Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo

Abstract

Background The new reality of cybersuicide raises challenges to ideologies about the traditional form of suicide that does not involve the internet (offline suicide), which may lead to changes in audience’s attitudes. However, knowledge on whether stigmatizing attitudes differ between cybersuicides and offline suicides remains limited. Objective This study aims to consider livestreamed suicide as a typical representative of cybersuicide and use social media data (Sina Weibo) to investigate the differences in stigmatizing attitudes across cybersuicides and offline suicides in terms of attitude types and linguistic characteristics. Methods A total of 4393 cybersuicide-related and 2843 offline suicide-related Weibo posts were collected and analyzed. First, human coders were recruited and trained to perform a content analysis on the collected posts to determine whether each of them reflected stigma. Second, a text analysis tool was used to automatically extract a number of psycholinguistic features from each post. Subsequently, based on the selected features, a series of classification models were constructed for different purposes: differentiating the general stigma of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide and differentiating the negative stereotypes of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide. Results In terms of attitude types, cybersuicide was observed to carry more stigma than offline suicide (χ21=179.8; P<.001). Between cybersuicides and offline suicides, there were significant differences in the proportion of posts associated with five different negative stereotypes, including stupid and shallow (χ21=28.9; P<.001), false representation (χ21=144.4; P<.001), weak and pathetic (χ21=20.4; P<.001), glorified and normalized (χ21=177.6; P<.001), and immoral (χ21=11.8; P=.001). Similar results were also found for different genders and regions. In terms of linguistic characteristics, the F-measure values of the classification models ranged from 0.81 to 0.85. Conclusions The way people perceive cybersuicide differs from how they perceive offline suicide. The results of this study have implications for reducing the stigma against suicide.

Mind the gap: Exploring differences in suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide

“…Furthermore, between cybersuicide and offline suicide, significant differences were also observed in proportions of specific false knowledge types, reflecting the differences in weights assigned to the prevalence of false knowledge types. For example, cybersuicide was more likely than offline suicide to be associated with three false knowledge types, including “Should keep secrets”, “Manipulating/attracting attention”, and “Stop media coverage of suicide”, which may be due to the prevalence of a distinctive stigmatizing stereotype (false representation stigma, a belief that people livestreaming their suicides do not really want to kill themselves) influenced by the highly public and interactive nature of cybersuicide ( 12 ). Similar results were also found for different genders.…”

“…The coding framework of suicide literacy was based on available evidence and expert consensus, which finally contained 11 items from Calear's Literacy of Suicide Scale (LOSS) ( 20 ) ( Table 1 ). Details on coding framework and coding results of stigma can be found in another paper ( 12 ).…”

“…Literacy of Suicide Scale (LOSS) (20) (Table 1). Details on coding framework and coding results of stigma can be found in another paper (12). The IBM SPSS Statistics software (SPSS, version 20) was used to analyze statistics below.…”

“…In recent years, considerable research effort has been devoted to investigating public reaction to cybersuicide. Results showed that cybersuicide carries more stigma than offline suicide ( 12 – 15 ). Besides, significant differences were also found between cybersuicide and offline suicide in linguistic pattern of stigmatizing expressions ( 12 ).…”

“…Results showed that cybersuicide carries more stigma than offline suicide ( 12 – 15 ). Besides, significant differences were also found between cybersuicide and offline suicide in linguistic pattern of stigmatizing expressions ( 12 ). These findings provide evidence that the public reacts differently to cybersuicide and offline suicide.…”