Suicide Prevention and the Media, Essay Example

Famous suicides are a part of media culture, dating back at least to Cleopatra — or at least to the star-studded movie made about her in 1963 (Mankiewicz & Mamoulian, 1963). With the rise of mass media and the Web, well-meaning people are increasingly concerned whether vulnerable people may be induced to commit suicides as the result of a story about another suicide they saw or read about, particularly if the suicide was of an important person or a big, messy, dramatic news-event (SBS-TV, 2011). Unlike anti-suicide public-service ads (discussed in assignment 6.1) that compel central route processing to persuade people to forestall suicidal tendencies, media-stories tend to foster peripheral route processing (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), allowing unbalanced people to be suddenly persuaded to take the final step by events that are not really central to their own lives (UPI, 1980).

Much research has been done on the influence of media on suicide, leading to the conclusion that the influence is substantial the subject of legitimate concern (Williams, 2002). Proposals have been made that a special effort be made to sanitize certain suicide stories of the word “suicide” itself, at least in headlines, thus attempting to reduce its perception in culture. A news story might include a suicide factoid designed to insert perspective to a story. The question is how this would be enforced. Public-service ads, by contrast, serve to emphasize suicide by educating people about it — for example telling us that “suicide claims more Australian lives than road accidents” (Talking Suicide, 2011). Such would be the two-pronged approach of a National Suicide Prevention campaign. And were this the pre-Internet era, it might work. But more and more people get their news on Facebook and Twitter. These are beyond governmental persuasion.

People want education, not governmental lessons.

References

Mankiewicz, J., & Mamoulian, R. (Directors). (1963). Cleopatra [Motion Picture].

Petty, R., & Cacioppo, J. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes. New York: Springer-Verlag.

SBS TV. (2011). Suicide Prevention Ideas. Surrey Hills: Republic of Everyone.

Talking Suicide (2011). [TV program].

UPI. (1980, December` 11). Two Lennon Fans Commit Suicide. Times Daily, p. 11.

Williams, K. (2002). Influences of the media on suicide. BMJ, 1374-1375.