Abstract
Background
Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide. Journalistic reporting guidelines were created to curb the impact of unsafe reporting; however, how suicide is framed in news reports may differ by important characteristics such as the circumstances and the decedent’s gender.
Objective
This study aimed to examine the degree to which news media reports of suicides are framed using stigmatized or glorified language and differences in such framing by gender and circumstance of suicide.
Methods
We analyzed 200 news articles regarding suicides and applied the validated Stigma of Suicide Scale to identify stigmatized and glorified language. We assessed linguistic similarity with 2 widely used metrics, cosine similarity and mutual information scores, using a machine learning–based large language model.
Results
News reports of male suicides were framed more similarly to stigmatizing (P<.001) and glorifying (P=.005) language than reports of female suicides. Considering the circumstances of suicide, mutual information scores indicated that differences in the use of stigmatizing or glorifying language by gender were most pronounced for articles attributing legal (0.155), relationship (0.268), or mental health problems (0.251) as the cause.
Conclusions
Linguistic differences, by gender, in stigmatizing or glorifying language when reporting suicide may exacerbate suicide disparities.
Reference53 articles.
1. About multiple cause of death, 1999-2020Centers for Disease Control and Prevention20212022-10-13http://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd-icd10.html
2. WISQARS (Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System)201104012022-09-01Atlanta, GACenters for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Controlhttps://wisqars.cdc.gov/
3. Trends in the Incidence and Lethality of Suicidal Acts in the United States, 2006 to 2015
4. The gender paradox in suicidal behavior and its impact on the suicidal process
5. Why are women more likely to attempt suicide than men? Analysis of lifetime suicide attempts among US adults in a nationally representative sample