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Tracking the Werther Effect on social media: Emotional responses to prominent suicide deaths on twitter and subsequent increases in suicide

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  • Fahey, Robert A.
  • Matsubayashi, Tetsuya
  • Ueda, Michiko

Abstract

Rises in suicide rates following media reports of the deaths by suicide of public figures are a well-documented phenomenon. However, it remains unclear why, or by what exact mechanism, celebrity suicides act to increase suicidal risk in the wider public due to the lack of data showing how the public understands and reacts to the suicide of well-known figures. This study used a supervised machine learning approach to investigate the emotional content of almost 1 million messages sent on Twitter related to the suicides of 18 prominent individuals in Japan between 2010 and 2014. The results revealed that different demographic characteristics of the deceased person (age, gender, and occupation) resulted in significant differences in emotional response; notably that the suicides of younger people, of women and of people in entertainment careers created more emotional responses (measured as a ratio of emotionally-coded tweets within the overall volume of tweets for each case) than for older people, men, and those in other careers. Moreover, certain types of emotional response were shown to correlate to subsequent rises in the national suicide counts, with “surprised” reactions being positively correlated with the suicide counts, while a high proportion of polite messages of condolence were negatively correlated. The study demonstrates the importance of, and describes a methodology for, considering the content of social media messages, not just their volume, in research into the mechanism by which these widely-reported deaths increase suicide risk in the broader public.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:219:y:2018:i:c:p:19-29
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.10.004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
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    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Ownby & P. Wesley Routon, 2020. "Tragedy Following Tragedies: Estimating the Copycat Effect of Media-Covered Suicide in the Age of Digital News," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 65(2), pages 312-329, October.
    2. Rebecca A. Bernert & Amanda M. Hilberg & Ruth Melia & Jane Paik Kim & Nigam H. Shah & Freddy Abnousi, 2020. "Artificial Intelligence and Suicide Prevention: A Systematic Review of Machine Learning Investigations," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-25, August.
    3. 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.
    4. Phillip Cheuk Fung Law & Lay San Too & Nicole T. M. Hill & Jo Robinson & Madelyn Gould & Jo-An Occhipinti & Matthew J. Spittal & Katrina Witt & Mark Sinyor & Benedikt Till & Nathaniel Osgood & Ante Pr, 2021. "A Pilot Case-Control Study of the Social Media Activity Following Cluster and Non-Cluster Suicides in Australia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-15, December.
    5. 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.
    6. Arendt, Florian & Haim, Mario & Scherr, Sebastian, 2020. "Investigating Google's suicide-prevention efforts in celebrity suicides using agent-based testing: A cross-national study in four European countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    7. 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).

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