Resource Tag: WERTHER EFFECT

A considerable number of studies have shown that sensationalist portrayals of suicide in the media trigger imitational suicides, often referred to as Werther effect. In order to prevent harmful media effects, media recommendations  for suicide reporting have been developed and implemented by national and international organizations in order to change the conversation on suicide and […]

Objective Responsible media reporting is an accepted strategy for preventing suicide. In 2015, suicide prevention experts launched a media engagement initiative aimed at improving suicide-related reporting in Canada; its impact on media reporting quality and suicide deaths is unknown. Method This pre–post observational study examined changes in reporting characteristics in a random sample of suicide-related […]

Background Media guidelines for reporting on suicide recommend that journalists should avoid monocausal explanations of suicide, but it is unclear if media items with monocausal explanations elicit different effects as compared to multicausal portrayals. Method Using a web-based randomized controlled trial (n = 969), we tested five versions of a news article about the suicide of a […]

Introduction A large body of literature has examined the Werther effect following news reports of suicide, yet much less attention has been paid to the protective Papageno effect. This research explored the causal relationships between news reports of real celebrity suicides (e.g., pop-rock star Chester Bennington) and real non-celebrity “peer” suicides (e.g., college student Madison […]

Many international studies describe a relation between prominent and sensational suicide reporting and subsequent rises in suicide rates – the Werther effect –, especially when involving celebrities, but that relation has never been investigated in Portugal. In this article, we intend to examine whether there were increases in suicides in Portugal in the 3 and […]

Objectives: When journalists report on the details of a suicide, the way that they contextualize the meaning of the event (i.e. the ‘narrative’) can have significant consequences for readers. The ‘Werther’ and ‘Papageno’ narrative effects refer to increases and decreases in suicides across populations following media reports on suicidal acts or mastery of crises, respectively. […]

Background The suicide rate in Korea was the highest among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) for 2013–2016 and 2018–2020. In korea, suicide was the leading cause of death among individuals aged 10–39, and the second leading cause of death for aged 40–59. Thus, this study aimed to examine the […]

Background Suicide has become an increasingly concerning problem among soldiers in recent years. Previous research has hypothesized that media-related social contagion effects, termed “Werther effects,” may contribute to military suicide numbers. Unfortunately, there is limited empirical knowledge on such social contagion effects in soldiers. We contribute to the literature by investigating this phenomenon in the context of a specific […]

Background: The media and the Internet may be having an influence on suicidal behavior. Online social networks such as Facebook represent a new facet of global information transfer. The impact of these online social networks on suicidal behavior has not yet been evaluated. Aims: To discuss potential effects of suicide notes on Facebook on suicide prevention and […]

Background: Reporting on suicide can elicit an increase in suicides, a phenomenon termed the “Werther effect.” The name can be traced back to an alleged spike in suicides after the publication of Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, in which the protagonist Werther dies by suicide. Aims: Acknowledging the importance and primacy of systematic ecological and individual-level […]

Quality of journalism is not a stable phenomenon, yet there is limited longitudinal evidence. We provide a content analysis of news reporting over a whole century within a specific thematic context: suicide reporting. Quality is a key dimension in this context as low-quality reporting is associated with imitative suicides (Werther effect). We took a historical […]

The purpose of this study is to suggest the need to strengthen suicide prevention monitoring for the mentally vulnerable by analyzing the specificity and relation between the suicide search volume of Google Trends and the number of suicide deaths according to celebrities’ suicides. The focus of this study is on the high suicide death rates […]

Background: Suicide has become an increasingly concerning problem among soldiers in recent years. Previous research has hypothesized that media-related social contagion effects, termed “Werther effects,” may contribute to military suicide numbers. Unfortunately, there is limited empirical knowledge on such social contagion effects in soldiers. We contribute to the literature by investigating this phenomenon in the context […]

Despite much theorizing on the quality of journalism, there is limited actual empirical evidence for the effects of improved news quality on societal outcomes. This study provides such evidence for suicide reporting. News quality especially matters in this domain, as low-quality reporting can elicit “copycat” suicides (Werther effect). We developed and disseminated a web-based campaign […]

Objective Media reporting of celebrities’ deaths by suicide are prone to suicide contagion effects. The aim of the current study is to examine whether the widely publicized celebrity suicide of Ari Behn in Norway was associated with changes in search activity of suicide-related terms. Method Search activity data for the terms “suicide,” “Ari Behn suicide,” […]

Objectives: When journalists report on the details of a suicide, the way that they contextualize the meaning of the event (i.e. the ‘narrative’) can have significant consequences for readers. The ‘Werther’ and ‘Papageno’ narrative effects refer to increases and decreases in suicides across populations following media reports on suicidal acts or mastery of crises, respectively. The […]

Background: Alfred Redl, a colonel in the Imperial and Royal General Staff and Deputy Director of Military Intelligence for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a leading figure of pre-World War I spying. The “spy of the century,” as he has been called, died by suicide in Vienna on May 25, 1913. It was a big news story […]

Research suggests that media adherence to suicide reporting recommendations in the aftermath of a highly publicized suicide event can help reduce the risk of imitative behavior, yet there exists no standardized tool for assessing adherence to these standards. The Tool for Evaluating Media Portrayals of Suicide (TEMPOS) allows media professionals, researchers, and suicide prevention experts […]

Background Guidelines to encourage responsible reporting of suicide in news media are a key component of suicide prevention strategies. Recent guidelines have been developed on portrayal of suicide in entertainment media although the relationship between these portrayals and subsequent suicidal behaviour has received considerably less attention in research. Methods We conducted a systematic review and […]

The objective of this study was to examine the impact of widely publicized suicides on the Werther and Papageno Effects using internet search trends. A list of widely publicized suicides from 2010 through 2018 was compiled along with dates of death for each of these individuals. Google.com/trends data were then collected for searches for “how […]

This study investigated associations between indiscriminate media reporting of suicides and later inflated suicide counts among Israel’s general population between the years 2008 and 2012. Self-inflicted deaths that received post-suicide media exposure (referred to as “publicized suicides”) were selected via Google news search-hit appraisals. Distributions of suicides were inspected and risk ratios (RRs) estimated by […]

Background: Suicide rates increased substantially in many countries during the 19th century. Little is known about news coverage on suicide in this period and its relationship to suicide rates. Aims: To test whether there was a covariation between the quantity of reporting and suicide rates and whether the press relied on sensational reporting. Method: A […]

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