The Genovese Syndrome and Social Media Streaming

     In 1964, Winston Moseley killed Catherine Genovese, and no one did anything to help her. Sadly, not much has changed in human psychology since then. Recently, I heard about an incident in which Khaseen Morris got into a fight with a girl's boyfriend about him walking with her. He died in the altercation.  While people were streaming his death, no one intervened or took the responsibility of calling 911. This is just one of many incidents that have occurred in recent years involving massive social media coverage and little intervention in violence. It almost seems that people are more focused on recording something that will get views rather than actually intervening. Social media encourages some to do bizarre things for attention, which can be seen with the recent arrests following the storming' of Area 51. The fact that people are more likely to stream a crime than report it is horrifying. But is it our social media culture or the bystander effect that is responsible for this kind of behavior?

    While recording video can help give evidence for crimes, such as with Rodney King's beating, one could say that stopping a crime from escalating would be much more effective. In Rodney King's case, the police were the ones perpetrating the violence; therefore calling the authorities would not have been a good idea. There are also other instances of police brutality being uploaded onto social media and resulting in public outcry. With Khaseen Morris there were plenty of people around, making it unlikely that the person calling 911 would be singled out and attacked as well. There was also an instance in which a woman watched her friend be raped and streamed the instance on Periscope in Columbus, Ohio. Unlike with Rodney King, intervention by emergency personnel could have resulted in very different outcomes.

    Lack of trust in police, the allure of becoming 'viral' on social media, and ubiquity of cell phones all contribute to such situations.  There is no simple answer to how to address this. While creating algorithms to prevent people from seeing explicit material might decrease the incentive to stream crimes, it could also be used to cover up wrongdoings by police and other authorities. Perhaps there should be options on social media to send an alert to the police while still streaming the video so they can assess the situation and send people using location services. Whatever the solution is, it will require people to take a degree of responsibility in bad situations. However, in doing so, they could save others and prevent themselves from being sent to jail themselves.

Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/retro-report-bystander-effect.html
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762555041/teen-charged-in-fatal-stabbing-of-student-that-dozens-filmed-shared-on-social-me
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/01/06/chicago-facebook-assault/96254060/