Media Effects On The Werther Effect

Impact of Media on the Suicide: The Werther Effect Whether media description of suicide influence to suicide in society has been notable debate. This debate start in the late 18th century with Goethe’s novel which is The Sorrows of Young Werther (Pirkis, Blood, Beatrais & Burgess and Skehan, 2006). In this novel, the protagonist who is Werther falls in love with a woman and their togetherness is imposible. Finally, he decide to take own life. When decide to suicide, he dresses a blue coat, a yellow vest, he sits his desk with a book and shoots himself. Goethe’s novel is fictional; however, when novel published, numerous suicides occured across Europe. There was substantial evidance that people who committed suicide were affected by protagonist …show more content…
For instance, a man took his life with a gun and there was a copy of the book by his side. After the lots of considerable suicide, authorieties banned the book (Pirkis, Blood, Beatrais & Burgess and Skehan, 2006). In conclusion, David Phillips used the term ‟Werther effect” for describe the situation which an audience imitate the individual’s behaviour who appeares in media (Phillips, 1974). In this review paper, our aim was to determine relationship between media description of suicide and audience’ suicidal behaviour. I want to start with explanations of media impact. According to assumptions, if person is vulnerable to suicide for example, he/she has bad social support, depression etc., vulnerable person may be pushed mass media impacts (Stack, 2005). In addition, people who have excessive positive definitions was affected by impact of media higher than people who have negative definitions. Positive definitions are such as work problems, personality disorder and marital disruption etc. Negative definitions are such as take counseling for find alternatives to suicide. To sum up, excessive amount of positive definitions can cause imitative suicidal behaviour (Stack, 2005). …show more content…
I begin with newspaper studies. Phillips (1974) did large-scale ecological studies and investigated relationship between suicide stories on newspaper and actual suicides. According to result of the study, when front page suicide articles were increase, actual suicides were increase. Phillips (1977, 1979) investigated impact of front page suicide articles on the motor vehicle accidents in California. He believe that some motor vehicle accidents are hidden suicide attempts. In conclusion, result of the research show that there was significant relationship between number of motor vehicle accidents and amount of front page suicide articles. When suicide articles on newspaper were increase, motor vehicle accidents were increase. Other researcher who was Stack (1996) investigated relationship between Japanese celebrity and unknown people suicide in front of the three page and actual suicide. This research did in Japan and front page suicide article explained the cause of the increase suicide rate. Secondly, l mention some studies which were investigated relationship between suicide stories on television and