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Media coverage Essay Other main causal reasons that shows the connection between media and the suicide rate was the news reporting about the incident. Studies suggest that imitational suicide occur when people are contacted with suicide event and this can be through the media coverage (Baume et al. , 1997). The evidence suggest that media reporting on suicides influences people to engage in the same manner while to some people, suicide can be an alternative way of solving problems (Baume et al. , 1997). This phenomenon can be explained with social learning theory as described previously. News about other people’s suicide cases might affect other people’s feelings especially to those people whom considered suicide and these people might actually commit suicide. Although there were differences in effects through gender or ages, various studies proves that there was certain relationship in news reports of suicide and actual suicides and this relationship leads to increase the actual suicide (Pirkis Blood, 2001). This was one of the examples of Werther effect conducted by media which tends people to commit suicide. When people watch news reporting about other people’s suicides, the idea of suicide may unconsciously affect the mind and their problems may trigger those ideas and these people may actually suicide. Moreover, the reporting of suicide to the public increases the suicide rate especially in celebrities’ cases, in which people becomes copycat. In his study in 2000, Stack found that celebrities’ suicide cases can cause 14. 3 times more copycat suicides than normal suicide cases, but in his study in 2005, he changed the percentage to 5. 27 times (Stack, 2000 2005). Although there were changes in percentage, these evidence shows that people are more likely to copy the suicide behavior of celebrities’ death. For example, after the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the famous rock star, there was increase in suicide crisis calls in the Seattle crisis clinic (David et al. , 1996). Also, there were other incidents that were similar to G case, which are another cases of a celebrities’ suicidal incident, but in these cases, an organization called EXIT(Society for Humane Dying), assists these people with their suicide. After publication of the celebrity (G)’s death and the suggestions that EXIT might be involved with this incident, more people got help from EXIT to commit suicide (Frei et al. , 2003). News report on Celebrities’ suicide was even more dangerous than reporting normal people’s suicide. Celebrity suicide can be a risk factor in a way of suicidal ideation and this can be effective to people in both right after the celebrities’ suicide and also in long term (Fu Yip, 2007). People, who have suicidal ideation, meaning thinking about suicide or actually planning to commit suicide, may be affected by the way celebrities commit suicide and may follow the same steps. In the celebrities’ suicide cases, people are emotionally more attached because they tend to know more the true identity of that particular celebrity due to the information’s released through magazines and news compared to the information’s given while the celebrity was still alive. Therefore, with emotional despair to celebrities’ suicide and effect of it to suicidal ideation, people would want to commit suicide in same ways as those celebrities did. Apart from the news reporting about the suicides, there are cyber suicides in which people get information’s from, like the website, and actually committed suicide. Internet, one of the most recent and developed sources of media, were used to increase the suicides, especially to teenager cases. The term â€Å"cyber suicides† shows new aspects of suicides in the young generations. As the internet develops, there are various websites created on the cyber world. There exist more than 100,000 websites on the internet which are about methods of committing suicide (Alao et al. , 2006). People search for information on the web and the suicide websites can easily pop up by simply typing in the word â€Å"suicide† to the search engine. Suicide covers enormous range of internet resources and a simple search of the word suicide reveals thousands of matches (Baume et al. , 1997). These suicide websites contain detailed information such as notes, various ways to commit suicide, and time and pain description to those suicides (Alao et al. , 2006). One of the major death reasons among the teenagers was suicide, and teenager spends more time on the web and the internet gives them the information about suicide (Becker Schmidt, 2004). Young people, including teenagers, are more likely to commit suicide, influenced by internet, and probable explanation to this may be due to their vulnerable personalities and risk-taking behaviors (Alao et al. , 2006). Especially, the sensitive nature of naive teenagers becomes unprotected from all cruel information from internet suicide resources and they tend to follow the acquired information. Many actual cases were reported about how people commit suicide with tips from suicide websites (Alao et al. , 1999). These cases were yet to be determined whether or not those victims were affected by these websites since the victims were fortunately failed to commit suicide, but still there are unknown actual victims of this website who ended their lives. On the internet, there are other means acquired than suicide websites. People also use chat rooms and newsgroup mailing system to discuss about suicides (Baume et al. , 1997). Discussing about suicide issues involving how to suicide is not a forbidden topic on chat rooms and people are actively talking about these topics. Also, the newsgroup mailing system gives recent updates to the suicide issues. Some people write postings on suicide site about when they are going to commit suicide before they actually do it and there was no prevention to this (Baume et al. , 1997). The internet can affect suicidal behaviors more directly than newspapers or news reporting (Baume et al. , 1997). All of these are happening because internet is a special space, in which interaction between people were different from the real world. With this specialty, people care less about how other people are claiming that they are going to kill themselves. It is also difficult for suicidologists to solve these cyber suicide problems because of the characteristics the internet have (anonymity and world-wideness) and it is complicated to reach out the potential victims for therapeutic interaction (Baume et al. , 1997). There might be some helpful suicide website, which persuade people who enter the site not to commit the crime and provide them help resources and ideas of the possible effects if they actually commit suicides. However, there are still many website that even encourages a group of suicidal people who wanted to commit suicide but had not made up their minds yet which then attracted to these ideas and actually commit the suicides. Furthermore, there are publications about how to commit suicide and this book can bring the ideas or suggestions about suicide. These books are actually used by the people who commit the suicide and this can be proved by the fact that books about suicides are often placed near the dead people who committed suicides (Lester Schaller, 2000). Some people might buy the suicide books just for fun, but having this type of book in the house may suggest the idea of suicide unconsciously. People may did not have the idea of committing suicide at first, but after reading this book or just have it in the house can pull the trigger whenever they feel a little bit depressed or encounters problems. Some countries ban this type of book, but other countries still allow the publication of this book based on the reasoning that if this book was banned, people might seek for it more (Lester Schaller, 2000). However, unlike the purpose of allowing this book, the actually suicide cases show that there is some effect from this book. There were evidences found that shows direct relationship of the suicide book and the actual suicide rate. When the suicide book, Final Exit (a guide for committing suicide by asphyxjectiation), was published, suicide by the recommended method increased 313% in New York City (Stack, 2005). Moreover, in 27. 3% of the suicide cases, a copy of this book was found near the scene of the suicide (Stack, 2005). This demonstrates how a copy of a book can affect people’s mental behaviors. As reviewing the mentioned cases, it can be concluded that the media, the internet, and books contributes percentage to the people’s suicidal rate. To prevent this from happening, there should be regulations that will restrict the media and treat the suicide issues in a manner where their reporting will not provide ideas nor will it triggers the â€Å"let’s do that† attitude to the people. There are different media guidelines for reporting suicides to prevent irresponsible reporting of suicide (Pirkis et al. , 2006). According to these guidelines, media should not report the suicide as sensational event (Pirkis et al. , 2006). Although these guidelines have similarities, they have developed differently and there need to be evaluations to the guidelines (Pirkis et al. , 2006). For example, in Cobain case, due to high professionalism and responsibility in media, there were only a few copycat suicides (Jobes et al. , 1996). There should be expansion to these guidelines and these guidelines should be spread to all news media and news directors should seriously consider about this before publishing the news. Cobain’s suicide might be a tragic event, but through this, the media might learn the importance of the media coverage on the suicides (Jobes et al. , 1996). The suicide prevention organizations can work on to change the news reporting on suicide and thus, make the media contribute to reduce the suicide (Stack, 2003). Also, the suicide website and suicide books should be banned to prevent the idea or suggestion of committing suicides. The suicides can be prevented easily if the people around that particular person pay more attention. Especially to those people who published suicide information in the internet, these people truly needs to think about their responsibilities to other people’s lives and the effect they might contribute by simply postings their works. Also, there are many organizations that help preventing people to commit suicides and the people with the suicidal attitudes must contact these organizations. Suicide considers being an extreme way to end one’s life, one should always keep in mind that there are millions of reasons why people must keep on living despite the many obstacles they faces. Problems come and go; no people in the world who don’t have a problem. Problems are the cycle of life, the meaning of life, the reasons behind the success and the happiness, the reasons why people learn and evolved. Problems should not be the reason for ending life.