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

自从Phillips(1974)的开创性工作以来，关于大众传媒与自杀之间联系的研究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，阻碍了对自杀与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者；其他形式和流派的媒体内容大多不被考虑。2)作为结果，研究重点特别放在事实自杀上，而之前的自杀形式(如抑郁和自杀念头)到目前为止被忽视了。3)特定的自杀激活物，如抑郁，没有整合到Werther的语境中。4)媒体接受背景下的众所周知的现象(例如，第三人称感知或感知的媒体议程)不包括在当前关于这一主题的研究中。5)对维瑟效应的研究几乎完全基于事实自杀(如自杀率)的汇总数据，这带来的方法论问题与维瑟研究的理论背景相比并不令人信服。为了解决当前维瑟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，重点关注关于维瑟效应研究的两个最核心组成部分：媒体(使用和感知)和自杀(自杀想法、计划和企图)以及它们最重要的倾向，同时控制社会结构的第三个变量。为了从我们的数据中对文献的理论含义进行建模，我们使用结构方程建模(SEM)。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。研究项目的目的是描述媒体内容与其使用之间的方向，主观归因于某些大众媒体内容的日常相关性，以及它对具有不同倾向的人的个体自杀行为的影响。因此，该项目扩大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一(全球)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.