Massacre in the Media Age
The recent shopping mall gunfire in Omaha have made me think about Virginia Tech incident, especially how killers orchestrated their own media exposure as the last remark of their life. Is this the characteristic of violence in the media age now? Massacre in the media age, or massacre for the media?
News about 19 year old Hawkins random gunfire in a shopping mall toward Christmas shoppers and mall staff is all over the web since December 5. According to these news, Hawkins had left a will and indicate that “I’ll be famous.” Evidently there is nothing more explosive for America domestic life than having a mass murder in the shopping mall in the Christmas shopping hype.
Looking back to Virginia Tech massacre, the killing of 32 people took place in a campus. But the killer an Korean American student recorded himself on tape after the first round of firing in the campus and mailed it to mainstream news. He had ensured his image of holding guns staring at the camera were also spread everywhere to the people who were not in the incident.