A Growing Sense of Alienation: Spirals of Silence and Suppression of Structural Circumstances of Suicide in News

Abstract

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States. Global safe reporting guidelines for news reports of suicide intend to mitigate associations of increased suicide incidence and stigma. However, recent research suggests more latent patterns in news beyond the guidelines could still contribute to suicide outcomes such as inhibited help-seeking and isolation. Using the Theory of Spiral of Silence to center isolation, we take a mixed-methods approach to analyze 22,021 articles (2020-2024) and use a zero-shot learning large language model (LLM) classifier to detect suppression of four structural circumstances of suicide: financial/job, legal, school, and access to physical/mental healthcare. We find that circumstance disclosure by news publishers diverges by political leaning, financial (p = 0.016), legal (p < 0.001), and school (p < 0.001); and by regionality, legal (p < 0.001) and health (p < 0.001). We qualify mechanisms of suppression using topic modeling and content sharing networks (CSNs). The spiral of silence lens highlights that left leaning publishers are more likely to disclose systemically or socially collective circumstances. In contrast, right leaning outlets suppress those and instead disclose instances that blame individuals for their experiences. Our work highlights how news reporting can downplay structural factors contributing to suicide. Content Warning: This paper discusses suicide deaths reported in news articles and may be sensitive to readers.