Mind the gap

Exploring differences in suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide

Bibliographic Data

ID22066713
AuthorsAng Li (0000-0002-6269-6432, Beijing Forestry University, corresponding author), Dongdong Jiao (0000-0002-3276-0413)
Year2023
Volume10
Pages1061590-1061590
Publication date2023-01-16
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrontiers in Public Health (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2296-2565 • E-ISSN: 2296-2565
PublisherFrontiers Media SA (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3389/fpubh.2022.1061590
PMID36726611
OpenAlexW4316362685
LanguageEN
References cited26

Introduction The highly public nature of cybersuicide contradicts long-held beliefs of offline suicide, which may cause differences in the way people perceive and respond to both of them. However, knowledge of whether and how suicide literacy differs between cybersuicide and offline suicide is limited. Methods By analyzing social media data, this paper focused on livestreamed suicide and aimed to compare suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide on three aspects, including false knowledge structure, extent of association with stigma, and linguistic expression pattern. 7,236 Sina Weibo posts with relevant keywords were downloaded and analyzed. First, a content analysis was performed by human coders to determine whether each post reflected suicide-related false knowledge and stigma. Second, a text analysis was conducted using the Simplified Chinese version of LIWC software to automatically extract psycholinguistic features from each post. Third, based on selected features, classification models were developed using machine learning techniques to differentiate false knowledge of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide. Results Results showed that, first, cybersuicide-related posts generally reflected more false knowledge than offline suicide-related posts ( χ 1 2 = 255.13, p < 0.001). Significant differences were also observed in seven false knowledge types. Second, among posts reflecting false knowledge, cybersuicide-related posts generally carried more stigma than offline suicide-related posts ( χ 1 2 = 116.77, p < 0.001). Significant differences were also observed in three false knowledge types. Third, among established classification models, the highest F1 value reached 0.70. Discussion The findings provide evidence of differences in suicide literacy between cybersuicide and offline suicide, and indicate the need for public awareness campaigns that specifically target cybersuicide

Injury prevention · Literacy · Medical emergency · Online and offline · Poison control · Psychiatry · Suicide prevention · Clinical Psychology · Computer Science · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Human Factors and Ergonomics · Medicine · Mental Health via Writing · Psychology · Suicide and Self-Harm Studies

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