A Pilot Case-Control Study of the Social Media Activity Following Cluster and Non-Cluster Suicides in Australia

Phillip Cheuk Fung Law, Lay San Too, Nicole T. M. Hill, Jo Robinson, Madelyn Gould, Jo-An Occhipinti, Matthew J. Spittal, Katrina Witt, Mark Sinyor, Benedikt Till, Nathaniel Osgood, Ante Prodan, Rifat Zahan and Jane Pirkis
Additional contact information
Phillip Cheuk Fung Law: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville 3053, Australia
Lay San Too: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville 3053, Australia
Nicole T. M. Hill: Telethon Kids Institute, Nedlands 6009, Australia
Jo Robinson: Orygen, Parkville 3052, Australia
Madelyn Gould: Departments of Epidemiology and Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
Jo-An Occhipinti: Brain and Mind Centre, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Sydney 2050, Australia
Matthew J. Spittal: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville 3053, Australia
Katrina Witt: Orygen, Parkville 3052, Australia
Mark Sinyor: Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M4N 3M5, Canada
Benedikt Till: Unit Suicide Research & Mental Health Promotion, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Nathaniel Osgood: Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5C9, Canada
Ante Prodan: Brain and Mind Centre, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Sydney 2050, Australia
Rifat Zahan: Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5C9, Canada
Jane Pirkis: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville 3053, Australia

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 19, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Social media may play a role in the “contagion” mechanism thought to underpin suicide clusters. Our pilot case-control study presented a novel methodological approach to examining whether Facebook activity following cluster and non-cluster suicides differed. We used a scan statistic to identify suicide cluster cases occurring in spatiotemporal clusters and matched each case to 10 non-cluster control suicides. We identified the Facebook accounts of 3/48 cluster cases and 20/480 non-cluster controls and their respective friends-lists and retrieved 48 posthumous posts and replies (text segments) referring to the deceased for the former and 606 for the latter. We examined text segments for “putatively harmful” and “putatively protective” content (e.g., discussion of the suicide method vs. messages discouraging suicidal acts). We also used concept mapping, word-emotion association, and sentiment analysis and gauged user reactions to posts using the reactions-to-posts ratio. We found no “putatively harmful” or “putatively protective” content following any suicides. However, “family” and “son” concepts were more common for cluster cases and “xx”, “sorry” and “loss” concepts were more common for non-cluster controls, and there were twice as many surprise- and disgust-associated words for cluster cases. Posts pertaining to non-cluster controls were four times as receptive as those about cluster cases. We hope that the approach we have presented may help to guide future research to explain suicide clusters and social-media contagion.

Keywords: suicide; clusters; contagion; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/1/343/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/1/343/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2021:i:1:p:343-:d:713789

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().