Negative (Criminogenic) Impact of the Mass Media

As we know, public consciousness is most vulnerable in regions regularly bombarded with mass media reports on violent crimes, unpunished bureaucracy of officials, civil servants, law enforcement agencies, the cunning of local criminals, or on “high-profile” cases, school shootings, and mass shootings. Repeated mentions in the media of a criminal event, the name of the shooter, his hidden heroization, repeated references to other recurring details of the crime, numbers, the weapon used, the shooter’s schedule on the day, and actions can lead to imitation or similar incidents. The contagion effect is widely known (as mentioned in the article “School Shootings And Manipulation Over Consciousness”), which refers to the increased likelihood of mass murders and/or suicides following media coverage of a mass shooting.

Moreover, in such conditions, the population develops a habituation to crime, as well as a belief that it is futile to seek any protection from criminal encroachment. Over time, media coverage of violent and fear-inducing events, such as school shootings and mass shootings, can lead to negative consequences for the mental health of consumers of such content, including the development of anxiety symptoms, depression, acute stress, and post-traumatic stress disorders, as well as physical health problems. Media coverage of these distressing events not only instills fear in the population but also contributes to the escalation of further violence. It has been noted that after receiving such shocking information, people often seek similar content to dispel their fears and attempt to “take control” of the situation in their minds.

In particular, the study “Media exposure to mass violence events can fuel a cycle of distress” ¹ states that in the case of violent events, the information received does not alleviate uncertainty or fear, as it often contains distressing content. This can lead people to seek information that they could somehow use to protect themselves from the perceived threat, which may renew their fear and develop a “cycle of distress,” a type of stress that acts as a trigger for the development of various psychosomatic disorders.

How can we determine whether the impact of information on a person’s consciousness is positive or negative? What reduces or increases the capacity for rational perception of information? What contributes to increased levels of individual self-control or critical thinking? How can we support the safety of consciousness at a personal level and create conditions for the safety of public consciousness? 

The negative (criminogenic) characteristics of media influence.

So, in what cases can the influence of the media have a destructive, negative (criminogenic) character? 

Criminogenic influence refers to the impact in which the information conveyed in the media: 

• leads to negative changes in its structure and nature; 
• increases the overall level of social tension in society; 
• contributes to the escalation of fear; 
• promotes the romanticization and heroization of criminals; 
• gives information on methods of committing crimes; 
• offers information on concealing traces of crimes and evading responsibility; 
• causes alienation and hostility towards law enforcement agencies; 
• contributes to a decrease of tolerance in society; 
• fosters the disunity of people, inciting social hostility and exacerbating social conflicts; 
• aids in intensifying conflicts within society and awakening base instincts in people; 
• raises the level of crime and contributes to the growth of latent crime.

Under such negative mass media influence, a process of manipulation over public consciousness occurs when secret tools of socio-psychological influence are employed, along with ingrained instrumental methods such as coercion, suggestion, stereotyping, persuasion, propaganda, and agitation. The main goal is to create an illusory, “inverted system” of beliefs, values, and views based on fear, which makes a person submissive to the will of the manipulator or the paymaster of this content. Constant intimidation of individuals and the activation of fear discourage them from analyzing social phenomena and situations critically, habituating them to accept these without question. One of the leading theorists in the field of media criminology, Raymond Surette, who developed the widely known theory of “mediated reality,” asserts that the media acts as a distorted mirror of reality, amplifying certain crimes and criminals while minimizing or omitting others.

In another study³ by American criminology professor Robert Reiner, discussed how stories of crime and violence have dominated the news, fueling fear of crime in the population, even as crime statistics are falling. The media’s constant focus on situations in which the media or interest groups amplify certain incidents or issues to the status of social problems, with the media alternating between different “threats” to the public, provoke a disproportionate and often unfounded fear in society within society, causing people to believe that crime is more widespread and inevitable than it actually is. This, in turn, affects the behavior and beliefs of the population, triggering moral panic and a disproportionate reaction from society.

What is the danger of the negative criminogenic nature of media influence? The hidden psychological impact on people can lead to a distorted perception of the world for those who consume such content, resulting in a transformation of their moral values and the formation of a wide range of destructive and violent patterns, that is, changes in their behavior and intentions. This, in turn, can lead to subsequent unpredictable actions by such individuals that pose a threat to public safety. Moreover, consumers of negative content often remain unaware of this hidden influence on them, which is why their behavior frequently does not align with their own desires. Thus, the mass media exerts a negative influence on the criminal situation by affecting the will and consciousness of people.

The Positive (Preventive) Characteristics of Media Influence

To compare, we will present the characteristics of the positive informational impact of the media on individual and collective legal consciousness, which allow for the active transformation of the system of legal values, views, and perceptions. In what cases can mass media exert a preventive influence on the population? 

Positive (preventive) influence refers to the impact in which the information conveyed in the media:

• raises the level of legal consciousness;
• decreases aggression and social tension in society;
• helps to eradicate the belief in the impunity of offenders;
• dismantles the romantic and heroic halo surrounding criminals;
• encourages the population to interact with law enforcement agencies and provide them with all information about committed or planned crimes;
• fosters self-education in individuals in the spirit of adhering to legal norms and fundamental human freedoms;
• provides information convincing people that illegal or criminal ways of solving personal problems are unacceptable and ineffective;
• aids in eliminating legal illiteracy;
• facilitates impartial informing of society about the state of crime;
• contributes to the fight against latent crime;
• enhances moral regulators in society.

“Columbine”

Let’s consider key examples of the negative impact of the media on public consciousness that have had tragic consequences for society. The dramatic event of April 20, 1999 — the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado (USA) — can be classified as an international social catastrophe in terms of its scale and consequences. In public consciousness and mass culture, the tragedy at Columbine High School became a symbol of school shootings, that is, of armed attacks on educational institutions. At first glance, the first mass school shooting in history occurred earlier, in 1966, when a shooter opened fire on students at the University of Texas. However, due to the prompt intervention of the media, it was the tragedy at Columbine that was amplified globally, allowing for the formation of a certain public opinion and provoking a series of similar tragic events in subsequent years, including in other countries.

According to research by the Pew Research Center, the greatest public interest in America throughout 1999 was sparked by the tragedy at Columbine.  ⁴

Journalist Dave Cullen analyzed the media coverage of the events in Colorado and found that, for instance, CNN and Fox News provided continuous reporting on this event, while The Times featured “Columbine” on its front pages for nearly two weeks straight. According to “The Columbine High School Shootings”. Chapter prepared for publication in Crimes of the Century, Frankie Bailey and Steven Chermak (Eds.) Praeger Publishers ⁵, 400 to 500 reporters,  75 to 90 satellite trucks, and 60 television cameras  from various media outlets were present at the scene of the attack.

Many video reports and articles have been dedicated to this topic in other media outlets. The popularization of the “Columbine” theme has been picked up by mass culture, and with the development of the Internet, social networks have actively contributed to the promotion of the internet subculture of “Columbiners” among teenagers. 

The question arises: who orchestrated this event and sparked public interest in it through the media? Who implanted the bloody idea of preparing a plan to blow up a school in the minds of the shooters, which, as they believed, must rival the Oklahoma City bombing in its magnitude? Who developed bipolar disorder in them, and what specific information contributed to this (one of the shooters during meetings with a psychiatrist complained about depression, feelings of anger, and suicidal thoughts)? Who, by means of the media, influenced public opinion and embedded the scenario for subsequent school shooting incidents, including in other countries? Who turned this tragedy into a model for imitation among youth, and for what purposes? Who launched this information capable of provoking children to commit unlawful acts, including the murder of other children?

Answers to many of these questions can be found in “The IMPACT” documentary (2024), which discusses methods of manipulating consciousness, the puzzle coding of young shooters, and the tragedies in Waco, Oklahoma City, and Columbine, as well as the activities of an international anticult group led by a religious apologist obsessed with radical ideas — Alexander Dvorkin and his successor Alexander Novopashin. This group operates through the Russian anticult organization RACIRS, modeled after the Nazi apologetic center of Walter Kühnert and employs similar methods and ideologies adapted to modern conditions.

So, how do the media subtly manipulate public consciousness through negative information? How do they instill a sense of fear in the majority, paralyzing people’s will, while simultaneously creating an image of exceptionalism and superiority in the minority (perhaps genetically predisposed to psychopathy or having difficulties with emotional control), akin to the ideology of Nazism, and pushing them towards committing illegal acts against society? 

Essentially, these manipulators, who influence consciousness remotely through media-driven information, transform individuals into proxy shooters by conditioning their consciousness and subconsciousness. They craft specialized “soldier-biorobots,” by altering their behavior and subjugating them to their will. Perhaps, guided by Nazi ideas, they rely on the concept of Hitler’s penal battalions — Wehrmacht’s “living dead” (the “living dead” because their survival rates were minimal) — through which they shape their “geopolitical landscape” and construct their “architecture of control over public consciousness”?

In one way or another, they primarily seek to instill a Nazi image of exceptionalism and superiority in the mind of a person who believed them, driving him to override his instinct for self-preservation and take up arms to harm others and himself. And what drives a person to become a monster, obsessed with their own exceptionalism and superiority? It is driven by the popularization of bloodthirsty scenes in the media, mass culture, and social networks; the discrediting information about law enforcement in the media, and the internal everyday life resentments and the imagined “injustice of the world,” which incite a thirst for revenge that fills the person’s consciousness. All this information triggers obsessive emotional states. At this moment, two factors turn on the “shooter” to act: examples of similar situations they learned about through the media or the Internet, and the patterns they acquired from this information, such as the idea of superiority over others, an obsessive desire to demonstrate that “I have the right to punish,” and so on.

How does the subtle advertisement of a mass shooting event take place and give rise to new similar events? What manner of presenting information influences the behavior, consciousness, and subconsciousness of the audience? How can one recognize the destructive nature of articles in the media and identify methods and ways of conveying information similar to manipulative techniques affecting the consciousness and subconsciousness of the reader and akin to priming (behavioral priming, cognitive priming, media priming, subconscious priming, anchoring effect as a feature of perceiving numerical values by human brain, etc.)? In particular, how to discern these fixed patterns as a mechanism of implicit memory (hidden memory), resulting from unconscious influence of information (a specific stimulus, such as a word or image) on the behavior of the person who is unaware of this interconnection? Who is interested in spreading mass shootings and school shootings in the world, in the puzzle coding of youth, in intimidating the population, in creating a negative image of politicians and threatening their lives? Who and in what way is trying to manipulate public opinion through fear and subtly introduce changes into the geopolitical landscape, while remaining an unnoticed shadow force for intelligence agencies?

A MASS SHOOTING OR A POLITICAL HIT?  

Tragic events at Charles University. The incident occurred on December 21, 2023, in Prague (Czech Republic). A student from the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University opened fire on students in the hallways and classrooms on the 4th floor, and also shot at people from the university balcony who were passing by at that time on Jan Palach Square, located near the university. As a result of the shooting, 14 people were killed (all Czech citizens), and over 20 more were injured. ⁶

Lidovky.cz: You were an eyewitness to this event. What exactly did you see?  

I saw a young man standing on the upper balcony of the Faculty of Philosophy, facing Palach Square. I assume he was the perpetrator, but I don’t know for sure. He was facing either the Castle or Mánes Bridge. He was holding some kind of weapon, probably a submachine gun, (judging by the photos, probably from an assault rifle – ed. note), and he fired several shots towards Prague Castle or the Mánes Bridge. Then he moved a little and fired again. After some time, he fired again. 

After that, he raised his hands and threw the weapon over the balcony railing. It landed on the pedestrian crossing between the green area and the Faculty of Philosophy. After that, he disappeared behind that balcony. I couldn’t see him there because it is a massive concrete structure. And then, I don’t know. After that, the police were running around.

Many international media reported on the shooting at Charles University. The location and event can be described as landmark. For reference: Charles University is one of the oldest higher education institutions in the world, founded in 1348 by the King of Bohemia, Charles IV. Today, it is the main higher education institution in the Czech Republic. More than 50,000 students study at this university, including international students from all over the world.

The world press reported on the events at Charles University. Some newspapers (including Russian ones, such as RIA Novosti and TASS, citing the publication in Lidové noviny) reported that among the injured by the shooter were three foreigners who were passing through the square near the university at the time. One of them is a citizen of the Netherlands and two are citizens of the UAE—high-ranking government officials from the United Arab Emirates. Lidové noviny reported that these individuals were taken to the Central Military Hospital (ÚVN), with one of them in critical condition. They were visited in the hospital by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UAE, who came to Prague along with the Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský. Later, the injured were to be transferred to Munich. Was this mass shooting a political hit? This question remains open.

Another example: in the United States, a young man attempted to assassinate Donald Trump (back then a candidate for the U.S. presidency) during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. If we analyze these two cases, we can identify interesting facts regarding the circumstances of the incidents and the profiles of the Czech shooter from Charles University and the American shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump:

• Both studied well and were awarded prizes in certain fields of science as gifted youth.
• Both came from well-off families.
• Both were balanced individuals, quiet loners who did not socialize much with anyone, introverted, and did not suffer from mental illnesses.
• Both had connections to information related to radicalism and the use of weapons to solve issues: the shooter from Charles University defended a bachelor’s thesis in June 2022 on the topic “The Issues of the Antagonism of the Galician Peasant Uprising and the Krakow Uprising in 1846”; while the shooter from the USA attended political history course at Crooks, where the last topic was the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.
• Both attended shooting training courses.
• During the shooting, both acted as if following a well-structured plan, and after completing their “mission,” both were “neutralized” – killed on the spot. In the case of the shooter from Charles University, later media reports mentioned his suicide.
• According to one version, there was a Russian trace. The head of the Czech police stated that the police were investigating a Telegram channel in Russian, allegedly authored by the shooter. The shooter was reportedly influenced by a terrorist act that occurred in Russia at the end of that year.⁸

(The terrorist act apparently referred to the December school shooting in Bryansk, Russia, where an eighth-grade girl opened fire with a rifle at school). However, later reports indicated that the Czech police had abandoned this version.

The American investigation revealed ⁹ that the U.S. shooter had accounts on three encrypted foreign platforms, which he accessed through his mobile phone. 

The suspect’s social media profile was deleted.

• Bipolar disorder, which is characteristic of puzzle coding of a person’s subconsciousness from the outside: reports indicate that the U.S. searched online for information about major depressive disorder back in April. Meanwhile, in relation to Charles University, there are media reports that students from Charles University submitted a petition requesting assistance with bipolar disorder.
• “Unknown motives.” In both cases, the press reported similar statements: “the motives of the shooter are unknown, the investigation is ongoing,” “it has not yet been established what could have motivated the shooter, and no evidence has been found revealing his political or ideological views.”

Did you notice the difference? While in the Columbine massacre, the perpetrators were mentally unstable teenagers, here we are talking about determined, gifted young people, mentally balanced, who were planning for their future. What has society faced 25 years after the onset of such deadly attacks, which are still classified as “unrelated to international terrorism,” with claims that the “the shooter acted alone, driven by his own motives”? This raises the question: what do experts not know, or what do they know but conceal from the public? Is this the testing of new methods of conditioning and controlling consciousness and the subconsciousness, with experiments now being conducted on completely sane, gifted young people? How can such “accidents and coincidences” be explained?

However, let’s return to the incident at Charles University. It is worth noting that after the mass shooting, some media reports took on a clearly destructive and criminogenic character. Headlines proclaimed that this was “the deadliest mass shooting in the history of modern Czechia,” that it had become “the bloodiest of its kind in the entire 30-year history of modern Czechia.” Authors of such articles instilled fear in people by posting related photos. They glorified the shooter, popularized his photo, and provided detailed information about him, describing what kind of weapon he had, his routine, and actions. They discredited the authorities, inciting negative attitudes towards them. All this unfolded while the university administration, the public, the police, and even the students themselves urged the media not to spread rumors and disinformation, not to glorify the criminal, and not to share details about his deeds, asking for basic respect for the victims’ families.

“On December 22, 2023, Prokop Vodrážka published an article titled “Footage of the Attackers or People on the Ledge Cross the Line. But the Media Must Not Stay Silent, Otherwise the Space Will Be Filled with Disinformation, Says Ethics Specialist.””

“According to media ethics specialist Jana Motala, journalists should not disclose the attacker’s identity, glorify their actions, or provide details about how they carried out the crime. However, this does not mean that the circumstances of tragic events should not be reported. How should the media act in such cases? The head of the Center for Media Ethics and Dialogue at the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University in Brno shares his perspective in an interview.” ¹⁰

“June 4, 2024

Charles University Requests the Media to Be Ethical and Tactful

Charles University (CU), six months after the tragic event at the Faculty of Arts (FA CU), continues to provide financial, psychological, and crisis support not only to the families of the deceased or injured but also to students, faculty members, and other staff in the CU. To achieve this, we are engaging experts from our ranks and affiliated organizations. Assistance is, of course, available to everyone at Charles University, not just those from the Faculty of Arts.

The management of CU and FA CU regularly communicates with all the families of the victims. Through this communication, they convey the wishes of many families that purely commemorative events, such as the planned gathering with the President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, should not provoke a new wave of media coverage revisiting the tragic shooting.

Charles University asks representatives of the Czech media to be considerate and tactful in their approach to covering this tragedy, particularly when reporting on the families of the victims of the December 2023 shooting at FA CU. The pain and suffering of the survivors must not be ignored. Increased media attention and pressure from the media on the grieving of  the victims’ families can reignite their pain, further limiting their already restricted space for mourning and their efforts to come to terms with the situation, even if only partially.” 

“December 22, 2023 

Journalism Students Issued an Open Letter Urging the Media to Report Responsibly on the Attack in Prague

Journalism students issued an open letter calling on the media to adopt a responsible approach in reporting on the tragic attack at the Faculty of Arts in Prague. The document was created at the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University. Among other points, the students criticized the publication of alleged photos of the attacker and speculation about his motives.” 

“Thursday’s events at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts attracted coverage from both domestic and international media, while journalism students and future reporters have now decided to speak out against numerous ethical missteps. Some outlets published the perpetrator’s identity, including his photo, while others detailed the course of the shooting or published images of fleeing and terrified students while the attacker was still active. The Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism wrote an open letter addressed to editors and journalists. “We are appalled by the approach of some editorial offices and believe that many of them violated the unwritten ethical code,” the letter states.”

“Just a few hours after the attack, Minister of the Interior Vít Rakušan urged citizens not to share unverified information, but only confirmed news from reliable sources. However, it was not the citizens who failed, but the media themselves. Just minutes after the initial information was published, news websites—despite appeals from some of us to our leaders—began circulating alleged photos of the perpetrator, along with information about his background and even a supposed motive for the murder. This happened at a time when families of victims were anxiously awaiting news from their children, or, in the worst case, official confirmation from police or emergency services.”

“We do not understand the media’s desire to broadcast immediate footage of terrified people, share testimonies of those who have experienced the horror, or publish the perpetrator’s messages he wrote on his Telegram account before this horrific act. Even if the account is real (although, this verification falls under the jurisdiction of law enforcement, at least in our opinion), we do not find the news coverage of the killer’s thoughts justified and believe that editors do this simply to increase their readership and, consequently, increase financial profit. We feel the same way about the publication of the attacker’s photo and name, which the police have repeatedly warned against. Nevertheless, this information was featured in major news outlets several hours after the attack.”

The public appeal had an impact. For instance, shortly after the incident, Jiří Kubík, the editor-in-chief of the Czech online news portal Seznam Zprávy, apologized for the mistakes made and clarified some of them in his article “Difficult Days That Even Journalists Can Learn From,” published on December 23, 2023.

The editor-in-chief apologized, that is a fact. But what was the rhetoric of the journalists from this news portal regarding the incident at Charles University over the following year? Who was the interested party in supporting this topic, and most importantly, in what manner was the information presented over such an extended period, and for what purpose? What was the specific impact of this information on shaping the audience’s values?

After all, the readers, through consuming information from the media, not only absorb certain norms of behavior and values but also develop mindsets and begin to interpret all other information through the lens of these adopted values and orientations. Manipulation of the sense of fear — for instance, inciting fear of aggression and violence — covert or overt teaching audiences aggressive behavior, subtle promotion of violence as a supposed solution to problems, and stimulation of aggressive, copycat instincts in the audience are not merely a mechanism of media effects. They are a covert subversion that destabilizes society by imposing certain aggressive attitudes. 

For example, if we analyze the articles of Czech journalist Kristina Ciroková, who has been working at the editorial office of the Seznam Zprávy news portal since 2020, we can identify interesting patterns. Over the course of a year (from December 2023 to December 2024), according to our preliminary calculations, Kristina Ciroková authored (and co-authored) 22 articles in one way or another related to the topic of mass shooting at Charles University. And these articles raise numerous questions, considering the criminogenic nature of the influence of such information, the discrediting rhetoric that includes denigrating comments, the intentional undermining of the authority of the government and law enforcement agencies, the use of “provocative” wording, tactics of accusations and mockery aimed at undermining trust and respect for authority among the population, hidden instructions that detail schemes for committing illegal acts, including descriptions of violent behavior that could lead to the imitation of such behavior in real life, and much more. We have already mentioned the destructive activities of Kristina Ciroková and her connection to Czech anticultism whose breeding ground is located at Charles University, in the article “Czech Anti-Cult Movement Nazism, Russian Influence, and Connections with American Deprogrammers.”

“Kristina Ciroková, as it turns out, is a reporter for Czech media who actively covers new religious movements, labeling them as ‘sects’ and ‘cults’ and violating all democratic principles, the presumption of innocence, and journalistic ethics. What is the reason for such destructive human activity? What drives a journalist to break laws and international human rights, act against their fellow citizens, and risk criminal liability just to please their mentors from RACIRS? Moreover, many of her publications are also filled with criticism of the government, law enforcement, and numerous baseless accusations, either distorting existing facts or presenting no evidence at all.” 

We believe that such individuals working in the mass media, who create conditions for the negative impact of information on human consciousness, employ techniques to manipulate the audience’s subconsciousness, distort facts, escalate anxiety in society, and contribute to destabilization in the country, should be under close scrutiny by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. After all, as history teaches us, such actions do not pass without leaving a trace.

Sources: 

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