior research findings, females were significantly less likely than males to report copycat crime histories. Age was also predictive for copycat attempts, and prior victimisation and new media use were predictive for copycat crime consideration. Policy implications are discussed and the need for continued research into the dynamics of copycat crime across cultures and gender is indicated.

IDENTIFICATION THEORY AND ITS ROLE IN COPYCAT CRIMES

The reasons for the copycat crimes at the moment are a “white spot” in criminology. Theories explaining the origins of human behaviour can help in filling it out. Skinner’s and Bandura’s behavioristic theories explain the copycat process with the action of operant conditioning and the learning of aggression, respectively. Confronting the escape process from freedom is one of the reasons why a person can go against social norms and laws. These theories conclude in the cognitive theory of identification, which currently most extensively explains the mechanism of imitation, as well as is taking into concideration the influence of the media, an important actor in the mechanism of copycat crimes, on a person and vice versa.

Aircraft-Assisted Pilot Suicides in the General Aviation Increased for One-Year Period after 11 September 2001 Attack in the United States.

Pilot aircraft-assisted suicides (AAS) are rare, and there is limited understanding of copycat phenomenon among aviators. The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible effect the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks had on pilot AASs in the U.S. Fatal aviation accidents in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) database were searched using the following search words: “suicide”, “murder-suicide” and “homicide-suicide”. The timeline between 11 September 1996, and 11 September 2004, was analyzed. Only those accidents in which NTSB judged that the cause of the accident was suicide were included in the final analysis. The relative risk (RR) of the pilot AASs in all fatal accidents in the U.S. was calculated in order to compare the one, two, and three-year periods after the September 11 terrorist attacks with five years preceding the event. The RR of a fatal general aviation aircraft accident being due to pilot suicide was 3.68-fold (95% confidence interval 1.04–12.98) during the first year after 11 September 2001, but there was not a statistically significant increase in the later years. This study showed an association, albeit not determinate causal effect, of a very specific series of simultaneous terrorist murder-suicides with subsequent pilot AASs.

Neither an Authentic Product nor a Counterfeit: The Growing Popularity of Shanzhai Products in Global Markets

AbstractCounterfeits have been a longstanding concern to global brand manufactures. However, recently, a new product category that partly imitates and partly innovates under the term shanzhai has entered into market. Shanzhai products mimic original leading brands through visual or functional similarities and may also provide additional features. Given this new copycat phenomenon, our study for the first time conceptually distinguishes shanzhai products from counterfeits, theoretically compares the values of consumers choosing shanzhai products versus counterfeits, and empirically tests such differences in one integrative model. Specifically, shanzhai buyers value product functional benefits more than counterfeit buyers, while counterfeit buyers value status consumption, yet experience less self‐clarity than shanzhai buyers. Our findings offer important implications for imitative innovation literature as well as for practitioners.

Inspiring Copycat Violent Crime – A Question of Social Responsibility

The phenomenon of copycat crime, especially copycat murder, is nothing new. One would think that, because it has been around for so long, somehow the problem would have been addressed. Unfortunately, that is not the case, as we continue to see important details of horrible and violent crimes being reported by mass media without reflection on, or consideration of, how this type of information could be used by some in planning their own crimes, imitating the crime reported. This article discusses both the media and the law enforcement aspect of the copycat problem and concludes with the authors’ own recommendations. It is essential that both mass media and police make important changes in their approach to releasing information about crime to the public. It is naïve to believe that only law-abiding people are consumers of mass media, or that important details about the commission of violent crimes that are reported by media are never going to be used by anybody for an illegal purpose.

Different Types of Role Model Influence and Fame Seeking Among Mass Killers and Copycat Offenders

Contagion and copycat behavior among mass killers is often discussed in the media when there are multiple attacks within a short span of time. Proximity in time, however, does not necessarily mean that one attack inspired another. This study examines the clearest cases of role modeling and fame seeking among mass killers in which the perpetrators personally acknowledged these types of influence and motivation in their own lives. Instead of simply categorizing potential copycat offenders in a “yes”/“no” binary fashion, it outlines many different types of influence, imitation, and inspiration and then provides evidence on perpetrators who represent examples of each type. Overall, findings suggest that most killers were not gaining insights into attack methodology from their role models, but rather were drawn to the prior perpetrators for a variety of personal reasons. Looking ahead, because of the frequency of mass killers citing previous perpetrators as role models or sources of inspiration, it is critical that media outlets give careful consideration to how they cover such incidents.

The (Mutual Fund) Imitation Game: On the Outperformance of Copycat Funds, and the Value of Their Information to All Investors.

We introduce a novel methodology to identify copycat behavior in mutual funds. We find that imitation is pervasive in the mutual fund industry. While most copycats underperform, a small number are 'smart imitators'. We find that funds at the high and low ends of the Copycat Score range outperform other funds in the sample by 1.92% and 3.24% per year, respectively. We show that the Copycat Score is persistent in time, related to other measures of skill, and is a good predictor of fund performance. We conclude that smart copycatting is another skill in the toolkit of successful fund managers.

Gain attraction in the presence of social interactions

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to suggest that a fundamental cause of market booms and busts is that investor risk attitudes change during market booms. Specifically, the authors propose that an investor’s risk aversion falls as (s)he attempts to “keep up with the Joneses.” This paper studies changing risk attitudes induced by social interactions, and shows that risk-seeking behavior that is initially successful may induce copycat behavior and lead individuals in the same peer group to reduce their degree of risk aversion to attempt to obtain similar rewards, a phenomenon we call “Gain attraction in the presence of social interactions.”Design/methodology/approachThe authors propose a new theoretical model that incorporates the social interaction term into the value function of prospect theory. The modified value function empowers the standard prospect theory by introducing the idea that people often compare themselves to others and then compare their gains to the gains of others. The model predicts that, if people exhibit some degree of envy, they will treat the observed utility achieved by others as destination points and will reposition themselves to the new reference points, and at that point their willingness to accept risk dramatically increases.FindingsThe theoretical model is tested empirically against experimental data and survey data. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, the experimental results suggest that, after subjects observed the behavior of the leading investor in the controlled laboratory condition, there was a significant increase in risk-taking behavior. The survey results further confirm that envy is an emotional force behind the dissatisfaction and disappointment among investors when they miss available opportunities that others were able to take advantage of.Originality/valueThis study provides evidence that investment decisions are not made in a social vacuum by isolated individuals, but rather in social settings in which individuals are influenced by the actions and outcomes of their peers. The study also opens up a new research avenue that the reduction in risk aversion induced by peer effects may be an important element explaining how greed is transmitted across the economy during times of financial boom, thus helping to fuel the flames of financial crises.

Tweeting celebrity suicides: Users' reaction to prominent suicide deaths on Twitter and subsequent increases in actual suicides

A substantial amount of evidence indicates that news coverage of suicide deaths by celebrities is followed by an increase in suicide rates, suggesting a copycat behavior. However, the underlying process by which celebrity status and media coverage leads to increases in subsequent suicides is still unclear. This study collected over 1 million individual messages (“tweets”) posted on Twitter that were related to 26 prominent figures in Japan who died by suicide between 2010 and 2014 and investigated whether media reports on suicide deaths that generated a greater level of reactions by the public are likely to be followed by a larger increase in actual suicides. We also compared the number of Twitter posts and the number of media reports in newspaper and on television to understand whether the number of messages on Twitter in response to the deaths corresponds to the amount of coverage in the traditional media. Using daily data from Japan's national death registry between 2010 and 2014, our analysis found an increase in actual suicides only when suicide deaths generated a large reaction from Twitter users. In contrast, no discernible increase in suicide counts was observed when the analysis included suicide deaths to which Twitter users did not show much interest, even when these deaths were covered considerably by the traditional media. This study also found suicides by relatively young entertainers generated a large number of posts on Twitter. This sharply contrasts with the relatively smaller volume of reaction to them generated by traditional forms of media, which focuses more on the deaths of non-entertainers. The results of this study strongly suggest that it is not sufficient to examine only traditional news media when investigating the impact of media reports on actual suicides.

Copycat crime dynamics: The interplay of empathy, narrative persuasion and risk with likelihood to commit future criminality.

Copycat crime dynamics: The interplay of empathy, narrative persuasion and risk with likelihood to commit future criminality.