Intervention - (Newsroom) Reaction - Prevention? Effects of Media Guidelines for Responsible Suicide Reporting on the Media Coverage of Suicides in German Newspapers

预防自杀是全球的当务之急。由于媒体是预防自杀的关键，研究确定了媒体对自杀的报道中可能导致个人自杀的几个因素，如突出的、详细的、重复的、耸人听闻的、浪漫化或美化的自杀报道--特别是对已经脆弱的个人(Werther-Effect)。另一方面，最新的发现表明，媒体对自杀的报道也可以预防自杀(帕帕吉诺效应)。这些预防自杀的文章包括对自杀原因的解释，或展示如何应对自杀危机。显然，记者在预防自杀方面发挥着关键作用。全世界关于适当报道自杀的准则承认了这一事实，特别是包括了帮助记者避免在其自杀报道中包含有害因素的方面。因此，这个项目关注的是一个重要的研究空白：令人惊讶的是，几乎没有任何关于记者如何将媒体关于自杀报道的指导方针整合到他们的工作生活中的研究。然而，几乎没有关于记者如何看待这些指导方针的实证研究，或者这些指导方针是如何在日常工作中实施的。大多数现有研究采用区域重点的组合和/或使用非标准化的代码簿，这使得无法比较研究结果和/或不直接询问记者关于专业人员如何看待指导方针(例如接受度、抵抗力)或他们如何在工作中实施指导方针。因此，这个项目探讨了不同呈现形式的意识干预对适当的自杀报道的影响：记者对自杀和自杀报道有什么态度？随着时间的推移，自杀报告是否发生了事实上的变化？哪些因素会影响积极的预防性改变？为此，该项目结合了对德国报纸自杀报道的标准化内容分析和对记者的调查。内容分析的重点是在18个月的过程中，自杀报道在两次新闻编辑室干预后是否以及如何改善，时间间隔为6个月。由于干预嵌入了一项基于网络的调查，我们能够描绘出德国记者如何看待干预，以及随着时间的推移，干预如何影响媒体对自杀的报道的详细情况。然而，我们也将更多地了解导致其成功的个别新闻因素。最终，所有新闻编辑部将获得提高德国媒体对自杀报道的认识材料。使用这种设计，该项目超越了基本的科学知识，并延伸到直接影响社会：负责任的自杀报道每天都有助于拯救生命。

Suicide prevention is a global imperative. As the media are pivotal for suicide prevention, research determined several factors within media coverage on suicides that are likely to contribute to individual suicidality, such as prominent, detailed, repetitive, sensationalist, romanticizing, or glorifying suicide reports-especially for already vulnerable individuals (Werther-effect). On the other hand, latest findings suggest that media coverage on suicides can be suicide-preventive, too (Papageno-Effect). These suicide-preventive articles include explanations for the causes of suicide, or show ways how to cope with suicidal crises. Clearly, journalists play a key role for suicide prevention. Worldwide guidelines on appropriate suicide reporting acknowledge this fact especially by including aspects that help journalists to avoid including harmful elements in their suicide stories. Hence, this project focuses on an important research gap: Surprisingly, there is scarcely any research on how journalists integrate media guidelines on suicide reporting in their work life. Yet, there is almost no empirical research on how journalists perceive these guidelines, or how they are implemented in everyday working routines. Most existing studies apply combinations of a regional focus and/or use unstandardized codebooks that make it impossible to compare results between studies and/or do not ask journalists directly about how the professionals themselves perceive the guidelines (e.g. acceptance, reactance) or how they implement them in their work. Therefore, this project explores the influence of an awareness-intervention in different forms of presentation about appropriate suicide reporting: What attitudes do journalists have towards suicide and suicide reporting? Is there a de facto change in suicide reporting over time? Which factors influence positive-preventive changes? To do so, the project combines a standardized content analysis of the suicide coverage of German newspapers and a survey of journalists. The content analysis focuses over the course of 18 months, whether and how suicide reporting improves after the two newsroom interventions with a time lag of 6 months. Since the intervention is embedded within a web-based survey, we are able to draw a detailed picture of how German journalists perceive the intervention and how the intervention influences media coverage on suicides over time. However, we will also understand more about individual journalistic factors for its success. In the end, all newsrooms will obtain the awareness materials to improve suicide coverage in the German press.Using this design, the project is beyond basal scientific knowledge gains and reaches out to directly impact society: Responsible suicide reporting helps to save lives, every day.