LIVE-STREAMING MASS MURDER A NEW LOW FOR KILLERS.

Scholars of mass murder seem especially concerned when something is new. Something new — a tactic, a target — has been found more likely to inspire imitation. On Friday, the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, killing 49, appeared to mark another “horrific milestone” in the modern history of mass violence, as one researcher said, because it was broadcast live on Facebook through a camera strapped to the gunman’s head.

It seems a trivial distinction to make, to look at the uniqueness of a hate crime. The footage, which social media platforms struggled to suppress throughout the day Friday, is revolting in how utterly real it is, despite looking like a first-person shooter video game, moving with the gunman’s head as he scans around a room filled with victims, looking for his next target.

The app, Live4, used to funnel the video from body-mounted cameras to social media, released a statement on its website condemning the attack and “their disgusting use of our app,” which is intended for athletes in extreme sports to post first-person footage of their achievements. Each time Facebook or Twitter or YouTube removed a version of the video, another clip seemed to appear. But that footage, researchers say, has terrible potential.

“If we really get down to it, this is a snuff video,” said Jooyoung Lee, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies and teaches about mass shootings. “He’s broadcasting the live murder of innocent people, which is grotesque and is another way of inciting and inspiring people who support this Islamophobic and racist cause.

“My biggest fear is that it will inspire the next copycat.”

Lee said the live-streamed killing was the latest in a slow shift toward killers incorporating video and social media into their attacks. Elliott Rodger, who killed six and injured 14 in Isla Vista in 2014, first posted a video of himself giving a long speech. And WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were shot and killed in Virginia by a disgruntled former WDBJ employee, while Parker was live on television.

“I look at the diaries and journals of mass killers,” he said. “They are students of other mass killers. They spend time researching, studying, reading up on people that came before them.”

Mass killing scholarship often deals with the concept of contagion, the idea that one mass shooter can spawn others. Studies of manifestos and diaries left by mass killers find the crimes most often imitated are ones that were somehow unique, said Sherry Towers, an Arizona State University research professor who uses quantitative and predictive analytics to study armed violence.

“It’s kind of a horrific milestone,” she said of Friday’s video footage, adding that she hoped social media platforms would find ways to limit the potential of another live broadcast happening again. “Hopefully this one is not a landmark.”

She said landmark cases are unique in some way and are often cited as inspiration, like the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. “There have been so many school shooters, since Columbine, who have been so fascinated with Columbine.” According to Towers, contagion is a factor in 20 to 30 per cent of mass killings that have been studied.

Frank Farley is a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia and a former president of the American Psychological Association, whose research focuses on crime and violence, as well as risk-taking and thrill-seeking.

Some perpetrators are motivated to outdo other mass killings, Farley said, noting a concept he described as “king of the kill.” And one of the main motivators of mass shootings is self-expression, he said.

“They’re angry and hateful,” he said, “and this is how they express that.”

“I would fully expect to see more of that — broadcasting the act,” he said.

But U of T’s Prof. Lee does not think this live-streaming element is really novel at all. “There’s a series of mundane activities that people broadcast every day,” he said. “The fact that now mass killers are doing the same thing... it’s really just a perverse extension of what we’re doing in everyday life.”

THEY ARE STUDENTS OF OTHER MASS KILLERS, THEY SPEND TIME RESEARCHING ... PEOPLE THAT CAME BEFORE.