That is what this killer did. His five videos currently range from ~200K to 2 million views. But it's impossible to separate the number of page views from attention pointing his way via media outlets.
Even though the anarchic general Internet is a big deal, media outlets (The New York Times, Fox News, CNN, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, MSNBC, NPR) still determine what most people who pay attention to news pay attention to. How major media outlets cover stories still makes a major difference in what people pay attention to.
To respond to your first point, it's not an issue as simple as publishing or not publishing names. It's the whole method of coverage. How does it come to be that so many are so familiar with characters like McVeigh and Manson? Is it simply because names got published and everyone suddenly knew what they know? Of course not. It's that media outlets extensively covered stories and showed faces over and over and over and over, over the course of days, week, months, and years, till there's no possible way that people wouldn't be just as familiar with who McVeigh or Manson is, as say, Biden, Cheney, Gore, or Quayle.
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Re: Besides, if they knew the media wouldn't publish it
Date: 11/1/11 06:28 (UTC)Even though the anarchic general Internet is a big deal, media outlets (The New York Times, Fox News, CNN, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, MSNBC, NPR) still determine what most people who pay attention to news pay attention to. How major media outlets cover stories still makes a major difference in what people pay attention to.
To respond to your first point, it's not an issue as simple as publishing or not publishing names. It's the whole method of coverage. How does it come to be that so many are so familiar with characters like McVeigh and Manson? Is it simply because names got published and everyone suddenly knew what they know? Of course not. It's that media outlets extensively covered stories and showed faces over and over and over and over, over the course of days, week, months, and years, till there's no possible way that people wouldn't be just as familiar with who McVeigh or Manson is, as say, Biden, Cheney, Gore, or Quayle.