Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2012, 9 133 For example, online newspapers provide possibilities for interaction between the suicide story and the reader, but also between the readers themselves, which in turn can construct the reality of exposed persons. Some hints about social construction and interpretation of suicide stories presented in online media can be obtained by exploring the content of spontaneous readers’ comments on media portrayal of a suicide story [13,81]. 4. Conclusions The vast majority of the studies about possible effects media reporting on suicidal behaviours might have on actual suicidality (fatal and non-fatal suicidal acts or suicidal ideation) support the idea that these two phenomena are associated. However, there is a risk of reporting bias in the sense that only positive results could be considered as worth to publish and zero results may remain unknown. This is especially true for the studies performed during the last two decades and investigating merely a single suicide story. Only four studies [20,26-28] included in the current systematic review found no significant associations and all of them were conducted before 1990. More research is available about how irresponsible media reports can provoke suicidal behaviours (the ‘Werther effect’) and less about protective effect media can have by newspaper blackout or by changing the quality and content of media reporting (the ‘Papageno effect’). Contemporary tendencies in public health encourage researchers to ascertain protective factors as opposed to risk factors, although most of the time these are just two sides of the same coin. Strong modelling effect of media coverage on suicide is based on age and gender. Individuals with demographic background similar to the person who committed highly publicized suicidal act (in most of the cases celebrities) are more vulnerable and receptive for identification. As it is true for suicide prevention as a whole, the research on media effects should also be target group specific, because universal approaches are less promising. Several studies have revealed how media reports tend to ‘advertise’ dramatic and highly lethal suicide methods (burning, charcoal burning, shooting, jumping, railway and subway suicides), which are rare in real life. Media reports are not representative to official suicide data and tend to exaggerate sensational suicides. The studies about media reporting on suicide come from a limited number of countries, although from different regions of the world. Researcher should be encouraged to assess the situation in different countries, although the fact about globalisation of news via Internet should kept in mind. Future studies have to encounter the challenges the global medium Internet will offer in terms of research methods. Circulation of news in the Internet is not limited either spatially or in time. However, online media can provide valuable innovative qualitative research material like readers’ spontaneous comments on media portrayals, which enables to analyse different meanings audience gives to messages and also interactions between different agents in this process. One possible limitation of the study is that if alternative search regimens were utilized, additional studies might have been found. Especially the studies from earlier periods (e.g., from 1960’s to 1980’s) are difficult to find using standard search engines, an example of such omission could be the study performed by Stack [82]. The bibliographies of articles and books need to be searched, which is very time consuming. After all, it is difficult to get copies of many of these papers that are simply not