Title: Understanding the role of social media in the aftermath of youth suicides
Funder: Department of Health (England)

Abstract: BACKGROUND Up to 2% of suicides cluster in time and space and this phenomenon occurs most often in young people. There has been considerable concern expressed about the possible role of social media in maintaining suicide clusters. For example, in the Bridgend case in early 2008 there was concern about RIP sites glorifying the deaths. Very little is known, however, about the use of social media following a young person’s death and it may be that young people’s social media communication following a peer’s suicide is not any different from that which follows other kinds of sudden death. AIMS The over-arching research question for the study is ‘How is social media communication used by young people in the aftermath of a youth suicide and how does this compare with the aftermath of an young person’s accidental death?’ Sub-questions are: What kind of language is used in relation to the deceased and what kind of sentiment and tension is expressed? What is the frequency of social media communication about the death? What social networks can be identified via social media and which voices are influential? What seems to be the effect of post-suicide micro-blogging on young people’s social media communication and how can this effect be understood? Is there any evidence of ‘contagion’ of suicidal intent? How can research on social media contribute to more credible theorising of the apparent process of suicide clustering? Can the study of social media interaction feed into the development of an intervention to help prevent suicide clusters? RESEARCH PLAN AND METHODS OF INVESTIGATION The Cardiff Online Social Media Observatory (COSMOS) is a tool for digital social research which archives data in close-to real time from a number of different sources and uses a range of harvesting methods, allowing for almost any Web page or Blog post to be captured and archived for analysis. The resulting archives support quantitative analysis via Natural Language Processing (NLP), sentiment, tension and network analysis, among other methods. The NLP functionality of COSMOS will be enhanced with a lexicon of the communication of distress and loss or memorial, developed in the first stage of the research project. This lexicon will then be applied to a comparative study of social media communication following suicides and traffic accident deaths in young people aged 18 and under over a period of 12 months. There will be quantitative analysis of the frequency of communication, sentiment and the character of on-line social networks. Deaths will be identified via Child Death Overview Panels (for all local areas in England) and daily searches of Google News for reports of child suicides anywhere in the British Isles. RESEARCH TEAM The Principal Applicant has a track record of research on the social context of suicide and self-harm. Other team members bring a range of relevant expertise in social science and computer science (e.g. conversation analysis, automated text classification, cybercrime and the analysis of suicide notes). Applicants include the core members of the existing COSMOS team. The project has been adopted by DECIPHer, the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement, which is a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence. DECIPHer will facilitate public involvement in the research via its young people’s group. POTENTIAL IMPACT Insights into the use of social media following the sudden death of a young person will be of value to practitioners in health, education and social care. In addition, enhancements to COSMOS could be made available in future for identifying the risk of a suicide cluster and ultimately for developing a preventative intervention, e.g to encourage help-seeking.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH