Searching for suicide-related information on Chinese websites
Journal
Psychiatry Research
Journal Volume
258
Pages
506-510
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Abstract
Growing concerns about cyber-suicide have prompted many studies on suicide information available on the web. However, very few studies have considered non-English websites. We aimed to analyze online suicide-related information accessed through Chinese-language websites. We used Taiwan's two most popular search engines (Google and Yahoo) to explore the results returned from six suicide-related search terms in March 2016. The first three pages listing the results from each search were analyzed and rated based on the attitude towards suicide (pro-suicide, anti-suicide, neutral/mixed, not a suicide site, or error). Comparisons across different search terms were also performed. In all, 375 linked webpages were included; 16.3% of the webpages were pro-suicide and 41.3% were anti-suicide. The majority of the pro-suicide sites were user-generated webpages (96.7%). Searches using the keywords ‘ways to kill yourself’ (31.7%) and ‘painless suicide’ (28.3%) generated much larger numbers of harmful webpages than the term ‘suicide’ (4.3%). We conclude that collaborative efforts with internet service providers and search engines to improve the ranking of anti-suicide webpages and websites and implement online suicide reporting guidelines are highly encouraged. ? 2017 Elsevier B.V.
Subjects
Chinese; Cyber-suicide; Internet; Pro-suicide; Suicide; Taiwan
Other Subjects
access to information; Article; attitude to mental illness; Chinese; comparative study; information service; Internet; online analysis; online system; priority journal; search engine; software; suicide; Taiwan; web browser; attitude; human; language; search engine; statistics and numerical data; Attitude; Humans; Internet; Language; Search Engine; Suicide; Taiwan
Publisher
Elsevier Ireland Ltd
Type
journal article