Beyond the Werther effect: The role of mass media in the context of depression and suicidality

自从菲利普斯（1974）的开创性工作以来，对大众传媒与自杀之间关系的调查几乎完全被贴上了维特效应研究的标签。这一事实导致了几个理论和方法上的缺陷，阻碍了对自杀和媒体之间联系的全面概念化：1)对事实自杀的报道被认为是自杀行为的激活因素；其他形式和类型的媒体内容大多没有被考虑在内。2)因此，研究重点主要集中在实际自杀上，而之前的自杀形式（如抑郁和自杀念头）迄今为止一直被忽视。3)自杀的具体诱因，如抑郁，并没有整合到维特的语境中。4)媒体接受背景下众所周知的现象（如第三人称感知或感知的媒体议程）未包括在当前关于该主题的研究中。5)对维特效应的研究几乎完全基于实际自杀（例如自杀率）的汇总数据，这就需要对方法的关注，而这在维特研究的理论背景下是没有说服力的。为了弄清当前维特效应研究的这些缺点，我们计划在德国进行一项具有代表性的横断面电话调查，重点关注维特效应研究的两个最核心组成部分：媒体（使用和感知）和自杀倾向（自杀想法、计划和尝试），以及他们最重要的倾向，同时控制社会结构的第三个变量。我们使用结构方程建模（SEM）来模拟我们数据中文献的理论含义。通过这样做，我们还能够测试这些模型的直接和间接、全球和局部影响。该研究项目的目的是描述媒体内容及其使用之间的方向，主观地归因于某些大众媒体内容的日常相关性及其对不同倾向的人的个人自杀行为的影响。因此，该项目扩展了目前关于自杀与大众媒体之间关系的研究范围。通过这样做，这个研究项目将极大地丰富这个（世界）研究领域的现有知识。

Since the seminal work of Phillips (1974) investigations on the connection between mass media and suicide have almost completely been labeled as Werther effect studies. This fact has led to several theoretical and methodic shortcomings that hamper a comprehensive conceptualization of the connections between suicide and the media: 1) Coverage on factual suicides is regarded to be an activator of suicidal behaviors; other forms and genres of media content are mostly not taken into consideration. 2) As an outcome the research focus lays especially on factual suicides, while preceding forms of suicidality (e.g. depressions and suicidal thoughts) have been neglected so far. 3) Specific activators of suicidality, like depression, are not integrated in the Werther context. 4) Well-known phenomena in the context of media reception (e.g. third-person perceptions or the perceived media agenda) are not included in current research on the topic. 5) Research on the Werther effect is almost completely based on aggregate data on factual suicides (e.g. suicide rates) which entails methodological concerns that are not convincing against the theoretical background of Werther research.To disentangle these shortcomings of current Werther effect research we plan to conduct a cross-sectional representative telephone survey in Germany that focuses on both of the most central components of research on the Werther effect: Media (use and perception) and suicidality (suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts) as well as their most important predispositions while controlling for socio-structural third variables. To model the theoretical implications from the literature in our data we use structural equation modeling (SEM). By doing so, we are also able to test these models for direct and indirect, global and local effects.The aim of the research project is to describe the directions between media content and its use, subjectively ascribed everyday relevance of certain mass media content and its influences on individual suicidality of people with different predispositions. Therefore, the project extends the scope of current research on the associations between suicidality and mass media. By doing so, existing knowledge in this (worldwide) field of research will be extremely enriched through this research project.