A Longitudinal Dynamic Perspective on Quality in Journalism: Investigating the Long-Term Macro-Level Media Effect of Suicide Reporting on Suicide Rates Across a Century.

ABSTRACT: Quality of journalism is not a stable phenomenon, yet there is limited longitudinal evidence. We provide a content analysis of news reporting over a whole century within a specific thematic context: suicide reporting. Quality is a key dimension in this context as low-quality reporting is associated with imitative suicides (Werther effect). We took a historical perspective: suicide rates increased in many countries during the 19th century, with suicide reporting hypothesized as a contributory factor. Conducting the first longitudinal study of journalism quality that examines an entire century, we manually coded N = 14,638 articles. Our analyses indicated a strong nonlinear increase in low-quality reporting. Importantly, a high quantity of low-quality reporting predicted annual increa

SUBMITTER: Mestas M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11537977 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature