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Tweeting celebrity suicides: Users' reaction to prominent suicide deaths on Twitter and subsequent increases in actual suicides

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  • Ueda, Michiko
  • Mori, Kota
  • Matsubayashi, Tetsuya
  • Sawada, Yasuyuki

Abstract

A substantial amount of evidence indicates that news coverage of suicide deaths by celebrities is followed by an increase in suicide rates, suggesting a copycat behavior. However, the underlying process by which celebrity status and media coverage leads to increases in subsequent suicides is still unclear. This study collected over 1 million individual messages (“tweets”) posted on Twitter that were related to 26 prominent figures in Japan who died by suicide between 2010 and 2014 and investigated whether media reports on suicide deaths that generated a greater level of reactions by the public are likely to be followed by a larger increase in actual suicides. We also compared the number of Twitter posts and the number of media reports in newspaper and on television to understand whether the number of messages on Twitter in response to the deaths corresponds to the amount of coverage in the traditional media. Using daily data from Japan's national death registry between 2010 and 2014, our analysis found an increase in actual suicides only when suicide deaths generated a large reaction from Twitter users. In contrast, no discernible increase in suicide counts was observed when the analysis included suicide deaths to which Twitter users did not show much interest, even when these deaths were covered considerably by the traditional media. This study also found suicides by relatively young entertainers generated a large number of posts on Twitter. This sharply contrasts with the relatively smaller volume of reaction to them generated by traditional forms of media, which focuses more on the deaths of non-entertainers. The results of this study strongly suggest that it is not sufficient to examine only traditional news media when investigating the impact of media reports on actual suicides.

Suggested Citation

  • Ueda, Michiko & Mori, Kota & Matsubayashi, Tetsuya & Sawada, Yasuyuki, 2017. "Tweeting celebrity suicides: Users' reaction to prominent suicide deaths on Twitter and subsequent increases in actual suicides," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 158-166.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:189:y:2017:i:c:p:158-166
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.06.032
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Pirkis, Jane E. & Burgess, Philip M. & Francis, Catherine & Blood, R. Warwick & Jolley, Damien J., 2006. "The relationship between media reporting of suicide and actual suicide in Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(11), pages 2874-2886, June.
    2. Niederkrotenthaler, Thomas & Till, Benedikt & Kapusta, Nestor D. & Voracek, Martin & Dervic, Kanita & Sonneck, Gernot, 2009. "Copycat effects after media reports on suicide: A population-based ecologic study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 1085-1090, October.
    3. Joe Chen & Yun Choi & Kohta Mori & Yasuyuki Sawada & Saki Sugano, 2009. "Those Who are Left Behind: An Estimate of the Number of Family Members of Suicide Victims in Japan," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 94(3), pages 535-544, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Vikas Menon & Sujita Kumar Kar & Marthoenis Marthoenis & SM Yasir Arafat & Ginni Sharma & Charanya Kaliamoorthy & Ramdas Ransing & Srijeeta Mukherjee & Jigyansa Ipsita Pattnaik & Nikhilesh B Shirahatt, 2021. "Is there any link between celebrity suicide and further suicidal behaviour in India?," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 67(5), pages 453-460, August.
    2. Vikas Menon & Charanya Kaliamoorthy & Vivekanandhan Kavanoor Sridhar & Natarajan Varadharajan & Rini Joseph & Shivanand Kattimani & Sujita Kumar Kar & SM Yasir Arafat, 2020. "Do Tamil newspapers educate the public about suicide? Content analysis from a high suicide Union Territory in India," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 66(8), pages 785-791, December.
    3. Joseph Gibbons & Robert Malouf & Brian Spitzberg & Lourdes Martinez & Bruce Appleyard & Caroline Thompson & Atsushi Nara & Ming-Hsiang Tsou, 2019. "Twitter-based measures of neighborhood sentiment as predictors of residential population health," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-19, July.
    4. Fahey, Robert A. & Matsubayashi, Tetsuya & Ueda, Michiko, 2018. "Tracking the Werther Effect on social media: Emotional responses to prominent suicide deaths on twitter and subsequent increases in suicide," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 19-29.
    5. Maryam Ayub & Bariah Rafiq & Sania Mumtaz Tahir & Nazish Imran & Sadiq Naveed & Imran Ijaz Haider, 2023. "Assessing the quality of media reporting of suicide deaths in Pakistan against international guidelines," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 69(2), pages 406-411, March.
    6. Fahey, Robert A. & Boo, Jeremy & Ueda, Michiko, 2020. "Covariance in diurnal patterns of suicide-related expressions on Twitter and recorded suicide deaths," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 253(C).
    7. Lutter, Mark & Roex, Karlijn L.A. & Tisch, Daria, 2020. "Anomie or imitation? The Werther effect of celebrity suicides on suicide rates in 34 OECD countries, 1960–2014," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 246(C).
    8. Song Zhou & Qingli Guan & Huaqi Yang & Yiheng Cao, 2024. "Navigating the social media landscape: unraveling the intricacies of safety perceptions," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-10, December.
    9. Paul S. F. Yip & Edward Pinkney, 2022. "Social media and suicide in social movements: a case study in Hong Kong," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1023-1040, May.

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