The Ted Talk above discusses mass shootings and the media’s correlation. The speaker, Tom Teves, lost his son due to a mass shooting in 2012. He recalls how the media had made the murder famous. His name was everywhere, yet none of the victims were anywhere. The media had boiled the victims down to numbers, not humans.
One of my favorite tactics used in this Ted Talk was the use of anecdotes and stories to introduce the topic. It makes the issue seem more humanized if the speaker is able to have a personal connection to it. Another tactic that Teves used was relating back to previous shootings to further his point. Teves used a Florida shooting who paused during the attack to see if the event had gone viral online as an example to further his point.
For my Unit 2 project, I want to cover the evolution of media and crime. As a criminology major, it’s fascinating to see how the media evolved from reporting facts to pushing a particular agenda.
For my essay, I want to focus on the same evolving idea of crime and the media.
I definitely will enjoy your paper and ted-talk as you will talk about crime and the media as one and how they have cooperated with each other over time. It’s always fascinating hearing about crime stories and the way the media always portrays it. Usually showing sympathy for the people that lived rather than the ones that died. About the ted-talk, love it, love how you keep the idea of school shootings so prevalent. It seems like people are forgetting just how tragic and scary school shootings actually are and you always hit the nail on the head when it comes to these ideas.
I’m really intrigued to hear your take on this issue. I’ve heard this sort of thing brought up every once in a while, but usually all of the focus is either on mental health or gun control. It will be really interesting to hear more about this under-discussed aspect not only school shootings, but also hate crimes and public violence in general.