Over the past six weeks or so, the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why, has swiftly become a hot topic. Primarily focusing on the showās frank portrayal of suicide, a cacophony of frantic voices have been given prime space in the media, many of which accuse the seriesā producers for peddling ādangerousā and āharmfulā material; for āglamourizingā, āromanticizingā and/ or āsensationalisingā the way in which protagonist, Hannah Baker, takes her own life. āThere is a great amount of concern in the suicide prevention community around this seriesā, , executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE). āYoung people are not that great at separating fiction from realityā, says Reidenberg, and āā.
Australian mental health organisation, , publically condemned the show for containing ādangerous contentā. Speaking to claimed that āirresponsible reporting can lead to further deathā and that 13 Reasons Why could spark off a āsuicide contagionā, especially among children and teens. This kind of āsuggestion-imitationā model has been feted, celebrated and well and truly discredited. So-called ācopy cat behaviourā has not only become a shorthand way of describing oneās own fears and anxieties, it has been thoroughly debunked.
The idea that fictional representations of suicide, especially those that depict method, can be directly linked to rising national suicide rates is worrisome. As usual in cases of moral panic, expert voices have been given a bullhorn with which to shout highly emotional warnings using bald language that reproduces a rhetoric of fear, risk and harm (which is not a new phenomenon, of course). These experts come armed with āresearchā on their side, proof that the danger is real (usually without informing audiences where this research can be found). Furthermore, within the cognate fields of film, television, journalism, media and cultural studies, these kinds of arguments have been undermined, time and time again. (Interested readers can check out or )
On the , the Hunter Institute of Mental Health claim that āmore than 100 international studies have been conducted looking at the link between media reporting and suicideā. That certainly seems to be unequivocal. However, what the website doesnāt say is that within the field of psychology ā and, by extension, other cognate disciplines ā there is no consensus nor consistency on these important issues; that is to say, the field is more akin to a battleground than a peace process. ()
, Mortality, for instance, James B. Hittner emphasises that āa number of studies have reported positive associations between mass media portrayals of suicide and actual suicide rates, [but] these studies have been criticised on both methodological and statistical groundsā. Additionally, much of the extant research relies on what which I am particularly interested in how Ofcom included terms about imitative behaviour and how this was arrived at (I wonāt go into the problems with this research here, but, instead, refer interested readers to Ann Luceās The Bridgend Suicides: Suicide and the Media (2016) for a robust debunking of the relationship between media reports and suicide rates.)
More than this, however, astute readers will no doubt have noticed an enormous elephant thudding across the room.
These studies, with their methodological problems and statistical mysticism, are about the way in which journalistic media reports on real cases of suicide, not fictional representations. Yet there are many āexpertsā criticising Netflix for not following broadcasting and reporting standards, be it Ofcom, the Editor's Code of Practice or the . 13 Reasons Why is not, nor does it claim to be, non-fictional reportage.
Although the Mindframe website does provide hyper-links to extant research, those links actually raise a series of issues in relation to fictional representations of suicide. clearly state that the evidence is not only inconsistent, but that āthe evidence has been relatively weakā. Moreover, that āit is probably not the case that the association could yet be described as causalā.
In effect, by failing to inform the public of contradictory findings, certain experts are acting in fundamentally dishonest ways.
Rather than 13 Reasons Why being āsensationalistā, then, the way in which these kinds of voices are given prime space across global media news platforms has all the hallmarks of a traditional moral panic and runs the risk of being even more āsensationalā. By reporting on the outrage emanating from the suicide prevention community (mental health campaigners, charities and psychologists) and, in the process, excluding other voices, is surely a cause for concern. It is not 13 Reasons Why that is āsensationalisedā, but the way in which media outlets are latching onto the āsensationalistā claims of a small portion of āexpertsā. Simply put, there is no scholarly consensus in either the field of psychology or suicidology. In other fields, especially media and cultural studies, the discipline has largely moved on from this kind of simplistic āeffectsā model.
In fact, there are serious problems with these highly vaunted claims that may cause more harm than a Netflix series ever could. What does issuing anxious statements and writing letters to parents cautioning against viewing the series hope to achieve, such as that written by the NASP (National Association of School Psychologists)?
āWe do not recommend that vulnerable youth, especially those who have any degree of suicidal ideation, watch this series. Its powerful storytelling may lead impressionable viewers to romanticize the choices made by the characters and/or develop revenge fantasies. They may easily identify with the experiences portrayed and recognize both the intentional and unintentional effects on the central characterā.
Not only are these kinds of statements largely based in superstition (of copy catting), they are irresponsible and unsubstantiated. (Readers may be interested in thorough debunking of the thorny concept of āidentificationā.) Besides this, actively castigating a series as verboten has been demonstrated to have an antithetical affect (although there is also research that āprovesā the contrary, too, such is the psychology field). That is to say, that the āforbidden fruit effect theoryā posits that . Following this logic, then, are campaigners inadvertently promoting 13 Reasons Why as forbidden fruit?
Decades of research tell us that media audiences are not passive receivers but use, interpret, and resist āmedia messagesā in a variety of ways: āpeople do not indiscriminately absorb every media message, rather they interpret what they hear and see in the context both of what they already know and what they learn from other sourcesā.
To address this directly, I am one of seven researchers leading a large-scale project that investigates media audiences of Netflixās 13 Reasons Why. We shall be releasing an online questionnaire in the next few weeks and will continue to examine the way in which news stories frame the fears and anxieties of campaigners and researchers that seem to be more about rhetoric than data. We also intend on conversing with academics from a wide range of disciplines with a view towards building a dialogue between psychologists, journalists, mental health campaigners and media scholars. By scapegoating media and amplifying the rhetoric of harm as legitimate and beyond doubt (as moral campaigners invariably do) constructs an alarmist narrative, when what is really needed is a rational, reasonable and democratic conversation. We do need to talk about suicide, but rather than demonise a Netflix TV series, perhaps our efforts would be best by speaking to one another, regardless of the academic discipline each of us belongs to.
By Dr William Proctor.
13 Reasons Why Project Research Team
Dr. William Proctor (Ā鶹“«Ć½)
Dr. Richard McCulloch (University of Huddersfield)
Dr. Ann Luce (Ā鶹“«Ć½)
Dr. Lesley-Ann Dickson (Queen Margaretās University)
Dr. Helena-Dare Edwards (University of East Anglia)
Dr. Billur Aslan (Royal Holloway University of London)
