The presentation of suicide topic in lithuanian internet media

The scientific studies of the effect of the media on suicides were started in the 1970’s. The foreign press studies have shown that the more amateur publications presenting the model of suicidal behavior appear in the press, the bigger the possibility of imitation of such suicides. What is more, due to such publications the number of suicides grows. The latest research study in Lithuania has shown that the way of presenting suicide in the media has not changed compared with the previous years, thus the level of encouragement to imitate of suicides remains quite high. In the year 2005 Estonian and Swedish sociologists Merike Sisask, Airi Värnik and Danuta Wasserman carried out a research which studied 7 internet media portals and 188 internet articles analyzing the cases of two adolescent who tried to commit suicide, as well as the reader’s comments. The results of the research show that there is a correlation between the article writing style and the number of reader’s comments, as well as a correlation in some particular aspects of the content of the articles and the comments. This master’s thesis uses the method of qualitative and quantitative content analysis in studying the main Lithuanian Internet news portals (www.lrytas.lt, www.delfi.lt, www.bernardinai.lt, www.zebra.lt) in order to highlight the aspects of presentation of suicide topic. In the analysis of the articles and the readers’ comments on the suicide topic it is aimed to clear out what the prevailing tendencies in the presentation of suicide topic are. Attention is also drawn to what attitudes towards the suicides are formed and what the style of writing about the topic is. Analyzing the new source of information – Internet media – it was also important to find out how the content of readers’ comments corresponds to the content of articles. This study has shown that the articles on the suicidal behavior presented on the Internet media attract reader’s attention. The previous studies of traditional media as well as the resent study of the internet media clearly showed that the internet media tends to present the suicide topic in a simple, provoking way, despite the recommendations given to the media representatives by the psychologists. The deeper causes of suicides as well as the heart of the problem often are not presented in the descriptions of suicides. As a result, the prevention of suicides does not become the dominant topic for discussion neither for the media nor for the readers. The analysis of the readers’ comments has shown that the way of presenting the suicide topic may influence the content of them. A large number of readers who commented on the articles viewed and understood the phenomenon of the suicide simplistically. More than a half of those who wrote comments showed negative attitude to the suicidal behavior expressing irony and condemnation