News articles in the spanish digital press media: characteristics of the sample and adherence to World Health Organization guidelines
e202104056
Keywords:
Suicide, Risk factors, Mass media, World Health Organization, Contagion effect, Protective effectAbstract
Background: News about suicide may cause a contagion effect or a protective effect. For this reason, the World Health Organization (WHO) has published recommendations on responsible media coverage of suicide. Certain characteristics of suicide news articles and their frequency have been associated to such effects. Despite their importance, these aspects have been scarcely studied in the Spanish media. The objective of this study was to identify the characteristics of suicide news articles in the Spanish digital media.
Methods: We identified the adherence to WHO recommendations, avoidability, frequency, and typology of suicide news articles in the four main spanish digital media (El País, El Mundo, El Confidencial and ABC), according to Alexa (a website traffic statistics). Adherence was evaluated from a dichotomous and continuous perspective by using an ad hoc scale, and avoidability was conceptually defined. The evaluation period was 6 months (11/1/2016-04/30/2017). The statistical program used was R Core Team (2017).
Results: We analysed 141 suicide news articles. Of these, 99.12% did not adhere to the recommendations, the degree of adherence was 2.97 (95% CI, 2.19-3.75; range between +22 and -22), 34.51% were avoidable, 34.04% were about “suicide after murder”, and 90.04% about death by suicide.
Conclusions: Adherence to WHO recommendations is very low in suicide news articles. Furthermore, almost one third of them are avoidable. The identified profile points out the need for interventions aimed at the media. Besides, it allows adjusting their contents to the identified specific needs.
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