📑 Reporting a massacre: Why the ABC didn’t share the shooter’s ‘manifesto’

Craig McMurtrie unpacks the decision by the ABC to not publish extracts of the Christchurch shooter’s ‘manifesto’. Every move made seems to have be orchestrated to grab attention. As Robert Evans from Bellingcat explains, it is an example of
Shit posting:

The act of throwing out huge amounts of content, most of it ironic, low-quality trolling, for the purpose of provoking an emotional reaction in less Internet-savvy viewers.

Zeynep Tufekci backed this stance on Twitter:

Don’t do this. We know how to cover terrible news like this, without doing it on the killer’s terms. Don’t participate in the snuff film he directed: instead give us the crucial news coverage we need. https://t.co/jhDXdxaa9W

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) March 15, 2019

Tufekci linked to a couple of posts she wrote in response to Sandy Hook Massacre and the Virginia shooter explaining the dangers of feeding copycat scenarios.

This focus on media manipulation also reminded me of dana boyd’s discussion of 4Chan’s association with fake news.