Is suicide reporting in Bangla online news portals sensible? A year-round content analysis against World Health Organization guidelines

Media reporting on deaths due to suicide attributed to gaming in digital news: A case of misrepresentation and missed opportunities

INTRODUCTION

We aimed to study the attributes of the digital media reports on death due to suicide attributed to gaming. We also aimed to assess the overlap between the 'gaming' and 'gambling' activities in these media reports.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The online media reports on the theme of deaths due to suicides attributed to digital gaming in India were retrieved using the Google News online platform. The news reports were searched in the tor browser using the keywords "gaming suicide India" or "gaming death India".

RESULTS

Gaming was identified as the direct reason for death due to suicide in an overwhelming majority (94.8%) of news reports. A large proportion of the reports failed to report death due to suicide in a responsible manner following the guidelines for responsible media reporting of suicide given by the World Health Organization (WHO). Stakeholders' views and opinions mentioned in the news reports included parents, caregivers or friends (17.5%), other gamers (3.1%), gaming industry (8.3%), and mental health professionals (5.2%). Around 24 per cent reports advocated a ban on 'gaming'.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on our observations we recommend responsible reporting on death due to suicide in the online news. Also, there should be a more rigorous and systematic attempt before reaching at the conclusion while attributing these deaths to gaming. Finally, the news reports should ensure that the boundaries between 'gaming' and 'gambling' do not get blurred.

Covid-19-Related Suicides in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh: Can we Rely on Reporting System? A Rapid Systematic Review

Purpose of Review

With other life-altering changes, Covid-19 pandemic has brought a mental health crisis upon the global community. Untreated psychological disturbances can lead to tragic outcomes such as suicide. Currently, the most feasible way to know the true burden of Covid-related suicides is through media reports. However, the standards of media-reported suicide cases and their compliance to WHO checklist of suicide reporting in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh are concerning. The question that arises here is if we can truly rely on the media reporting system of these countries to establish exposure-causality relationship. We've attempted to gather the evidence of reporting sources of Covid-related suicide cases in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. We've conducted a systematic review in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines to identify the media-reported cases of COVID-related suicides.

Recent Findings

After compilation of the results, it was observed that most of the reported cases were from India (74.2%) whereas males died of suicide more often than females. When risk of bias was assessed using Pierson's method, it was observed that 70% of the studies had high risk of bias.

Summary

We've attempted to gather the evidence of reporting sources of Covid-related suicide cases in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh and found that nearly all media reports hadn't followed the WHO reporting guidelines for suicide cases. This could lead to a false sense of panic among the general population.

Variations in newspaper reporting of suicidal behavior in the WHO-South-East Asian region

BACKGROUND

South-East Asia is a densely populated region, comprising of 11 low- and middle-income countries and contributing to 39% of global suicides. There are serious challenges to suicide prevention in the region such as lack of high-quality suicide data, underreporting and poor quality of media reporting. The current report aimed to assess the variations in newspaper reporting of suicidal behavior in the World Health Organization-South-East Asian countries.

METHODS

We analyzed the contents of nine research articles on media reporting of suicide, published from four South-East Asian countries (four from Bangladesh, three from India, one each from Indonesia and Bhutan) that used similar methods and presented results in a nearly similar fashion.

RESULTS

Personal identifying information of the deceased was very frequently mentioned in the newspaper reports across the countries. Suicide notes were reported more commonly in India (9.5-18%) than Bangladesh (4.2-7.5%) and Indonesia (9.5%). No educative material was found in any of the newspaper reports of Bangladesh and Indonesia while it was rarely reported in Bhutan and India.

CONCLUSION

Our findings from the four South-East Asian countries suggest that there are variations between the countries while presenting the news reports of suicidal behavior. These findings would help to formulate and regulate the media guidelines for the specific country.

Appropriate Strategies for Reducing the Negative Impact of Online Reports of Suicide and Public Opinion From Social Media in China

Suicide events may have a negative impact on all of society. The media plays a significant role in suicide prevention. Therefore, the aims of this study are (a) to understand the association between characteristics of suicide events and characteristics of who committed suicide, and event impact indexes (EIIs) of suicide reported on the internet; (b) to analyze violation of recommendations for reporting suicide by Weibo, and (c) to investigate the effect of online reports of suicide on public opinion. We carried out a content analysis of online reports of suicide. This study analyzed 113 suicide events, 300 news reports of suicide, and 2,654 Weibo comments about suicide collected from the WeiboReach between 2015 and 2020. We used a t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to explore the potential factors associated with the EIIs of suicide events. The results found that (a) The suicide events reported on the internet during COVID-19 and those related to celebrities and students tend to have higher EIIs; (b) suicide reports on Weibo frequently violated WHO recommendations for suicide reporting in the media; and (c) public opinion of suicide reporting in the online media was mostly emotional and irrational, which is not beneficial for public mental health and suicide prevention. In conclusion, first, the situation of many people working from home or studying from home and spreading more time online during COVID-19 may lead to suicide events obtain more public attention. Online media could further improve public responsible reporting and daily media-content surveillance, especially taking particular care in those suicide events during COVID-19, and related to celebrities and students, which may have a higher event impact on the internet. Second, health managers should regular assessment of observance of the WHO recommendations for suicide reporting by online social media to prevent suicide. Third, health communication managers should use big data to identify, assess, and manage harmful information about suicide; and track anyone affected by suicide-related reports on social media to reduce the negative impact of public opinion to intervene suicide in the early stage of suicide.

Online media reporting of suicidal behaviour in Ghana: Analysis of adherence to the WHO guidelines

BACKGROUND

Irresponsible media reporting of suicide is a potential risk for copycat suicide. There is a paucity of studies from sub-Saharan Africa on the quality of media reporting of suicide.

OBJECTIVES

We assessed the compliance of Ghanaian online media outlets with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for media reporting of suicide.

METHODS

We searched 10 local media outlets with strong online presence in Ghana, to identify suicide-related news reports from 2000 through 2019. We applied summative content analysis and chi-square (χ2) test to the data.

RESULTS

We included 288 news reports, of which 261 (90.6%) were completed suicides, 7 (2.4%) were attempted suicides and 20 (6.9%) were homicide suicides. Most of the news reports failed to comply with the WHO guidelines: 92.7% mentioned the specific method of the suicide act, 82.6% included 'suicide' in the headline and 55.6% included photos of the victims. The χ2 tests indicated that privately owned media outlets were more likely than publicly owned to post a photo of the victim, χ2(1) = 17.37, p < .001, and report the incident location in the headline, χ2(1) = 15.00, p < .001. However, generally, there were no statistically significant relationships between the quality of reporting and media outlet ownership. Each of the 288 reports failed to mention any of the potentially helpful features recommended by the WHO guidelines.

CONCLUSION

Regardless of the ownership of the media outlet (whether private or publicly owned), mostly, the online reportage of suicidal behaviour in Ghana deviates sharply from the international recommended best practice by the WHO.