Don't share images of dead people or crashes, family plead
The family of the woman who was killed in a car accident on the M50 last week have called on the public to 'stop and think' before sharing traumatic images.
Jacqueline Griffin died in a multi-vehicle collision on a slip road off the M50 in Dublin last week. Subsequently, pictures of the collision were widely shared on social media, despite a garda warning against doing so.
Her family has now issued a statement asking the public to delete the images and not to pass them on.
The statement was shared by Senator Lynn Ruane, a family friend of the Griffins: "The immediate aftermath of Jacqueline's horrific accident was deliberately filmed and photographed.
"This video and photographs were then shared over a number of social media platforms. I am confident that the majority of society would have the good sense to know that this is completely immoral and should be reported, deleted and not shared.
It is my hope that this message is shared far and wide among today's on and offline influences. When or if you receive these images, I urge you to stop and think. Do not share. Delete and report.
Criminologist, David Wilson, criticised the phenomenon of sharing traumatic and graphic images.
People have turned trauma and distress into a commodity, Prof Wilson told Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ Radio 1: "We live in something that is called the wound culture.
"People encounter trauma and distress on a constant basis and, therefore, what we have done is turn that trauma and distress into a commodity: it is something that can be bought and sold, consumed and enjoyed."
Prof Wilson said that it is a psychological phenomenon called 'coactivation'.
"There are people passing a car accident and they are on their mobile phones taking footage of that car accident as if, somehow, they are consuming those images.
"They are both abhorred by what is happening but, at the same time, like riding a rollercoaster, there is some kind of thrill to riding that rollercoaster because they know that eventually it will stop and they will get off - they know when they are passing that accident, they have not been harmed."
