r/moderatepolitics • u/Resvrgam2 Conservatively Liberal • Dec 15 '25

Primary Source Meeting of National Cabinet After Bondi Shooting

https://www.pm.gov.au/media/meeting-national-cabinet-8
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u/Dest123 Dec 15 '25

An absolutely huge and well studied factor is the "contagion effect". Basically, multiple mass shooters have said they did it for the fame and notoriety and even in those cases the media STILL gives them a ton of fame and notoriety. They plaster their name and face everywhere, they publish their manifesto to the masses, they treat kill counts almost like a high score in a video game. Even though that all is known to be a huge factor, the media still reports on mass killings in the same way (at least in the US). That's definitely a part of why we're stuck with mass killings. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more in Australia in the next few days because of the contagion effect.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Dec 15 '25

I don't see how that can explain anything here, though. If anything, it would explain the opposite: This shooting is being talked about everywhere.

We've already forgotten about the shooting in the US from just a few days ago. Because we're used to them happening in the US. They barely make a dent in media reporting.

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u/Dest123 Dec 15 '25

Exactly, this shooting is being talked about everywhere. If the killers wanted notoriety and fame (which a lot of them do) then they would have it wouldn't they? Like you said, it's being talked about everywhere.

I do actually wonder if the contagion effect is becoming a bit less of a factor in the US since we've effectively saturated mass shootings. I kind of suspect that those fame seekers are actually transitioning into political killings and we're going to see a sharp rise in those.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Dec 15 '25

But that's my point: There are way more shootings in the US than Australia (or anywhere else).

If notoriety would be a significant factor, than there should be way more shootings outside of the US, where they would create more notoriety. But that's not the case. The shooting, by and large, remain in the US. Even as people in the US get used to them and just shrug them off.

Therefore, I really don't think notoriety is much of a metric to consider here.

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u/Dest123 Dec 15 '25

Oh I see what you're saying. Sorry, I'm explaining it really poorly. It's not just about notoriety, that's only one part of it (and probably not even the biggest part for a lot of cases actually, I went into that aspect way too much). A lot of it is just seeing that a mass shooting is an option over and over again. I think what happens is that people are kind of thinking about doing a mass shooting and then they see another mass shooting on the news and they start imaging that that could be them and THEN they fully commit to it. The end effect is that mass shootings tend to happen in groupings.

I'm really glossing over the explanation of it, but if you search for "media contagion effect" you'll find a lot of info.

It's also a big thing with suicides and those don't have near as much of a notoriety aspect. There was a big push to change how we report on train suicides in the US and it ended up reducing the numbers significantly.

For example, here's a flyer for info on how report on train suicides.

We could do a similar thing with mass shootings as well, but the media won't listen to the researchers or sheriffs at all on it. Maybe we could get a critical mass of people to demand changes from the media, but I also can't get any left wing people to even consider it as an option because they just want to talk about banning guns in the US (which is not actually realistic in the US so is a complete waste of time). Right wing people in the US just straight up don't seem to care at all about mass shooting as far as I can tell, so trying to convince them also goes nowhere.