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Background: Research suggests that direct exposure to suicidal behavior and acts of self-harm through social media may increase suicidality through imitation and modeling, with adolescents representing a particularly vulnerable population. One example of viral self-harming behavior that could potentially be propagated through social media is the Blue Whale Challenge (BWC). Objective: We investigate how people portray BWC on social media and the potential harm this may pose to vulnerable populations. Methods: We first used a grounded approach coding 60 publicly posted YouTube videos, 1112 comments on those videos, and 150 Twitter posts that explicitly referenced BWC. We deductively coded the YouTube videos based on the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) Messaging guidelines. Results: Overall, 83.33%, 28.33%, and 68.67% of the YouTube videos, comments, and Twitter posts were trying to raise awareness and discourage participation in BWC. Yet, about 37% of the videos violated six or more of the SPRC messaging guidelines. Conclusions: These posts might have the problematic effect of normalizing BWC through repeated exposure, modeling, and reinforcement of self-harming and suicidal behavior, especially among vulnerable adolescents. Greater efforts are needed to educate social media users and content generators on safe messaging guidelines and factors that encourage versus discourage contagion effects.
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Measuring Asian Social Media Sentiments Toward Bat Exploitation
As human activities continue to negatively affect bat populations, bat conservation efforts continue to rely on questionnaires to understand human actions toward bats; however, the use of questionnaires constrains understanding by limiting the sample size to those who choose to participate, being subject to selection bias, and overall may not be the most efficient way of understanding sentiments and behaviors toward bats. We used social media to analyze sentiment toward bat exploitation behaviors in Asia and evaluated the influence that these posts have on users in the region. We gathered and analyzed a total of 458 social media posts and 2,427 comments throughout Asia utilizing keywords and hashtags in 16 languages. We found that nearly 90% of initial posts discussing bat exploitations were discussed in an acceptive, pro-bat exploitation way. Initial posts from Southeast and South Asia showed acceptance of bat exploitation. Comments on posts from Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, were acceptive of bat exploitation for food and medicine, whereas comments on posts from South Asia were rejective of bat exploitation, in contrast, with the initial South Asian posts, which were more acceptive of persecution of bats. We recommend using social media platforms to promote messages that reject bat exploitation and encourage bat conservation efforts as our results indicate that positive messages receive mostly positive comments, reinforcing the importance of protecting bats. Moreover, we suggest future work be conducted using social media to further understand region-specific narratives for and against bat exploitation.
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- PAR ID:
- 10567442
- Publisher / Repository:
- Routledge Taylor & Francis group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Anthrozoös
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0892-7936
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 619 to 635
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Introduction Social media has created opportunities for children to gather social support online (Blackwell et al., 2016; Gonzales, 2017; Jackson, Bailey, & Foucault Welles, 2018; Khasawneh, Rogers, Bertrand, Madathil, & Gramopadhye, 2019; Ponathil, Agnisarman, Khasawneh, Narasimha, & Madathil, 2017). However, social media also has the potential to expose children and adolescents to undesirable behaviors. Research showed that social media can be used to harass, discriminate (Fritz & Gonzales, 2018), dox (Wood, Rose, & Thompson, 2018), and socially disenfranchise children (Page, Wisniewski, Knijnenburg, & Namara, 2018). Other research proposes that social media use might be correlated to the significant increase in suicide rates and depressive symptoms among children and adolescents in the past ten years (Mitchell, Wells, Priebe, & Ybarra, 2014). Evidence based research suggests that suicidal and unwanted behaviors can be promulgated through social contagion effects, which model, normalize, and reinforce self-harming behavior (Hilton, 2017). These harmful behaviors and social contagion effects may occur more frequently through repetitive exposure and modelling via social media, especially when such content goes “viral” (Hilton, 2017). One example of viral self-harming behavior that has generated significant media attention is the Blue Whale Challenge (BWC). The hearsay about this challenge is that individuals at all ages are persuaded to participate in self-harm and eventually kill themselves (Mukhra, Baryah, Krishan, & Kanchan, 2017). Research is needed specifically concerning BWC ethical concerns, the effects the game may have on teenagers, and potential governmental interventions. To address this gap in the literature, the current study uses qualitative and content analysis research techniques to illustrate the risk of self-harm and suicide contagion through the portrayal of BWC on YouTube and Twitter Posts. The purpose of this study is to analyze the portrayal of BWC on YouTube and Twitter in order to identify the themes that are presented on YouTube and Twitter posts that share and discuss BWC. In addition, we want to explore to what extent are YouTube videos compliant with safe and effective suicide messaging guidelines proposed by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC). Method Two social media websites were used to gather the data: 60 videos and 1,112 comments from YouTube and 150 posts from Twitter. The common themes of the YouTube videos, comments on those videos, and the Twitter posts were identified using grounded, thematic content analysis on the collected data (Padgett, 2001). Three codebooks were built, one for each type of data. The data for each site were analyzed, and the common themes were identified. A deductive coding analysis was conducted on the YouTube videos based on the nine SPRC safe and effective messaging guidelines (Suicide Prevention Resource Center, 2006). The analysis explored the number of videos that violated these guidelines and which guidelines were violated the most. The inter-rater reliabilities between the coders ranged from 0.61 – 0.81 based on Cohen’s kappa. Then the coders conducted consensus coding. Results & Findings Three common themes were identified among all the posts in the three social media platforms included in this study. The first theme included posts where social media users were trying to raise awareness and warning parents about this dangerous phenomenon in order to reduce the risk of any potential participation in BWC. This was the most common theme in the videos and posts. Additionally, the posts claimed that there are more than 100 people who have played BWC worldwide and provided detailed description of what each individual did while playing the game. These videos also described the tasks and different names of the game. Only few videos provided recommendations to teenagers who might be playing or thinking of playing the game and fewer videos mentioned that the provided statistics were not confirmed by reliable sources. The second theme included posts of people that either criticized the teenagers who participated in BWC or made fun of them for a couple of reasons: they agreed with the purpose of BWC of “cleaning the society of people with mental issues,” or they misunderstood why teenagers participate in these kind of challenges, such as thinking they mainly participate due to peer pressure or to “show off”. The last theme we identified was that most of these users tend to speak in detail about someone who already participated in BWC. These videos and posts provided information about their demographics and interviews with their parents or acquaintances, who also provide more details about the participant’s personal life. The evaluation of the videos based on the SPRC safe messaging guidelines showed that 37% of the YouTube videos met fewer than 3 of the 9 safe messaging guidelines. Around 50% of them met only 4 to 6 of the guidelines, while the remaining 13% met 7 or more of the guidelines. Discussion This study is the first to systematically investigate the quality, portrayal, and reach of BWC on social media. Based on our findings from the emerging themes and the evaluation of the SPRC safe messaging guidelines we suggest that these videos could contribute to the spread of these deadly challenges (or suicide in general since the game might be a hoax) instead of raising awareness. Our suggestion is parallel with similar studies conducted on the portrait of suicide in traditional media (Fekete & Macsai, 1990; Fekete & Schmidtke, 1995). Most posts on social media romanticized people who have died by following this challenge, and younger vulnerable teens may see the victims as role models, leading them to end their lives in the same way (Fekete & Schmidtke, 1995). The videos presented statistics about the number of suicides believed to be related to this challenge in a way that made suicide seem common (Cialdini, 2003). In addition, the videos presented extensive personal information about the people who have died by suicide while playing the BWC. These videos also provided detailed descriptions of the final task, including pictures of self-harm, material that may encourage vulnerable teens to consider ending their lives and provide them with methods on how to do so (Fekete & Macsai, 1990). 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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2024.2345474
