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Abstract
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Suicide and self-harm are complex, multifaceted, and simultaneously personal and social phenomena. While what motivates a person to engage in these acts cannot be reduced to a single factor, the media's role as a shaper and conduit of meanings has attracted considerable scholarly and practitioner attention. Although the mass media has been, and will doubtlessly continue to play a key role in shaping public attitudes and behaviors toward suicide and self-harm, the user-generated media has dramatically diversified our opportunities to encounter and interact with media content featuring these behaviors.
The nine articles in this Research Topic together provide a contemporary snapshot of this rapidly changing field. The articles cut across disciplinary boundaries, representing a wide range of perspectives from public health, psychiatry, psychology, cultural studies, communication studies, and computer science. The cross-disciplinary efforts demonstrate how researchers and practitioners across the world tackle the intricate role of the media in suicide and self-harm through their unique epistemological lens.
The media has long been viewed as a double-edged sword that can ameliorate or exacerbate suicide and self-harm. Mounting evidence suggests a considerable correlation between incautious media coverage--particularly the reporting of celebrity suicides--and perceived increase in suicidal behaviors (Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2020). Although guidelines for reporting suicide help media professionals improve in some areas of suicide coverage [e.g., World Health Organization (WHO), 2017], the old habit still clings. In this Research Topic, Ng et al. illuminate a shared concern among Malaysian stakeholders about unsafe suicide reporting. Media practitioners, mental health professionals, and people with lived experience of suicidal behaviors commonly concerned with sensational and emotionally provoking media coverage that presents suicide content as "newsworthy."
In response to the persistent need for sensible suicide reporting, three articles in this collection explored educational interventions for key stakeholders...
Language: en |