The Ripple Effect of Reported Violence like the Niu Shootings

When most people hear the word ripple, they think of a potato chip. Yet upsetting is when a greasy potato chip has more relevance and staying power in today's fast-paced culture, compared to tragedies reported in the news via the ripple-effect. The ripple-effect includes both the learning of information as it is happening, and the reporting style of it afterward by the media. While the first includes learning the information for sole purposes of learning it, the second suggests media framing techniques like frame amplification, salience, episodic and thematic framing desensitize people to forget the incident in a week. In other words although skipping a pebble appears serene, the environment becomes disturbed as the ripple gets bigger and bigger.

It is easy to feel less concerned or indifferent to the news if the person watching it isn't directly involved. In addition most of us think we are safe because the news is miles away. Therefore it can't happen to me right? This is a faulty assumption, for everyday we step out of our front door, we take a risk. Yet it is no reason to live in fear either.

However violence such as the Niu shootings propel the media to inadvertently use those already traumatized by the incident to get information out to the world. Surviving the aftermath of violence is hard enough without the media and the like trying to grasp a person in shock who just witnessed or survived the incident. I know when I walked out of the Holmes Student Center this previous Valentine's Day; I wanted to express a few choice words to the five news choppers hovering over my campus. The news can be impersonal when a person is in the middle of it.

Even more alarming is the scene of family members learning about the violent incident for the first time on the nightly 5:00 news. Panic sets in for not knowing if loved ones miles away are okay. This is enough to send any parent into a tailspin of fear and worry. Secondly family members watching their televisions cannot protect their child from harm. As a result some people will call the news stations for more information or go to the scene without finding out whether it is safe to do so. Case in point more people arrive on the scene to scan the crowd for their loved ones and worry more when they aren't immediately accounted for after the incident.

Sensitive even more so are the human beings in the incident as it happening, for the ripple-effect of subjective reality to objective awareness requires an adjustment of sorts not usually required in daily life. Since people react differently at their own pace, realization that something is wrong takes longer for some than for others. Further reactions before, during, and after an event may be completely different along with the memory of it. One person may be in disbelief while another breaks down. Emotions run high when the news repeatedly relays the events, sometimes inciting flashbacks.

The ripple-effect of violence and of desensitization follows a dangerously predictable pattern causing the violent incident to be forgotten in a week. To explain, the first violent ripple disrupting the serene environment at ground zero leads to family and friends learning of the event thanks to breaking news. Adding to this ripple-effect is both the media's reporting on the event, and the public watching the nightly news at 5:00 p.m. The desensitization to violence suggests the ripple should get smaller, but the reality is by the time the disturbance gets to the general public, it is out of control.

Speaking of out of control, the media framing of the incident also influences the ripple-effect and peoples' reactions, in part depending on how the media reports and packages the incident. After this the ripple-effect either grows out of control inciting everything in between from panic to perpetuation, it disappears just under the surface arousing indifference and anomie. A media framing technique more likely to suggest this indifference is thematic framing, for the impersonal view it provides by focusing on statistics in lieu of the incident forever changing people's lives. Yet the Niu shootings this past Valentine's Day cannot discount Kazmierczak's individual responsibility highlighted incessantly with frame amplification, salience, and episodic framing. Be that as it may, the essential reflective idea rippling throughout this entire piece is that the human beings just trying to move forward with their lives are just as newsworthy, and probably won't forget the incident in a week.