82 Scientific American, November 2019 Illustration by Thomas FuchsZeynep Tufekci is an associate professor at the University
of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science
and a regular contributor to the New York Times. Her book,
Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest,
was published by Yale University Press in 2017.THE INTERSECTION
WHERE SCIENCE AND SOCIETY MEETShootings and
Social Contagion
It’s the one factor we keep overlooking
By Zeynep TufekciTragically, more than 20 percent of mass shootings, as tracked
by the National Institute of Justice for the past 50 years, have
occurred in the past five. The past three have been the deadliest.
In the U.S., there is well-deserved attention on the availability of
guns (because the deadliness of method and ease of access to
weapons matter greatly) and on whether we pay sufficient atten-
tion to mental health support for troubled young men.
But there is one more factor that is only recently getting some
of the scrutiny it deserves: the role that social contagion plays in
inspiring those troubled individuals to choose this course. People
routinely underestimate how social humans are. We all have a
viewpoint and an inner life, of course. But in the 20 years since
Columbine and other mass shootings, we can say with increasing
confidence what is, in retrospect, almost blindingly obvious: the
shooters are inspired by those who came before—and how we
react to shootings is part of the unfortunate cycle feeding them.
We can look all the way back to ancient Greece for the arche-
type: Herostratus, the arsonist who burned down the second
Temple of Artemis in Ephesus to immortalize his name, albeit
in infamy. As Roman writer Valerius Maximus noted, “A man
was found to plan the burning of the temple of Ephesian Diana
so that through the destruction of this most beautiful building
his name might be spread through the whole world.”
Indeed, here I am, spreading it. In response to his terrible act,
Herostratus was given the damnatio memoriae treatment:
he was removed from all official historical records, and all pub-
lic mention of him was banned. The magnitude of his crime,
however, meant that he eventually found his way to some
accounts nonetheless.
Contrast damnatio memoriae with our own treatment of
mass shooters. Most readers who were old enough when the
Columbine tragedy happened almost certainly know the names
of the shooters. It is understandable because when confronted
with the seemingly unimaginable, we want to understand, so we
turn our attention to the individuals. Mass shooters’ names and
faces dominate the media, and if they leave manifestos, those
spread virally as well. Even if they are being condemned, they
are noted, remembered and immortalized.
Unfortunately, not everyone reacts in horror. The man who
murdered 26 people at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.,
an almost unfathomable crime, was obsessed with the fame and
attention the Columbine shooters received. He collected clippings
about their act and downloaded videos and other mate-
rial from other mass shootings, as well as gun suicides.
He then went on to commit his own horror.
This is not an isolated case. We have quantitative
evidence that reveals a spike in such shootings in the
period following extensive mass media coverage of
one, and reports and law-enforcement investigations
show that many shooters study previous shooters, col-
lect news stories about them and study their methods.
In a terrible twist, they even focus on the numbers of
their victims in an effort to up that count—realizing
that the higher the number, the more coverage and
attention they will receive in the “rankings,” so to
speak, as if it were a video-game scoreboard.
None of this is meant to make light of the other
factors—availability of guns or mental health sup-
port—and does not necessarily speak to all mass
shootings, some of which are more akin to terrorism.
It does, however, tell us something important about
ancient wisdom: damnatio memoriae may well be
the correct method, as hard as it may seem.
In the modern world, we cannot and should not
censor media coverage of the event; however, we can definitely
change the way we report it and talk about it. Instead of profil-
ing the murderers, we can focus on the victims; instead of pub-
licizing their often incoherent ramblings, we can dismiss the
content as the pathetic words of murderers, and we can certain-
ly avoid plastering the faces and the names of the killers on
media outlets and social media. That will not be a full solution,
because the other factors need tackling as well, but it is one
important step in denying these troubled men the one thing
they seek above almost everything: posthumous infamy.JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE
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