Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 28, 2021, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A7 THINK TANK PERSPECTIVES EDITOR: BRAD OSWALD 204-697-7269 ● BRAD.OSWALD@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A7 TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 28, 2021 Ideas, Issues, Insights EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A woman places a decoration near a poster after attending the funeral service for Gabby Petito in Holbrook, N.Y., on Sept. 26. Turning murder into social-media content WE may feel like we’re posting for Gabby, but are we just posting for ourselves? In the month since 22-year-old Gabby Petito vanished on a road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, her story has saturated the internet. As investigators steadily released new information, the followers of Petito’s now-dormant Instagram ballooned from less than a thousand to more than one million. On TikTok, videos tagged #gab- bypetito generated nearly one billion views. And when Petito’s body was found last week, de- mands of “Justice for Gabby” ricocheted around the web. All the attention may appear well-meaning, but something ugly happens when we turn murder into social-media content. From the early days of mass media, humans have devoured stories about crime. But our cur- rent true-crime boom, amplified and accelerated by social networks, is something else entirely. The curious no longer need wait for the trickle of news reports or court appearances. Social media has made true crime participatory; you can, as everyone is so fond of saying these days, do your own research. But in most every instance, the “research” is more for our benefit than the victims’. Because Laundrie and Petito, an aspiring influ- encer, lived so much of their lives online, there is abundant material to sift through. Consumers of contemporary true crime are overwhelmingly women, and it’s women — young women in par- ticular — who made the case a trending topic. The most avid #justiceforgabby TikTokkers are digital natives; they’ve spent their whole lives seeking secret clues in their crushes and frenemies’ posts, and now they can deploy those skills as amateur detectives, looking for signs of distress in Petito’s old photos, coded messages in her captions. Puffy eyes are evidence she spent the night crying; a misspelling means Laund- rie had control of her phone and was posting as her; a stack of rocks is an omen, for unspecified reasons. As someone who has spent many a late night on murder message boards, I understand the ap- peal. This DIY sleuthing feels like work, which is exactly the point. In the face of tragedy, passivity feels awful. It’s especially true if, as is the case for many women attracted to true crime, you see elements of your own trauma refracted in the headlines. It’s much better to imagine yourself as helpful, the one person whose midnight scrolling might crack the case. Combine that with a dwindling lack of faith in law enforcement, and you get an army of online detectives. At their worst, crowdsourced investigations can get things very wrong. In the 1990s, the West Memphis Three — a trio of teenagers wrongfully convicted of the murder of three boys — became one of the first true-crime case to have a dedi- cated website. In their eagerness to find the real culprit, amateurs converged on the wrong man, the stepfather of one of the murdered boys. Years later, when Reddit tried to pin the per- petrator of the Boston Marathon bombing, they ended up harassing the family of an innocent young man who had died by suicide. But even when things don’t go so badly awry, all the sleuthing looks less like investigation and more like content creation. Posters delivered breathless updates on Petito’s case, as if they’re recounting plot twists from the latest prestige drama. An influencer couple who accidentally captured footage of Petito and Laundrie’s van posted a credit-claiming video entitled “We found Gabby Petito’s Van!” — and drew 129,000 views. The drive for engagement drains the horror from the situation; newly created Instagram accounts shared information about the investiga- tion in pastel colours and blocky, sans-serif fonts. Squint, and you could be looking at an ad for a direct-to-consumer furniture company. Social-media companies would like us to think that all problems can be solved by sufficient at- tention. Pour enough views, shares or likes at an issue, and ta-da! it’s solved. Because these plat- forms amplify popular content, all the incentives are to keep posting, at least until the next clicky topic surfaces, or the next woman who is pretty enough — and, typically, white enough — goes missing in mysterious circumstances. This is the rotten place that the true-crime economy’s intersection with social media has taken us: the vast majority of victims don’t merit any public attention at all. A few, such as Petito, attain trending status. Neither option sounds much like justice. The more TikToks I watched about Petito, the more the real person at the heart of the case disappeared into the churning content around her. Her words have been picked apart, her life opened to scrutiny. She’s become flattened into a meme, inspiration for other people’s reaction videos. As an aspiring influencer, Petito sought celeb- rity, or at least attention, and found only middling success. But in death, her brand has been trans- formed into something eminently consumable: murdered girl. Rachel Monroe is the author of Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession. — The Washington Post Schools should be safe places for difficult questions C HILDREN from kindergarten to Grade 12 have settled into their school routines, as the pandemic that started in March of 2020 continues to affect the well-being of many Manitobans and is still affecting the capacity of our health-care system. As the highly contagious delta variant continues its march across our province, none of us can accurately predict outcomes. And while we have heard what sounds like good news from Pfizer regarding immunization for younger-aged individuals, we don’t know with certainty when Health Canada will authorize a vaccine for children under the age of 11. For parents, teachers, education sup- port staff, coaches, volunteers, bus drivers, administrators and kids alike, this can be a lot to feel nervous about. There is, however, so much that is within our control. Right now, the No. 1 priority is doing everything we can to keep kids safe at school, and in their day-to- day lives. Experts in child development and psycholo- gy know children and youth crave consistency and predictability. They feel safer and more confident when they know what’s coming, what to do, and how to get there. We can all choose to model behaviours and attitudes that are as consistent, reliable and predictable as the approved vaccines. Vaccination can stop youth from contract- ing the disease, prevent serious illness if they do contract it, prevent it from being passed on to others and reduce the chance of COVID-19 developing more strains. These facts bring a sense of safety and security in uncertain times. It also offers a good measure of assurance to know that all Manitoba public school teach- ers, school administrators and support staff — anyone working with children and youth — will be required to provide proof they are fully immunized by the end of October or, if they are not immunized, submit to COVID-19 testing up to three times a week. As well, in-school Pfizer vaccinations will be taking place over the next few weeks for students born before Dec. 31, 2009. Parents and guardians are encouraged to provide consent for youth who are eligible and who have not yet received their first or second doses. You don’t need to wait for the in-school program, however. In addition to vaccine protection from COVID-19, the youth immunization catch-up program is now taking appointments for rou- tine immunizations such as HPV, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease and tetanus, diphthe- ria and pertussis. The safety, predictability and reliability of all the approved vaccines is proven scientific fact we can all place confi- dence in. COVID-19 vaccines are tested on a much more widespread scale than most of the pre- scription medicines people take regularly, as prescribed by their doctor. And despite what you may have heard, no steps were missed in the clinical trials and vaccine approval pro- cesses before Health Canada authorized these vaccines for use. In addition to immunizing yourself and eligible youth at a pop-up clinic, medical office, pharmacy or a supersite, be aware of who your kids are hanging out with, at school, after school, and on the weekends. Always keep the fundamentals close at hand. There is a lot we can’t control, but getting yourself and the kids in your care vacci- nated is something that you can control. Your choices and decisions don’t just affect you — they impact everyone with whom you come into contact, and everyone in their circles, and so on. This fall, I would like to thank Manitobans for doing everything we need to do for the kids, and to help protect our whole commu- nity. Our future depends on it. Dr. Joss Reimer is the medical lead on Manitoba’s vaccine imple- mentation taskforce. RACHEL MONROE JOSS REIMER THROUGHOUT the day on election day, nearly three-quarters of a million students across 5,478 schools and all 338 federal ridings in Canada cast their ballot in the Student Vote campaign, organized by CIVIX, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting student engagement in public affairs. At my school, as in thousands of others across the country, student volunteers started the day early, setting up Elections Canada ballot boxes, laying out rulers and pencils to assist in striking names off the voters list, and listening at- tentively to the instructions of their teacher while they reviewed the rules around identification, scrutineering and voter privacy. The vast majority of these young people are years away from having the legal right to vote, but they felt compelled to have their voices heard while meaningfully participating in the demo- cratic process. It was an inspiring scene to wit- ness. We should all feel uplifted by the fact these young people felt as motivated as they were to be a part of the national conversation. The health of our society is dependent upon the ability of our population to engage in the af- fairs of community. Voting is perhaps the most powerful way in which an individual can exercise their responsibility as a citizen, but it is certainly not the only way. As the events of the past few years have starkly demonstrated, the thread that holds our communities together is precarious and fragile. We are angry, irritated and impatient. It’s become increasingly clear that we have lost our ability to listen and to trust. How can we find our way back to a place where humility, truth and a collectivist mindset can guide our actions? Our youth are looking to us for answers. They are not simply passive observ- ers without the ability for independent thought. They are smart and fearless. What we must never forget, however, is that they constantly look to us as adults, for cues on how to react and behave in a chaotic and fractured world. We have a moral responsibility and a sacred commitment to honour in how we go about it. The path starts by allowing for a healthy tension to exist in our classrooms. When young people can explore ideas and engage in discourse within a safe environment under the guidance of an adult who cares about them, there is no reason for us to shy away from difficult conversations. As many school psychologists who work with kids would tell you, we want them to experience dis- ruption in classroom routine from time to time. If they don’t, they cannot learn the skills and mechanisms required to cope in healthy ways when such situations arise in the future. Schools are critical spaces for dialogue, controversial or not. We cannot pretend that they are sheltered from the world. They are as immersed in it as ever before. What we cannot accept without intervention, however, is a disregard for fact and truth. As an educator, I have never felt more com- mitted to the work we are entrusted to carry out in our schools. I am, like so many others I know, deeply concerned by the diminishing quality of our public discourse, wrought with hostility, an- ger and a profound lack of respect. In schools, our job is not to profess the superiority of one world- view over another. It is not to promote the merits of one particular party, candidate or ideology, but to help provide our students with the skills they need to think critically. To find a common definition of critical thinking among educators is akin to a group of economists trying to agree on future trends in the stock mar- ket; at its core, however, I believe it comes down to the ability for an individual to pause, wonder, analyze, gather information and reflect before acting upon a given thought. The great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to func- tion.” By this measure, we are falling far behind. If someone were to ask what, in addition to academic and social/emotional skills, we want our kids to leave the public education system with when they graduate, my answer would come in the form of a question: can they read a head- line that pops up on their Instagram, Twitter or TikTok feed, pause to ask themselves where it came from, how they know if it is true or not, what aspects of their personal bias has informed their initial reactions, and how someone with an opposing worldview may have come to a different conclusion? If the answer is yes, then we can rest assured that the respect, compassion, integrity and truth we are sorely missing in our communities today will someday return. Ben Carr is principal of the Maples Met School in Winnipeg. BEN CARR The safety, predictability and reliability of all the approved vaccines is prov- en scientific fact we can all place confidence in Keeping kids safe at school is top priority A_07_Sep-28-21_FP_01.indd A7 2021-09-27 5:25 PM ;