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Archives of Suicide Research

ISSN: 1381-1118 (Print) 1543-6136 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/usui20

The Number and Characteristics of Newspaperand Twitter Reports on Suicides and Road TrafficDeaths in Young People

Jonathan Scourfield, Gualtiero Colombo, Pete Burnap, Rhiannon Evans, NinaJacob, Matthew Williams & Sarah Caul

To cite this article: Jonathan Scourfield, Gualtiero Colombo, Pete Burnap, Rhiannon Evans, NinaJacob, Matthew Williams & Sarah Caul (2018): The Number and Characteristics of Newspaperand Twitter Reports on Suicides and Road Traffic Deaths in Young People, Archives of SuicideResearch, DOI: 10.1080/13811118.2018.1479321

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2018.1479321

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The Number andCharacteristics of Newspaperand Twitter Reports on Suicidesand Road Traffic Deaths inYoung PeopleJonathan Scourfield, Gualtiero Colombo, Pete Burnap,Rhiannon Evans, Nina Jacob, Matthew Williams, andSarah Caul

In the light of concern about the harmful effects of media reporting of sui-cides and a lack of comparative research, this study compares the numberand characteristics of reports on suicides and road traffic accidents (RTAs)in young people (aged 11–18) in newspapers and Twitter during a 6-month period. Tweets about young people’ s suicides were more numerousthan newspaper reports. Twitter and newspaper reports were more stronglycorrelated for suicides than for RTAs. Recent suicides were less likely to bereported in newspapers than recent deaths by RTA. Bullying-related sui-cides were especially newsworthy. Suicide prevention organizations shouldconsider routinely monitoring social media reporting.

Keywords newspapers, road traffic accidents, suicide, media, Twitter

INTRODUCTION

The field of suicidology has shown consid-erable interest in newspaper reporting,

mostly through concern with its potentiallynegative impact on suicide ideation,attempts, and completion (Sisask & Varnik2012). In recent years, researchers in thisfield have started to pay attention to socialmedia material relating to suicide and self-harm (Daine et al., 2013) but there havenot been studies which bring together thetwo different kinds of media—official newsoutlets and social media communication,which is generated both by journalists andby lay people. Studies of suicidality in socialmedia have not tended to address the role

# Jonathan Scourfield, Gualtiero Colombo,Pete Burnap, Rhiannon Evans, Nina Jacob,Matthew Williams, and Sarah CaulThis is an Open Access article distributed underthe terms of the Creative Commons AttributionLicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,and reproduction in any medium, provided theoriginal work is properly cited.

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Archives of Suicide Research, 0:1–16, 2018Published with license by Taylor & FrancisISSN: 1381-1118 print/1543-6136 onlineDOI: 10.1080/13811118.2018.1479321

of social media platforms in referring to orreporting on specific deaths. This paperconsiders the interface between conven-tional news and social media through theanalysis of youth suicide reporting inEngland. The aim of this analysis is toexplore the relationship between socialmedia and newspaper reporting of youthsuicide and to describe the characteristics ofthe suicide cases which are most news-worthy in both kinds of media. The studyfocuses on the micro-blogging platformTwitter, because this is a heavily used site,which is predominantly used for the propa-gation of news (Kwak, Lee, Park, &Moon, 2010).

BACKGROUND

It is quite widely recognized that mediareporting of suicide is associated with sui-cidal behavior. Certain types of mediareporting of suicide have been shown toincrease the risk of “contagion” amongstvulnerable individuals (Sisask & Varnik,2012). In particular, this applies for articlesthat sensationalize suicide, contain explicitdescriptions of the means of suicide, orportray it as a legitimate solution to one’sproblems (Liu et al., 2007). Such reportinghas been linked with real increases inpopulation suicide, as well as influencingthe use of certain methods of suicide andincreasing the potential for suicide clusters(Gould, Kleinman, Lake, Forman, &Midle, 2014; Hawton & Williams, 2002;Stack, 2000). This process of suggestionwas termed the “Werther effect” byPhillips (1974), with reference to Goethe’snovel The Sorrows of Young Werther which,on publication, is said to have promptedimitative behavior, leading to the banningof the book in some places.

Features of stories that studies havefound to be especially newsworthy in vari-ous countries include suicides using lesscommon or dramatic methods, suicidestaking place in commercial areas or inmedical and residential facilities, andsuicides alongside multiple fatalities(Machlin, Pirkis, & Spittal, 2013; Pirkis,Burgess, Blood, & Francis, 2007). Interms of demographics, studies have foundsuicides in women and those with foreigncitizenship to be more reported(Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2009; Pirkiset al., 2007) and suicides in the youngestage group have been found to be morenewsworthy (Fu, Chan, & Yip, 2011;Machlin et al., 2013; Niederkrotenthaleret al., 2009) although Pirkis et al. (2007)found older suicides to be more reported.

Despite there being a potential processof suggestion, it is also possible for mediareporting to have an important role in theprevention of suicide. Articles that arenon-sensationalist, avoid disparagingterms, avoid describing the method of sui-cide in any detail, and offer a commentaryon people adopting constructive copingmechanisms in the face of adversity havebeen linked with decreases in suicide rates.This effect has been termed the Papagenoeffect, referring to a character in the MagicFlute who is persuaded against suicide(Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2010).

The potential for both suicide conta-gion and limitation has been studied inrelation to traditional news media, such asnewspapers and broadcast news. However,the increasing dominance of the Internethas led to it becoming an increasinglypowerful form of information media.Recent surveys have shown that 40% ofthe British population consume newsonline, with this medium now being morepopular than print media (Ofcom, 2014).Moreover, the increasingly participatory

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nature of the Internet, enabled by thetechnology of Web 2.0, means that usersnot only receive information but activelycreate and exchange their own content.Social media is now fundamental in theway people and organizations communi-cate and share ideas, opinions, and infor-mation (Luxton, June, & Fairall, 2012).Such participatory and user-generated con-tent on social media has been recognizedas a source of potential insights into arange of societal and geographical trendsfrom problem drinking to monitoringearthquakes (Sakaki, Okazaki, & Matsuo,2010; West et al., 2012). Significantly, thesocial media platform Twitter has beenused to demonstrate that conversationsindicative of suicidal ideation in theUnited States are associated with the widerstate-level suicide rate, thereby highlightingthe potential of the platform in exploringand understanding suicidal behavior(Jashinsky et al., 2014).

Social media’s potential as a tool tomonitor and track behavior is now becom-ing realized (Procter, Vis, & Voss, 2013;Williams & Burnap, 2016). However, des-pite the considerably different nature ofthese new media in comparison with themore traditional forms, many of the sameconcerns abound about its influence onsuicidal behavior. In relation to suicidecontagion for instance, there has beenmuch speculation about the potential forsuicide pacts to emerge through theInternet. Discussion forums and specificsuicide-related sites that promote suicidethrough encouragement and detailed infor-mation on how to complete the act havebeen linked with suicide contagion (Alao,Yolles, & Armenta, 1999; Janson et al.,2001; Prior, 2004). Indeed the phenom-enon of suicide pacts has been found to befacilitated by such forums, bringingtogether previously unknown individuals

to plan and carry out their death (Naito,2007). However, digital cultures and prac-tices are in a constant state of flux, result-ing in studies quickly becoming outdatedwhen interest moves on to new platforms.Indeed it has been noted that the onceprevalent suicide and self-harm forumshave fallen out of favor, with users’ interestmoving to new forms of social media andmicroblogging sites instead (Harris &Roberts, 2013).

Evidence for the risks of contagionfrom these microblogging sites is scant,despite there being considerable concernabout the use of such platforms in theaftermath of youth suicides, for example inthe case of the 2008 Bridgend cluster inthe UK (Jones et al., 2013) and a fewhighly publicized individual cases. Onestudy has examined possible contagioneffects on suicidal behavior via socialmedia and microblogging sites, in particu-lar changes in suicidal ideation as a resultof exposure to different sources of suicidestories (Dunlop, More, & Romer, 2011).Whilst social media sites were frequentlyreported as a source of information aboutsuicide, this was not found to be associatedwith increases in suicidal ideation.However, online discussion forums wereboth cited as sources and associated withincreases in ideation in this study. Itshould be noted however that researchinto contagion, the Internet and socialmedia use is really in its infancy, andwhilst there is evidence to suggest conta-gion is an important issue, any direct asso-ciations with Internet use are still relativelytentative (Daine et al., 2013).

The potential support afforded bysocial media and microblogging sites hasalso been highlighted as important (Daineet al., 2013). Such sites can provide spacefor vulnerable individuals free of judge-ment, thereby alleviating any feelings of

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shame they may feel as well as offeringopportunities to develop relationships andconnect with others (Smithson et al.,2011). The informal support provided bysuch platforms, particularly microbloggingsites, is becoming recognized (Lewis &Michal, 2016), although as there is cur-rently no evidence of effectiveness forprofessional suicide prevention programsusing such sites (Jacob, Scourfield, &Evans, 2014), their potential for preven-tion can only be speculated.

Although there has been recentresearch attention paid to the role of socialmedia communication in either normaliz-ing or preventing suicidal behavior, thereis a surprising lack of evidence about therole of social media in referring to andreporting on actual suicide cases and thecommunication of deaths by suicidethrough social media. Moreover, little isknown about how this communicationrelates to conventional news media andwhat kinds of cases are considered to benewsworthy in social media. There is alsoa general lack of control conditions instudies of media (of all kinds) in relationto suicide. In particular, there is a lack ofcomparison with the reporting of othersudden young deaths. The sudden deathof a young person is shocking and there-fore likely to result in news reports at leastat a local level. Little is known aboutwhether suicide is uniquely newsworthy,when compared with other kinds of sud-den death. It is important for suicide pre-vention to better understand what, ifanything is distinctive about the reportingof suicide, in all kinds of media. Withthese research gaps in mind, the presentstudy was guided by the followingresearch questions:

1. Is there a correlation betweenthe reporting of youth suicide

cases in newspapers and in themicro-blogging site Twitter?(And is there a stronger correl-ation for youth suicides thanfor other sudden deaths in youngpeople?)

2. Which characteristics of suddendeaths in young people are associ-ated with higher numbers ofreports in Twitter and newspapers?

3. What is the overall number ofreports per case of suicides innewspapers and Twitter and howdoes this compare with othersudden deaths in young people?

4. Are youth suicides more likely tobe reported than other suddendeaths in young people?

METHOD

This section describes the methods used inthe data collection for both teenage suicidecases and Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs),with the latter used as a comparison groupas they represent another kind of suddendeath in young people of the same age.For all cases we have collected daily therelated newspaper reports and postings onthe micro-blogging platform Twitter.Ethical approval for the study wasgranted by Cardiff University School ofSocial Sciences Research Ethics Committee.

Data

Identifying Cases. A “case” was defined asany death by suicide or RTA of a youngperson aged 11–18 in England that wasreported in a newspaper from February 1to July 31, 2014. Reports included bothdeaths that happened within the studyperiod and earlier deaths with inquestsreported in the study period. Inclusion cri-teria for the suicide cases were as follows:

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� Suicide is explicitly mentioned asthe cause of death.

� An inquest reported an open ver-dict or a suicide verdict. Deathsrecorded at inquest as“accidental” were not included.

� The method clearly indicates theintention to self-harm (e.g.,non-accidental hanging, jumpingonto train tracks etc.).

An inclusive definition of RTA deathswas used, encompassing any death appar-ently caused by a road accident, as long asthere was no suggestion of suicide. Thedeceased included both drivers and passen-gers of cars, motorbikes and in one case amini-bus. They also included pedestriansand young people riding bikes.

Daily news reports were monitoredfrom two different sources:

a. The on-line service Nexis (UK).1

This is a comprehensive news-paper database, updated daily,that provides full text access. Forthis collection, the UK regionalnewspaper database was used. Itwas hypothesized that any suicidereported in national newspaperswould also be reported inregional papers, but not viceversa. Nexis allows users to con-duct searches using up to threesets of keywords, so the followingwords and phrases were used,with the asterisk denotingany letter:

� “suicid��,” “hanged,” “overdose,”and the combination of the words

“took” or “taken” and “own life,”to monitor deaths by suicide.

� “killed” or “died” and“teen����” or “youth,” tomonitor RTA deaths.

From the set of retrieved articles, adaily manual inspection was needed to fil-ter the articles relevant to our investigation(actual suicide and RTA cases happeningin England and within the agerange considered)

b. RSS (Rich Site Summary) on-lineservices. RSS readers are desktopclient software or web applicationsthat aggregate syndicated web con-tent such as online newspapers,blogs, podcasts, and video blogsthat are made available from news-related sites, weblogs and otheronline content providers. A list ofRSS feeds was constructed fromthe published list of all UKlocal papers provided by TheNewspaper Society (accessibleonline)2 filtered for English publi-cations only. This resulted in adataset of 545 URLs accessible forRSS feeds collection.

RSS news feeds were monitored dailythrough an automated procedure that col-lected any posts containing any of the key-word searches listed in a) above, either inthe article title, the news summary, or inthe raw text returned by the feed (for thosefeeds which made this available). Newstext can be extracted from any web page orfeed using a number of third-partyservices, such as reading list software, senti-ment analysis, or natural language process-ing tool, usually accessible through APIs(Application Programming Interfaces).

1http://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/nexis/search/loadForm.do

2http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk/a-to-z-of-local-newspaper-websites

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The AlchemyAPI3 tool was used for textextraction and subsequently Named EntityRecognition was applied, using theNatural Language Toolkit library(NLTK),4 to further collect person namesfrom the retrieved articles. Finally, a dailymanual inspection was performed to filterthe cases in relation to our specific age andgeographical criteria.

Monitoring Newspaper and TwitterReports. To ensure adequate coverage overthe six-month period, the monitoring andcollection of reports of deaths continuedfor a fortnight after the end of the studyperiod (so until August 15, 2014)although any death which was firstreported after July 31, 2014 was disre-garded. This decision was based on thefinding that tweet cycles have two weeksduration after an apparent spike (Burnapet al., 2014).

A database was set up of the numberof newspaper report by case per day. Thesefrequencies were obtained from the Nexisdatabase service, through retrieval of newsarticles containing the name of thedeceased, this time extending the search toall UK publications, both regional andnational. A second database consisted of alltweets worldwide that mentioned thename of the deceased. These were collectedusing the Twitter API service (REST APIversion 1.1).5 It is possible to limit datacollection to Twitter accounts that haveselected the London time zone or whoseprofiles include UK place identifiers (seeSloan et al., 2013) but this would not beguaranteed to capture every tweet originat-ing in the UK. Hence the decision wastaken to search all tweets worldwide.

A standardized procedure was used forremoving false positives. These were pri-marily caused by namesakes, which couldbe numerous since we collected tweetsworldwide. Both automated and manualmethods were used for filtering out rele-vant posts. First, automated proceduresidentified the most relevant terms charac-terizing each specific case, via TermFrequency-Inverse Document Frequency(TF-IDF) for computing the most fre-quently used terms (Manning, Raghavan,& Schutze, 2008) and Latent DirichletAllocation (LDA), a statistical topic modelthat allows sets of observations to beexplained in terms of similarity betweenparts of the data (Blei, Andrew, & Jordan,2003). Of these two techniques, the for-mer produced the most effective results.

Despite initially intending to applythese methods within an automated pro-cedure by subsequently filtering the tweetscontaining the most frequent words, amore in-depth analysis revealed that inmany cases the most used words belongedto unrelated cases—tweets about name-sakes that were re-tweeted many times andbecame viral. However, these methodswere successful in filtering out unrelatedtweets based on the inclusion of frequentwords highlighted by the computerizedmethods above, after a manual investiga-tion revealed those tweets as unrelated toour cases.

Analysis

A Spearman’s rank-order correlationwas calculated in the statistical softwareStata 14, to test the correlation betweenTwitter and newspaper reporting of cases.The data used for this test were the dailycount of reports in both types of mediathat mentioned the names of the deceasedand also the number of reports in 48-hour

3http://www.alchemyapi.com4http://www.nltk.org5https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public

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intervals, recognizing that newspapers cansometimes be slower to report events thansocial media.

To investigate which features of caseswere associated with a higher report count,it was first necessary to identify a peak inreporting, because some cases attractedmore than one phase of intensive report-ing, e.g., a peak when the death was firstreported, followed by a later peak whenthe inquest was reported. The cut-offpoint for a peak was defined as one stand-ard deviation away from the mean dailyreport rate for that case. For each case, wethen considered a period of 48 hours fromthe start of a peak and then analyzed thenature of the posts/reports within thisperiod by coding their content against anumber of variables that were derivedinductively from inspection of the reports.The duration of the peak was determinedon the basis that peaks tend to expire, onaverage, two days after an apparent spikein a plot of tweet count vs. time (Burnapet al., 2014). The variables identified wereas follows (all assuming binary values):

� Age of deceased (<16 v 16þ)� Gender (M/F)� Is the death within the study

period? (Y/N)� Has a link ever been made to

another case? (Y/N)� Has there been any related cam-

paign or petition? (Y/N)� Has there been any memorial

event or fundraising? (Y/N)� Is there a related conviction?

(Y/N)� Does the deceased have a criminal

history? (Y/N) (suicides only)� Has the case resulted in an open

verdict? (Y/N) (suicides only)� Has bullying ever been reported?

(Y/N) (suicides only)

� Has a social media connectionever been reported? (Y/N) (sui-cides only)

� Has there been a related researchstudy or documentary? (Y/N)(suicides only)

As can be seen in the list above, severalof these characteristics only applied to sui-cides and not to RTAs, either on a theoret-ical basis, because they were not relevantto an accidental death (e.g., social mediaconnection, bullying), or empirically,because their incidence in RTA reportswas too low for their inclusion to be mean-ingful (deceased’s criminal history). Thevariable “campaigns and petitions” refersto attempts to generate support for a spe-cific cause via social media. Examples werea petition to close a particular web site anda campaign to stop cyber-bullying. A sep-arate variable was used to record the pres-ence or absence of fundraising formemorial events and other tributes. Wherethere could be any doubt about the codingof campaigns, petitions, memorials andfundraising, agreement was reached withinthe research team to improve reliability.A distinction was also made between thecriminal history of the deceased and a con-viction related to the death, featuring thedeceased as victim.

To determine which features of casesresulted in a higher count of reporting,negative binomial regression was used.There exists a growing methodological andempirical literature on regression modelsfor count data (see Land, McCall, &Nagin, 1996; Zorn, 1998). Linear regres-sion models are not appropriate for countvariables given the nonlinear distributionof the data. Count models are suited tothis kind of data as they are built onassumptions about error distributions thatare consistent with the nature of rareevents (Cameron & Trivedi, 1998).Negative binomial regression was found

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more appropriate than Poisson given theskewed distribution and over-dispersion ofthe data (conditional mean not equal tothe conditional variance). In total therewere four regression models, to coverTwitter and newspaper reporting separatelyfor each type of death (suicides and RTAs),assuming as dependent variable the num-ber of reports contained within a peakperiod and as independent variables thecharacteristics listed above. Incidence-rateratios were produced.

Descriptive statistics were produced tocompare the rate of reports per case, foreach type of death and each type of media.Effect sizes (Hedges’s g) were calculated toassess the difference between suicides andRTAs for each type of media. The relativerisk of RTAs and suicides being reportedat all was calculated from mortality datafor 11–18-year-olds dying by suicide(including open verdicts) or RTA duringthe study period, provided to the studyteam by the Office for National Statistics.

As recommended by Gorard (2014),the paper does not include standard errors,confidence intervals, or claims about statis-tical significance. Interpretation usinginferential statistical techniques is only suit-able for data generated using random prob-ability sampling. Inferential techniques arebased on the underlying assumption of ran-dom samples, and not samples (however“representative”) selected in any other way.Therefore, inferential statistical tests usedon non-random samples cannot produceuseful information (Gorard, 2016; Shaver,1993). In the statistical analysis of non-ran-dom samples, only the effect sizes associ-ated with variables and their contributionto the fit of the model need be considered.

RESULTS

This section presents the results obtainedafter analyzing the whole six months’

collection, which resulted in 81 reportedcases of suicide (with 23 deaths happeningduring the monitored period and 58 beinginquests on cases) and 68 reported RTAs(29 within the period and 39 inquests).

Correlation Between NewspaperReporting and Social Media Posts

The Spearman’s rank-order correla-tions for newspaper and Twitter reportingof all suicides (not broken down by case)were moderate at 0.588 for daily frequen-cies and very strong at 0.897 for frequen-cies grouped every 48 hours.

The retrieval of tweets by given nameand family name of the deceased was basedon the inclusion of them either in the textof the Tweet or in the URL link to theoriginal news article. There was a skeweddistribution of case-by-case daily correla-tions, i.e., whether or not a case wasreported at all in both types of media.The mean value (60%, [SD 37%]) waslowered by the high number of cases pre-senting a correlation of zero percent,whereas the rest of the distribution wasskewed toward higher correlations.

The Features Associated with Volume ofReports in Newspapers and Twitter

Frequencies of story characteristics, forboth types of media and both types ofdeath, are presented in Table 1. Theserefer to 48-hour peaks.

Suicides. Table 2 shows the negative bino-mial regression results for reporting of sui-cides. Model diagnostics indicate a robustfit to the data in both models. TheMcFadden’s R2 values indicate that only asmall proportion of the variance isexplained by the independent variables inthe models (consistent with related work

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in the social sciences). Suicides with associ-ated campaigns increased the count of sui-cide-related tweets by a factor of near ten(IRR¼ 9.70), compared to those without,and suicides in young women increasedthe count of suicide related tweets by a fac-tor of three, compared to suicides in youngmen (IRR male: female¼ 0.32). Cases fea-turing bullying had a greater count ofreports than those that did not, in bothTwitter (IRR¼ 4.43) and newspapers(IRR¼ 1.80). Having a link with anothercase (e.g., by happening soon after, in thesame area, or being potentially connectedvia social media) resulted in a higher countof newspaper reports, when comparedwith cases that had no link (IRR 1.79).Similarly, a social media dimension to astory—for example a case ostensiblyinvolving cyber-bullying or use of self-harm-related websites—resulted in agreater count in newspapers (IRR 1.64).There was no strong evidence of increased

attention to recent deaths, compared toolder deaths whose inquests were reportedon. Although in Twitter there was weakevidence of more reporting of recentdeaths, in newspapers the level of reportingof these two categories of suicide wasroughly equal.

Road Traffic Accidents. The overall correl-ation values for tweets and newspaperreports about RTA cases are lower thanthose obtained for suicides, at 0.476 fordaily frequencies and 0.520 for frequenciesgrouped every 48 hours. The mean per-case correlation was also lower than forsuicides, at 51%.

Table 3 presents the findings of thenegative binomial regression analysis forthe RTAs. Model diagnostics indicate arobust fit to the data in both models.McFadden’s R2 statistics are slightly lowerfor news reports than for tweets. If theyoung person dying in an RTA was 16 or

TABLE 1. Characteristics of Stories in Twitter and Newspapers (Suicides and RTAs)

Twitter Newspapers

Suicides: n (%) RTAs: n (%) Suicides: n (%) RTAs: n (%)

N of 48-hour story peaks 93 66 112 76

Age of deceased—<16 41 (44.1%) 18 (27.3%) 50 (44.6%) 18 (23.7%)

�16þ 52 (55.9%) 48 (72.7%) 62 (55.4%) 58 (76.3%)

Gender—Male 52 (55.9%) 37 (56.1) 56 (50.0%) 41 (54.0%)

—Female 41 (44.1%) 29 (43.9%) 56 (50.0%) 35 (46.1%)

Death within the study period 25 (26.9%) 29 (43.9%) 38 (33.9%) 34 (44.7%)

Case resulted in an open verdict 13 (14.0%) N/A 28 (25.0%) N/A

Bullying ever been reported 25 (26.9%) N/A 31 (27.7%) N/A

Social media connection ever been reported 24 (25.8%) N/A 25 (22.3%) N/A

Link ever been made to another case 30 (32.3%) 8 (12.1%) 26 (23.2%) 9 (11.8%)

Any related campaign or petition 18 (19.6%) 12 (18.2%) 29 (26.1%) 11 (14.5%)

Deceased has a criminal history 6 (6.5%) N/A 9 (8.0%) N/A

A related conviction 11 (11.8%) 24 (36.4%) 11 (9.8%) 28 (36.8%)

Memorial event or fundraising 12 (12.9%) 15 (22.7%) 15 (13.4%) 16 (21.1%)

Related research study or documentary 9 (9.7%) N/A 10 (8.9%) N/A

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under, the count of death-related tweetsincreased by a factor of 2.5, compared toover-16s dying in an RTA (IRR for->16:�16¼ 0.40). Female deaths weremore reported than male deaths in bothTwitter (IRR male: female¼ 0.43) andnewspapers (IRR¼ 0.59). A death throughRTA that happened during the studyperiod increased the count of death-relatedtweets by a factor of 2.83, compared to aless recent RTA death. In newspapers therewas also an increased number of reports fordeaths during the study period(IRR¼ 1.89). Deaths that were linked toanother case were reported more often innewspapers than deaths that werenot (IRR¼ 2.88).

Are Suicides Reported More Than RTAs?

Descriptive statistics comparing thetwo types of death in terms of reports per

case are presented in Table 4. In Twitter,the mean number of reports per case is2.33 times higher for suicides than forRTAs, however, the median number oftweets per case is very similar, both typesof death having many cases with zerotweets. Standard deviations are large, withoutliers for both types of death, so theeffect size, comparing reports in Twitterfor both types of death, is small at 0.27. Innewspapers there is little differencebetween the mean number of reports percase for suicides and RTAs (ES¼ 0.07).The number of Twitter mentions is farhigher than the number of newspaperreports for both types of death. For sui-cides, the mean rate of mentions per sui-cide case in Twitter is 10.5 times the meanrate in newspaper reports.

As noted earlier, there were 29 Englishteenage RTA deaths reported in newspa-pers that occurred during the study period,

TABLE 2. Multi-Variate Negative Binomial Regression Models: Count of Suicide-Related Tweetsand Newspaper Reports Within 48-hours of a Peak

Feature of story

Tweets (n5 93) News reports (n5 112)

IRR coeff. z IRR coeff. z

Deceased is aged >16 1.04 0.04 0.09 1.17 0.16 0.77

Deceased is male 0.32 –1.14 –2.82 1.16 0.15 0.79

Death within study period 2.26 0.81 1.84 1.01 0.01 0.06

Bullying 4.43 1.49 2.82 1.80 0.59 2.46

Social media dimension 1.10 0.10 0.19 1.64 0.49 2.13

Link with case 1.04 0.04 0.10 1.79 0.58 2.56

Campaigning 9.70 2.27 3.32 1.35 0.30 1.19

Criminal history 1.29 0.25 0.24 0.69 –0.37 –0.90

Related conviction 3.12 1.14 1.91 1.88 0.63 1.92

Memorial/fundraising 0.69 –0.37 –0.63 1.02 0.02 0.07

Research/documentary 0.21 –1.55 –1.94 0.77 –0.26 –0.67

Log likelihood –399.00 –289.07

Chi-square 46.48 24.75

p-value p< .001 p¼ .01

McFadden’s R2 0.06 0.04

LR test of alpha¼ 0 p< .001 p< .001

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compared with 23 teenage suicides. Ofcourse, this does not represent the real rateof these deaths in the population, but onlythe rate of media-reported deaths.Mortality rates for the 11–18 age groupduring the study period show there were30 RTA deaths and 45 suicides. The rela-tive risk of being reported for RTAs istherefore 1.89 (95% CI 1.41, 2.54).

DISCUSSION

The reporting of suicide is an importantissue for prevention because the qualityand amount of reporting have been found

to be associated with variation in suiciderates. The micro-blogging platformTwitter is commonly used for the report-ing of news by both professional news out-lets and lay users. Before we can improvereporting of suicide, with the aim of pre-venting deaths, we need evidence aboutthe volume and character of reporting,including in social media platforms suchas Twitter.

Comparing the reporting of deathsthat occurred within the study period withprevious mortality statistics suggests thatsuicides are clearly less newsworthy thanRTAs once the mortality rate is takeninto account. Arguably there may be an

TABLE 3. Multi-Variate Negative Binomial Regression Models: Count of RTA Death-RelatedTweets and Newspaper Reports Within 48-hours of a Peak

Feature of story

Tweets (n5 66) News reports (n5 76)

IRR coeff. z IRR coeff. z

Deceased is aged >16 0.40 –0.91 –2.69 0.84 –0.17 –0.79

Deceased is male 0.43 –0.71 –2.54 0.59 –0.53 –2.63

Death within study period 2.83 1.04 3.07 1.89 0.64 2.71

Link with case 0.77 –0.26 –0.54 2.88 1.06 3.56

Campaigning 1.18 0.16 0.42 0.80 –0.23 –0.84

Related conviction 0.99 –0.01 0.04 1.18 0.16 0.72

Memorial/fundraising 1.79 0.58 1.64 1.43 0.36 1.55

Log likelihood –265.87 –195.45

Chi-square 51.65 29.10

p-value p< .001 p< .001

McFadden’s R2 0.06 0.03

LR test of alpha¼ 0 p< .001 p< .001

TABLE 4. Comparison of Reports Per Case in Twitter and Newspapers: Suicides and Road TrafficAccidents (RTAs)

Twitter reports Newspaper reports

n of cases Mean (SD) Median IQR ES� Mean (SD) Median IQR ES�Suicides 81 125.98 (334.44) 15 2–60 0.27 12.00 (15.56) 5 2–16 0.07

RTAs 68 54.09 (148.66) 14 3–45 10.88 (15.97) 7 3–11

�Hedges’s g.

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implicit assumption in some research onmedia reporting of suicide that self-inflicted deaths are uniquely newsworthy.If such an assumption is made by someresearchers, it is certainly challenged by thecomparison of suicide and RTA deathsthat occur within the study period. If sui-cides are less likely to be reported close tothe time of death this may be because it isunclear whether or not the death was self-inflicted. It may also be because these aremore private events, with the cause ofdeath less publicized, due perhaps in partto the stigma surrounding suicide (Sudak,Maxim, & Carpenter, 2008).

Considering all deaths reported in thestudy period, including those whoseinquests were taking place, the number ofnewspaper reports per case is very similarfor suicides and RTA deaths, furtheremphasizing that caution may be neededin separating out suicide from other sud-den deaths in young people in research onmedia reporting. There is some differencein the “newsworthiness” of suicide inTwitter, compared with RTAs, with ahigher mean tweet rate per case for sui-cides, driven by a small number of casesthat attracted a large number of tweets,with the median tweet rate being verysimilar). The social and psychological con-texts of suicide cases are perhaps morelikely to have a moral dimension (seeCoyle & MacWhannell, 2002; Owens,Lambert, Lloyd, & Donovan, 2008) thatstimulates campaigns and debate inTwitter than is true for RTAs. It couldalso be argued that suicides are uniquelyshocking and that although any suddendeath can shock, the idea that someonehas decided to take their own life is moreexistentially challenging than the occur-rence of an accident. Because it implies thedeliberate choice of death over life,a suicide challenges the fundamental

norms and values of society and thereforeneeds to be morally accounted for.

The reporting of suicides was morehighly correlated between newspapers andTwitter than the reporting of RTAs andthe strongest correlation was for the overallvolume of suicide reporting (i.e., notmatched by individual case) over a 48-hourperiod, possibly because this longer unit oftime allows newspapers to catch up withevents that may first be reported in socialmedia, or vice versa. For suicides, and notfor RTA deaths, campaigning—i.e. seekingsupport for a specific change to policy orbehavior that is linked to a young person’sdeath—was associated with a much highernumber of postings in Twitter. We couldspeculate that the causes of RTA deaths aremore familiar, so less likely to prompt cam-paigns, whereas there are some relativelynewer features associated with youth sui-cides, especially the role of social mediaitself, through alleged “cyber-bulling.”There was a fairly high percentage of zerocorrelations per suicide case betweenTwitter and newspapers and there are anumber of reasons for this. MemorialR.I.P. messages in Twitter from family andfriends of the deceased are typically notmatched by a newspaper report and insome cases these happen before the deathhas been reported in newspapers. Somecases of death reporting initially have a verylow coverage in newspapers, often resultingin only one or two articles appearing inlocal publications. This low level of report-ing tends not to cause any spike of atten-tion within Twitter.

The fact that bullying is associated withgreater number of reports of suicides in bothkinds of media suggests that it is an espe-cially newsworthy feature (Wayne, 2013).So-called “cyber-bullying” is especially top-ical. Arguably, bullying is a (currently) famil-iar mono-causal explanation for a

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phenomenon that is in fact multi-facetedand rarely reducible to a single factor.

There was no strong evidence of dif-ferential reporting of recent suicides, com-pared with inquests. The attention paid tothe two categories of suicide in newspaperswas very similar. This is an importantpoint to note, given the tendency of previ-ous research on media reporting of suicidesto ignore the reporting of inquests. Therewas a suggestion of more mentions ofrecent suicides than inquests in Twitter,which might make sense in terms of theimmediacy of social media reporting. Thegreater attention in Twitter, though not innewspapers, to suicides in young womenmight perhaps be explained by the rate ofcompleted suicide being about three timeslower in women than in men, so lay peo-ple may therefore be more likely to con-sider a woman’s suicide worthy ofcomment. Previous research has also founddisproportionate attention to suicides inwomen (of all ages) in newspaper reporting(Fu et al., 2011; Pirkis et al., 2007). Theinteraction of the two kinds of media isbrought into relief by the apparentlygreater attention in newspapers to suicidecases with a social media dimension.

It is important to note the study’s lim-itations. Reports and mentions of thedeceased were monitored for only sixmonths and a longer period of monitoringwould result in larger and possibly morerepresentative samples of reported deaths.The sample consisted only of casesreported in newspapers, rather than allcases. This strategy is justifiable since it isprecisely the reporting that is being studied,however some other deaths may have beenreported only in Twitter and not in news-papers. Only one social media platform wasused in the study, selected because it isdominated by news reporting (Kwak et al.,2010). Twitter has a particular style andrigid format—140 characters at the time ofthe study. This places some limits on its

content, although it should be noted thatmultiple tweets are possible. Other socialmedia platforms may contain more lengthyand introspective blogs about suicidecases—an example might be Tumblr whichis popular for sharing images of self-harm(Jacob, Evans, & Scourfield, 2017).

CONCLUSION

This is the first study to compare thereporting of suicide cases in social mediaand conventional media. It is importantthat research in this field is extended tolonger time-frames, other age groups,countries, and social media platforms. Thestudy demonstrates that, in newspapers,the attention paid to inquests on suicidesis roughly equal to the attention paid torecent deaths, arguing for more researchon the reporting of inquests, which hasnot to date been the focus of many studies.More research is also needed which uses acontrol group of another kind of suddendeath, to get beyond the often untested apriori assumption that suicide reporting isunique. Furthermore, it is important tostudy audience reactions to the reporting ofsuicides in social media, compared withtraditional news media. There is potentiallyscope for the kind of media monitoring thatsome suicide prevention organizations (e.g.,Samaritans in the UK) currently undertaketo be extended to social media platformssuch as Twitter, to ensure good qualityreporting which contributes to reducingstigma and encouraging help-seeking.

AUTHOR NOTE

Jonathan Scourfield, Cardiff UniversitySchool of Social Sciences, CardiffUniversity, Cardiff, UK.

Gualtiero Colombo and Pete Burnap,Cardiff University School of Computer

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13ARCHIVES OF SUICIDE RESEARCH

Science and Informatics, CardiffUniversity, Cardiff, UK.

Rhiannon Evans, Cardiff UniversitySchool of Social Sciences, CardiffUniversity, Cardiff, UK.

Nina Jacob, Cardiff UniversityCentre for Trials Research, Cardiff, UK.

Matthew Williams, Cardiff UniversitySchool of Social Sciences, CardiffUniversity, Cardiff, UK.

Sarah Caul, Office for NationalStatistics, Newport, UK.

Correspondence concerning this art-icle should be addressed to JonathanScourfield, Cardiff University School ofSocial Sciences, Cardiff University, TheGlamorgan Building, King Edward VIIAvenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT, UK.E-mail: Scourfield@cardiff.ac.uk

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The views expressed in this publicationare those of the authors and not necessar-ily those of the Department of Health.

FUNDING

This is independent research commis-sioned and funded by the Department ofHealth Policy Research Programme(Understanding the Role of Social Mediain the Aftermath of Youth Suicides,Project Number 023/0165).

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