Happy slapping

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As happy slapping ( english about for, happy beating ') a physical attack (is personal injury offense ) on mostly unknown passers-by , but also classmates or teacher called, which is to humiliate the victims of the attacks on the disclosure of mitgefilmtem material.

procedure

Happy slapping incidents take a variety of forms and are mostly to be seen as leisure fun between young people who make their mutual teasing and annoyance public via the Internet or via camera phones. A criminal variant usually follows a similar pattern:

It is mostly a "group crime with objectification of the victim for a camera". The juvenile attackers run up to their victim and suddenly hit it z. B. in the face. The victim's perplexed reaction is usually filmed by another participant with a cell phone or video camera. The recordings are then published on the Internet or distributed via mobile phone and, through publication, lead to further humiliation of the victim.

Occasionally, victims are beaten to the point of unconsciousness, held under water, otherwise injured, sexually coerced or raped. The attackers then flee without paying any attention to the victim. These very criminal forms, however, “rarely occur in the school context. On the other hand, psychological and verbal forms show a worrying normalization. "

Emergence

A series of advertising spots for the lemonade brand Tango from 1993 are considered to be the media forerunner . In the spots, someone drinks Tango on the street and is then slapped by an orange-colored, naked man who is only recognizable in slow motion . Then the slogan “ You know, when you've been tangoed ” (for example “You notice when you've been tangoed ”) is displayed. The spot had to be taken off the market a little later because it was imitated by children and young people. On the other hand, various TV formats such as Jackass and Viva La Bam are responsible for the creation of Happy Slapping . In one of the previous formats, Camp Kill Yourself , a surprise attack between the protagonists is a running gag .

Happy slapping started out as recreational fun among British youth. Isolated incidents were later also reported on mainland Europe.

In June 2005, several happy slapping attacks took place in Winterthur and Basel, Switzerland . On June 18, 2005, police in England arrested four young people who had raped an 11-year-old girl in one such operation . A similar case resulted in Ania suicide in Gdansk in Poland .

Coverage and extent

Happy Slapping was widely reported in the English, German and international press. However, it remains unclear how widespread such attacks actually are. Critics of media coverage such as the British cultural researcher Graham Barnfield believe that this is primarily a media phenomenon. They prove this with the low number of documented attacks and criticize the mass media for making the individual cases a mass phenomenon and not always reporting objectively. Many of these violent videos are also staged. On the other hand, it is assumed that there is a high number of unreported cases , since a complaint is usually not considered out of a feeling of shame. In a survey of 3,600 young people, carried out by the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony , every tenth young person said they had experienced such violence. According to the 2009 JIM Youth Study by the Südwest Media Education Research Association, one in three young people between the ages of 12 and 19 have already experienced a fight being recorded on their cell phone: “A third of cell phone owners have already heard of a fight recorded with the mobile phone; these were predominantly real disputes (26%) and no staged scenes (6%). Boys witness staged scenes more often than girls. The middle ages between 14 and 17 years are generally more affected. In terms of educational background, high school students are twice as likely to witness such incidents as high school students. "

Motifs

The media educator Fred Schell commented on the motivation underlying such acts as follows: “In a society in which media presentation is actually common - everything is presented in the media, whether it is goods, services, people, the whole of politics is now a media presentation - then you don't have to be surprised when young people stage their actions and activities in the media. ”The criminologist Christian Pfeiffer said:“ We all tend to want to capture the highlights of our lives on film or photographically. Teens do it their own way: for them, it's the highlight of the week, when they beat someone else when they beat them, when they've got them really down. And they want to document that on film, show it braggingly to others and humiliate the opponent, that is the motive behind 'Happy Slapping'. "

Legal assessment

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Physical assault on another person results in bodily harm according to Section 223 of the Criminal Code . For this, the offender is punished with a prison sentence of up to five years or a fine. If the bodily harm is committed jointly with another person involved, the offense of dangerous bodily harm according to Section 224 (1) No. 4 StGB is met and the perpetrators face a prison sentence of six months to ten years, in less serious cases a prison sentence of three months to five years.

According to § 201a StGB, filming the scene of violence is punishable as a violation of the very personal sphere of life through image recordings, if the perpetrator "unauthorizedly creates or transmits images of another person who is in an apartment or a room that is specially protected from view and thereby transmits them highly personal area of ​​life injured ”or a picture taken in this way is used or made available to a third party. For this, the offender is punished with a prison sentence of up to two years or a fine.

Furthermore, according to Section 131 of the Criminal Code ( representation of violence ), the dissemination of "writings that depict cruel or otherwise inhuman acts of violence against humans or human-like beings in a way that glorifies or belittles such acts of violence or that expresses the cruel or inhuman nature of the process in the Representing human dignity injurious manner “punished with imprisonment for up to one year or with a fine.

In addition, dissemination of the filmed scene of violence can result in the offense of insult under Section 185 of the Criminal Code if the victim's honor is injured as a result. For an insult, the offender is punished with imprisonment of up to one year or with a fine and, if the insult is committed through assault, with imprisonment for up to two years or with a fine.

In addition, the dissemination and public display of an image without the consent of the person depicted represent a violation of the right to one's own image according to § 22 KunstUrhG . According to § 33 KunstUrhG , the perpetrator faces a prison sentence of up to one year or a fine.

Occasionally, students in Germany were excluded from classes because of happy slapping. Such an exclusion from teaching is legal according to a judgment of the Regional Court of Lüneburg on December 15, 2006 (file number: 4 S 59/06).

In culture

The theme played a role in the feature films Eden Lake , Harry Brown and the Coronation Street series .

See also

Publications

literature

Movies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birgit Richard, Jan Grünwald, Marcus right, Nina Metz: Flickerung Jugend - Rauschende Bilder. Net cultures in Web 2.0 . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-593-39305-6 , p. 171 .
  2. ↑ Birgit Richard, Jan Grünwald, Marcus right, Nina Metz: Flickerung Jugend - Rauschende Bilder. Net cultures in Web 2.0 . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-593-39305-6 , p. 171-172 .
  3. ↑ Birgit Richard, Jan Grünwald, Marcus right, Nina Metz: Flickerung Jugend - Rauschende Bilder. Net cultures in Web 2.0 . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-593-39305-6 , p. 165-167 .
  4. ↑ There is simply no more respect , Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 28, 2005
  5. ↑ JIM study (Youth, Information, (Multi-) Media) 2009, Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverband Südwest (Ed.), Stuttgart 2009, p. 58 f, ( PDF file; 814 kB ( Memento of the original from May 11, 2011 in Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mpfs.de
  6. ^ Horror trend "Happy Slapping" ( Memento from January 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), NDR , August 28, 2006
  7. ↑ Suspension from school lessons due to "happy slapping" permitted - message from February 5, 2010 on www.kostenlose-urteile.de