The Post and Review

Differences between Social Media and Broadcasters in how they respond to suicidal threats and suicides

And how suicide prevention professionals are adapting to these differences

Aug 13 2009 written by Michael Biven and photograph by Lane Hartwell

Earlier this summer I read a message on Twitter (an online microblogging platform) about a person who threatened suicide and stated he was headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. This is a person who I have met in person and has threatened suicide at least once before. It could have been very easy for me to brush this off as yet another attempt to grab attention and to not take his threat seriously, but someone who recently lost his brother to suicide pointed out any threat should be taken seriously:

"Attention or not, you have to treat every threat as if it is a REAL threat. Someone needs to act on this." - A. Tobias Tenney

I continued to watch as people expressed concern for him, explained to others his history as best they could and read as multiple people called 911 to report him. After contacting both San Francisco Police Department and California Highway Patrol that night I was able to verify that he was in custody and getting the help he needed.

Afterwards I started to consider how people reacted to his threat and how the public method that he threatened suicide with affected those who read it. Did Twitter have some responsibility to have a method in place so others could have alerted the authorities more easily and effectively? There are enough similarities between Twitter and Radio and Television broadcasters that they could offer insight on how social media could or maybe should respond to suicide threats and suicides. But has Twitter or any other social media service ever reached out for that experience?

When comparing social media and broadcasters the similarities may be easy to see, but the differences are not as simple to explain as you might think. Especially in how they respond to suicidal threats and suicides. First it depends if you consider social media to be a part of the media or not; if the ethical or industry standards from journalism should be applied. Does the person who is using the social media service consider these issues when they are creating content which would include commenting or reposting material from someone else? For example if someone retweets a message that someone has threatened suicide that could have an effect because suicide is considered to be a contagion (see sidebar). At the same time, suicide prevention professionals are having to adjust their outreach to the media to include social / new media services. A recent summit organized by two such groups discussed some of these issues and is resulting in a change to their media guidelines on how to report on suicide.

The coverage of suicides by broadcasters can be described as a public - private dichotomy. Mr. Stacey Woelfel, Chairman of The Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), explained that broadcasters generally do not cover suicides as spot news (unexpected news that is reported on the spot), but this does change if the person involved is a public figure or if the suicide happened in a public place.

Woelfel recounted an incident that took place on January 22, 1987 where Treasurer of Pennsylvania Budd Dwyer called a press conference to comment on his recent conviction of taking bribes. He went on to explain that for Treasurer Dwyer to call a conference was very unusual as he had a rocky relationship with the press. During the conference Mr. Dwyer pulled a handgun from an envelope after making a public statement and then he fatally shot himself. The press that were in attendance captured his death by suicide in a series of audio, video and still photographs which included live coverage from the local PBS affiliate. Due to a recent snow storm many school children who were out of school witnessed the suicide live on television. That coverage started a series of debates within the journalism profession on how to cover suicides.

For operators of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook or MySpace a debate on how to respond seems to be mostly absent or hidden from the public's view. Due to the high volume of content in each service, the rights of free speech and the difficulties in talking about suicide there is a large amount of inertia to fight against to address suicide in social media. But consider that cases of child abuse are dealt with rather quickly and effectively by most social media services after it has been brought to their attention. How is the welfare of one person over another more important due to the person's age?

If it is difficult for people to come forward to talk about suicides what about automatically monitoring for such behavior? That isn't necessarily the answer and not just for the freedom of speech concerns that it brings up, but very practical points as well. During the 1998 Winter Olympics Diane Pozefsky, IBM Fellow and professor at UNC, was part of the team that deployed the computer network at Nagano. One thing they had put into place was filters that would trigger alerts if an email contained certain words - like "bomb". This resulted in a flood of false alerts due to the phrase "da bomb" being used in many of the emails. This was a popular phrase at the time used to show that something was outstanding. You can imagine that would be a very common phrase as family, friends and fans sent emails to athletes competing in the Winter Olympics - maybe even more so if you remember that snowboarding debuted at '98 Olympics.

With the various issues involved with adding automation I asked professor Pozefsky about adding a method to verify people who are trained as suicide prevention counselors that could step in when needed. Twitter recently started verifying accounts - user accounts where they have verified that it belongs to a public figure. What if they started verifying accounts of professional groups like crisis counselors?

"the idea of having the right people, is very interesting" - Diane Pozeksy

May 6th, 2009 in Washington DC the Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN USA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) invited key people involved with suicide prevention and social media to their summit called: "Suicide Prevention and New Media: An Action Planning Summit to Save Lives". One thing that came out of the summit was the plan to revise the media guidelines to address social medial. Talking with Eileen Zeller, M.P.H. and Richard McKeon, Ph.D. from SAMHSA they explained the issues they face in taking guidelines that are meant for journalists and not only apply them to citizen journalists and bloggers, but also how to get their message out and educate people on how to discuss suicide. Suicide is a difficult issue to talk about in person and it can be difficult for people to know how best to proceed, but social media is helping to break down that barrier.

I had tried repeatedly to reach someone at either Twitter or Facebook to discuss their policies on this issue and get answers to my first set of questions:

• Do you have a policy or have plans for a policy on how to respond to suicidal threats or suicides from people using your service?
• Do you see yourself to be responsible to act in certain circumstances due to the actions of your users like those threatening to commit suicide?
• Has there ever been or is there any planned outreach to other professional organizations like the American Association of Suicidology or broadcasters?
• Would you consider a person who has repeatedly threatened suicide harassment of other users due to the potential emotional stress placed on them a violation of your Terms Of Service?

Neither responded to my questions in the four times I tried to contact them. They never took the opportunity to discuss their position and I never had the chance to explore it.

After that I did email Automattic to get a response from the people behind WordPress, Matt Mullenweg (founder of Automattic & WordPress) did send me a very short (seven word) response to my first email to them. After replying that I was looking for a little more information than that to my questions he responded one last time with a little more information that included the following:

"It sounded like you had already written the article and wanted people to fill in the blanks, which most people tend to shy away from. (Not saying you have, that just was the impression.) We've all been burnt by sensationalists. We don't have a PR firm or marketing people, so I tend to be blunter about things." - Matt Mullenweg

(Automattic has received over $30 Million in funding. 08/13/2009)

While Social Media services might not want to be seen actively playing a hand in monitoring it's users to not give the impression of playing "big brother", it is involved with suicide prevention. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, has a channel on YouTube and both Facebook and MySpace attended the Suicide Prevention and New Media summit in May.

A meeting that will address some of the points brought up in that summit will be held at The Annenberg School of Public Policy in Philadelphia later this month. Called Media Recommendations V2.0 it will cover updating the media guidelines to include social media with the results being published as soon as they are completed. When they are published I will explore their changes and will again try to get a response from Twitter and Facebook.

"I instantly realized that everything in my life that I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable-except for having just jumped." - Ken Baldwin recounts his suicide attempt by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge in the New Yorker article Jumpers by Tad Friend.

Suicide is a serious issue that in 2006 was the cause of death for 33,300 people and included over half a million emergency room visits for self-inflicted injuries. If you find yourself or someone else you know in need of help remember the above words of Mr. Baldwin. There are people out there that not only can help you - they want to help you. You can reach a person at one of their 130 crisis centers by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255).