Friday, January 28, 2005
LA train wreck: the copycat effect
The copycats have begun. Snipped from the LA Times after the Glendale, CA wreck caused by a deranged, suicidal man who left his car on the tracks:
Separately, a suicidal man who parked his SUV on railroad tracks in Orange County was arrested early Thursday, said Irvine police Cmdr. Dave Freedland, declining to say if it was a copycat situation. The man drove off when police spotted him and, after a chase, a dispatcher talked him out of suicide during a cell phone call.Copycat Effect author Loren Coleman says:
[S]uch indeed are repeat occurrences that do follow the "Werther" or "copycat effect" pattern. More copycats from the LA incident are to be expected in a three-day, one-week, and one-month anniversary cycle.Coleman describes the "copycat effect" as "what happens when the media makes an event into a 'hot death story' and then via behavior contagion, more deaths, suicides, murders, and more occur in a regularly predictive cycle." Link
posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:05:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
