{"id":247339,"date":"2020-03-07T00:59:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T05:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=247339"},"modified":"2020-03-07T00:59:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-07T05:59:30","slug":"viral-attack-videos-in-schools-could-be-part-of-motive-for-violence-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/03\/07\/viral-attack-videos-in-schools-could-be-part-of-motive-for-violence-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral attack videos in schools could be part of motive for violence, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
A video that was circulated on social media depicts a young student being attacked by another student at Riverview High School in Sydney, N.S. (File Photo: Priscilla Du Preez\/Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

HALIFAX — As police in Cape Breton investigate a video appearing to show a violent incident in a high school locker room, some experts and educators argue social media firms should act more swiftly to remove the disturbing images from their networks.<\/p>\n

A video that was circulated on social media depicts a young student being attacked by another student at Riverview High School in Sydney, N.S.<\/p>\n

The school’s principal, Joe Chisholm, says the victim in the video is \u201cOK\u201d and suspensions have been handed out.<\/p>\n

However, Chisholm adds the school community is unsettled, both by the incident itself and the video’s distribution in unedited form.<\/p>\n

He says in an interview that both the school and police have reached out to social media companies, including Facebook and Instagram, to urge them remove the video from their networks.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the Cape Breton Regional Police says the incident was reported to authorities on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot comment on any more details of an active investigation; we will provide an update once investigators have completed their work,\u201d wrote Desiree Magnus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the interest of the mental wellness of those involved, we ask that there please be a stop to any further sharing of the video.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wayne MacKay, the author of a report on bullying in Nova Scotia and a professor emeritus at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, says he fears such videos can play a role in motivating school violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the disturbing things about this incident is somebody decided to carefully capture the whole thing rather than intervening to help the poor young victim in the case,\u201d MacKay said.<\/p>\n

In the clip, the assailant appears at one point to lift up the victim and drop him on his head and shoulders as a group of other students watch.<\/p>\n

Aimee Morrison, a professor of literature at University of Waterloo who specializes in social media, said the video is an example of bullying images that go viral and multiply the original harm.<\/p>\n

Morrison also noted it’s unclear from the clip whether those involved were unaware of being filmed, or whether the video maker was complicit in the attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be one student beating up a person and another person who has a separate idea to film it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

However the videos emerge, Morrison and MacKay argue that social media firms should eliminate such unedited violence from their networks as it appears.<\/p>\n

MacKay said the companies’ response often \u201creactive and it’s complaint driven…. They should have resources monitoring the kinds of images and stories that are out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Facebook\u00a0Canada\u00a0said the company has \u201ctaken action to prevent minors from watching this video,\u201d in accordance with the company’s policies against harassment and bullying.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case, we cover videos of physical bullying or violence against minors in a fight context shared with a condemning caption with a warning screen … allowing for people to watch this content if they choose while making it unavailable to minors,\u201d David Troya-Alvarez said in an email.<\/p>\n

Chisholm said his school has clear policies against the distribution of such imagery — some of which were the result of MacKay’s study and recommendations published in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents that promote this type of violence by sharing it — we will deal with it. There’s discipline for doing this,\u201d said Chisholm.<\/p>\n

He said the school encourages students to contact the province’s anti-cyberbullying unit — known as Cyberscan — if violent or intimate videos or online images are being distributed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it’s not just the students we need to educate. We need to educate people using the social networks. We need to get the social networks to take down these videos,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Morrison also said there is a \u201cgrey zone\u201d where part of the video may be edited and replayed when it is newsworthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere may be value to having bits of it anonymized and excerpted in the news media, but there is no value in having it as a whole circulate around when the person suffering hasn’t given their consent for it to be shared,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The professor also said there may be social media videos made where citizens show police violence or crimes occurring that \u201cusefully shine a light\u201d on incidents that society needs to grapple with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are different from a person filming a fight in a high school locker room where the goal is to glorify the victor and humiliate the victim…. There’s not much social value to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zach Churchill, the province’s education minister, said he couldn’t watch the entire video as he found it deeply disturbing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can hurt people for a long period of time and extend the trauma of these kinds of events,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Centre for Education released a statement condemning the violence, saying it had \u201cshaken our entire school community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HALIFAX — As police in Cape Breton investigate a video appearing to show a violent incident in a high school …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":247340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","category-technology","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247341,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247339\/revisions\/247341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}