Mass shooting and mass media : does media coverage of mass shootings inspire copycat crimes?

In December 2012, twenty elementary school children and six adult staff members were shot and killed by a single individual at a school in Connecticut. Although this horrific event was met with widespread shock, Americans are sadly all too familiar with such mass shootings. From Columbine in 1999, to Virginia Tech in 2007, to the Colorado cinema shootings earlier in 2012, mass shootings seem to occur with alarming regularity. And although they appear to afflict the United States more than most other countries, they are by no means a uniquely American phenomenon. In 1996 sixteen kindergarten children were shot and killed in Dunblane, Scotland, and in 2011 69 teenagers were killed on an island retreat in Norway.