Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo
BackgroundThe new reality of cybersuicide raises challenges to ideologies about the traditional form of suicide that does not involve the internet (offline suicide), which may lead to changes in audience’s attitudes. However, knowledge on whether stigmatizing attitudes differ...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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JMIR Publications
2022-04-01
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| Series: | Journal of Medical Internet Research |
| Online Access: | https://www.jmir.org/2022/4/e36489 |
| _version_ | 1797735194585726976 |
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| author | Ang Li Dongdong Jiao Tingshao Zhu |
| author_facet | Ang Li Dongdong Jiao Tingshao Zhu |
| author_sort | Ang Li |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description |
BackgroundThe new reality of cybersuicide raises challenges to ideologies about the traditional form of suicide that does not involve the internet (offline suicide), which may lead to changes in audience’s attitudes. However, knowledge on whether stigmatizing attitudes differ between cybersuicides and offline suicides remains limited.
ObjectiveThis study aims to consider livestreamed suicide as a typical representative of cybersuicide and use social media data (Sina Weibo) to investigate the differences in stigmatizing attitudes across cybersuicides and offline suicides in terms of attitude types and linguistic characteristics.
MethodsA total of 4393 cybersuicide-related and 2843 offline suicide-related Weibo posts were collected and analyzed. First, human coders were recruited and trained to perform a content analysis on the collected posts to determine whether each of them reflected stigma. Second, a text analysis tool was used to automatically extract a number of psycholinguistic features from each post. Subsequently, based on the selected features, a series of classification models were constructed for different purposes: differentiating the general stigma of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide and differentiating the negative stereotypes of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide.
ResultsIn terms of attitude types, cybersuicide was observed to carry more stigma than offline suicide (χ21=179.8; P<.001). Between cybersuicides and offline suicides, there were significant differences in the proportion of posts associated with five different negative stereotypes, including stupid and shallow (χ21=28.9; P<.001), false representation (χ21=144.4; P<.001), weak and pathetic (χ21=20.4; P<.001), glorified and normalized (χ21=177.6; P<.001), and immoral (χ21=11.8; P=.001). Similar results were also found for different genders and regions. In terms of linguistic characteristics, the F-measure values of the classification models ranged from 0.81 to 0.85.
ConclusionsThe way people perceive cybersuicide differs from how they perceive offline suicide. The results of this study have implications for reducing the stigma against suicide. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T12:54:30Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-57921ea5b9654dec9d0f62c356b73226 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1438-8871 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T12:54:30Z |
| publishDate | 2022-04-01 |
| publisher | JMIR Publications |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Journal of Medical Internet Research |
| spelling | doaj.art-57921ea5b9654dec9d0f62c356b732262023-08-28T21:22:11ZengJMIR PublicationsJournal of Medical Internet Research1438-88712022-04-01244e3648910.2196/36489Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina WeiboAng Lihttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9222-3521Dongdong Jiaohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-3276-0413Tingshao Zhuhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0020-3812 BackgroundThe new reality of cybersuicide raises challenges to ideologies about the traditional form of suicide that does not involve the internet (offline suicide), which may lead to changes in audience’s attitudes. However, knowledge on whether stigmatizing attitudes differ between cybersuicides and offline suicides remains limited. ObjectiveThis study aims to consider livestreamed suicide as a typical representative of cybersuicide and use social media data (Sina Weibo) to investigate the differences in stigmatizing attitudes across cybersuicides and offline suicides in terms of attitude types and linguistic characteristics. MethodsA total of 4393 cybersuicide-related and 2843 offline suicide-related Weibo posts were collected and analyzed. First, human coders were recruited and trained to perform a content analysis on the collected posts to determine whether each of them reflected stigma. Second, a text analysis tool was used to automatically extract a number of psycholinguistic features from each post. Subsequently, based on the selected features, a series of classification models were constructed for different purposes: differentiating the general stigma of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide and differentiating the negative stereotypes of cybersuicide from that of offline suicide. ResultsIn terms of attitude types, cybersuicide was observed to carry more stigma than offline suicide (χ21=179.8; P<.001). Between cybersuicides and offline suicides, there were significant differences in the proportion of posts associated with five different negative stereotypes, including stupid and shallow (χ21=28.9; P<.001), false representation (χ21=144.4; P<.001), weak and pathetic (χ21=20.4; P<.001), glorified and normalized (χ21=177.6; P<.001), and immoral (χ21=11.8; P=.001). Similar results were also found for different genders and regions. In terms of linguistic characteristics, the F-measure values of the classification models ranged from 0.81 to 0.85. ConclusionsThe way people perceive cybersuicide differs from how they perceive offline suicide. The results of this study have implications for reducing the stigma against suicide.https://www.jmir.org/2022/4/e36489 |
| spellingShingle | Ang Li Dongdong Jiao Tingshao Zhu Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo Journal of Medical Internet Research |
| title | Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo |
| title_full | Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo |
| title_fullStr | Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo |
| title_full_unstemmed | Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo |
| title_short | Stigmatizing Attitudes Across Cybersuicides and Offline Suicides: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo |
| title_sort | stigmatizing attitudes across cybersuicides and offline suicides content analysis of sina weibo |
| url | https://www.jmir.org/2022/4/e36489 |
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