Segment 3

The next concept discussed is school shootings, warning signs, and violent online communities. School shootings are complex crimes with multiple contributing factors such as mental health concerns, access to weapons, social isolation, bullying, and family issues. Social media plays a significant role in identifying warning signs before violence occurs, with researchers using the term "leakage" to describe moments when individuals reveal violent intentions online. Social media can serve as both a warning system and a dangerous environment, shaping individuals' understanding of violence. The podcast highlights how social media can expose dangerous thinking and reinforce violent ideas, emphasizing the importance of monitoring online behavior to prevent real-world violence. So for the next concept, it is like the next segment is going to be school shootings, warning signs and like violent online communities. This is one of the issues that have became more often, has been happening more often than the other ones I do believe. So school shootings are like a complicated crime. They cannot be explained by like one single cause. They may like involve like mental health concerns, access to weapons, personal anger, like social isolation or things like bullying, family issues and like other factors. But in like recent years, social media has become like an important part of how warning signs can appear before violence happens itself. And so I've been researching this one a little bit more than like the kidnapping and like human trafficking. So like researchers often use the term leakage to describe moments when someone reveals their violent thoughts, plans or like intentions before an attack. So this can happen through conversations, drawings, writings, videos, direct messages or like social media posts. And today's word leakage often appears online. A person may post threatening messages. They may share like a violent images. They may comment about wanting revenge. They may follow accounts that glorify previous attackers. And they may like post videos or messages that suggest they're like planning something harmful. And this magic of social media can become both a warning system and a dangerous environment. And I feel like when perpetrators decide that criminological behavior may include like obsession with violence, threat making, attention seeking, planning and identification of previous attackers. So some individuals may enter like an online space where violence is discussed, praised or treated as like a powerful concept or like a powerful doing. So this connects with the social learning theory because people can learn behavior by watching others. If someone repeatedly sees like a violent offenders being discussed, remembered or even admired online, that can shape how they understand violence itself. It also connects to the self-control theory because some online threats may come from like an impulse of anger or like an emotional reaction. And a person may, they say, post something because they want attention, validation or power. And social media rewards that, those impulses of comments, reactions, visibility. Like, but that's not the only theory that applies to this because routine activities theory still matters. And like the motivated offender may be someone planning harm. Their suitable choice may be classmates, teachers or school communities. The lack of capable guardianship may happen when warning posts are ignored, deleted, not reported or not taken seriously. This is why schools and law enforcement agencies increasingly pay attention to like a digital evidence. Because social media posts, messages, search histories, online videos and shared content can all become part of a threat assessment. Because mostly everyone modernly has a phone or some type of communication device that they can interact with someone else. So they post such, like, in some cases online evidence can help, as they prevent violence before it happens. So if a student posts a threat and someone reports it, school officials or police may intervene. The intervention could involve questioning the student, contacting parents, searching for weapons, evaluating mental health concerns or like involving the law enforcement. So like social media has two sides in this part of the podcast. So on one side it can expose dangerous thinking and on the other side can reinforce those dangerous thinking. That is what makes it like criminologically important because online spaces can become a place where a person expresses harm before committing harm. It can also become a place where violent ideas are repeated until they feel normal to the person consuming them. This segment supports the main argument because it shows that social media is not only involved after a crime occurs. Sometimes it isn't involved before the crime happens. It may show warning signs, be able to attend things like provide a space where violent thoughts grow stronger. And this is why social media becomes connected to the real world violence. Not because every violent post becomes a crime, but because some real world crimes leave digital footprints before they happen. Next we will move into cases of online culture, like online relations directly connected to violence and murder itself.