Indonesian online newspaper reporting of suicidal behavior: Compliance with World Health Organization media guidelines

Abstract

Background: Despite the lack of attention, suicide is a major public and mental health problem in Indonesia. Research on how Indonesian newspapers portray suicide case has been lacking. Aim: To assess the quality of Indonesian online newspaper reporting suicide news and its compliance with the World Health Organization (WHO) mass media reporting guidelines. Methods: The content of suicide news reported in online newspapers was searched and scrutinized against the WHO suicide reporting guidelines. Results: Within the duration of 6 months, there were 548 suicide news reported. This consisted of 16.8% attempted suicide and 83.2% completed suicide. Approximately 90.3% reported age, 97.3% reported gender and 64.3% reported the marital status of the victims. Furthermore, 68% reported the methods of suicide in headline or title, 40.5% shown the picture of the victims and 56.6% shown illustration only, and 67.2% reported life event related to suicide act. Conclusion: The vast majority of online newspapers in Indonesia exaggerate suicide news. They rarely inform the readers that there is hope and help available. The majority also do not conform to the WHO media guidelines.

Do Tamil newspapers educate the public about suicide? Content analysis from a high suicide Union Territory in India

“…Consistent with our findings, studies from other Asian countries, such as Bangladesh (Arafat et al, 2019; Arafat, Khan, et al, 2020), Indonesia (Nisa et al, 2020), Bhutan (Zangmo & Zangmo, 2019), Pakistan (Kamboh & Ittefaq, 2019), Sri Lanka (Brandt Sørensen et al, 2019) and China (Chu et al, 2018), have also noted several breaches in media reporting such as the inclusion of identifying characteristics such as age, gender and occupation of the victim coupled with graphical illustrations and explicit details about the methods, steps involved in suicide and descriptions about the suicide note. Put together, these findings indicate that the adherence to media reporting guidelines in Asia is low and the quality of reporting is poor.…”

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

“…The present study shows that, generally, the media reporting of suicidal behaviour in Ghana does not comply with the WHO reporting guidelines. This evidence supports recent findings from other LAMICs in Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Taiwan (Arafat et al, 2019;Chiang et al, 2016;Nisa et al, 2020;Sørensen et al, 2019;Zangmo & Zangmo, 2019). The evidence also supports a previous anecdotal observation that media coverage of suicide in Ghana is sensational, overly simplistic and explicit (Quarshie et al, 2015).…”

“…details of suicide method) is common, while recommended helpful reporting practices are scarce -for example, providing contact details of available and accessible suicide support services (Armstrong et al, 2018;Chandra et al, 2014). In Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Sri Lanka and Taiwan, both online and newspaper reporting of suicide have been found to fail in adhering to the WHO recommended reporting guidelines (Arafat et al, 2019;Chandra et al, 2014;Chang & Freedman, 2018;Chu et al, 2018;Chun et al, 2018;Nisa et al, 2020;Sørensen et al, 2019;Zangmo & Zangmo, 2019).…”

“…Recent evidence from Bhutan, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka indicates that although some media reports show some level of adherence to recommended reporting guidelines, the majority of the available media reports are noncompliant (Chandra et al, 2014;Nisa et al, 2020;Sørensen et al, 2019;Zangmo & Zangmo, 2019). Frequently, they reported the method of self-harm and suicide in the headline, included identifiable information (e.g.…”

The quality of online media reporting of celebrity suicide in India and its association with subsequent online suicide-related search behaviour among general population: An infodemiology study

“…The high frequency of harmful reporting characteristics observed in the present study is consistent with the low adherence to WHO guidelines reported in other neighbouring Asian countries as well ( Arafat et al, 2020a ). Studies from Bangladesh ( Arafat et al, 2020b ), Indonesia ( Nisa et al, 2020 ) and Sri Lanka ( Brandt Sørensen et al, 2019 ) have also reported non-adherence to WHO recommendations in print media such as reporting of suicide method, description of suicide note and inclusion of personal identification characteristics in reports. The headlines of the online reports included in the current study used the term ‘suicide’ in 18 % articles.…”