Dear Colleagues,



We’ve been here before and we find ourselves here again. The cultural firestorm that is gaining traction in the popular presses and academia surrounding the Netflix TV series, 13 Reasons Why, is, unfortunately, being linked to broader media effects models, models which many of us in media and cultural studies would surely note as egregious and lacking in nuance, especially in relation to decades of media audience research. One brief example will suffice for now to contextualise the debate. Consider the BBC Radio programme (and podcast), The Media Show, a recent edition of which included a segment on the controversy anchored to a growing concern from mental health campaigners that “Netflix is acting irresponsibly” by depicting protagonist, Hannah Baker, killing herself. One of the fears here is that Ofcom regulations do not apply to Netflix (the same could, of course, be said of US subscription services, such as HBO and Showtime, which are not bound by network codes of conduct and practices) and that this permits a streaming service to breach boundaries of (moral)  representation. The show interviews Ged Flynn, Chief Executive of Papyrus, “a charity that seeks to prevent suicide among young people”. Said Flynn: “If you show graphic images of suicide you risk simulative acts [or] for want of a better term, potential copy-cat behaviour”.



In this light, it would be relatively easy to provide Flynn and others with a detailed literature review of the ways that this has been debunked and demystified from within the media and cultural studies discipline, especially extant research into media audiences. One of Flynn’s concerns is that 13 Reasons Why represents suicide in a “sensationalist, romanticised way”. As we all know, media audiences interpret, respond to, and use, media in a variety of complex and complicated ways, but the way in which this discourse is framed only functions if audiences are homogenous and passive receivers of media ‘messages’. (Martin Barker rightly explained that media texts are not ‘message-vehicles’ joy-riding into the  brain of the 'suggestible' viewer/ reader.)



When asked if “there is any evidence or research that would suggest that this could push vulnerable teens to suicide”, Flynn responds in the affirmative: “Most of your listeners will remember Bridgend in South Wales; there was a number of young suicides that Papyrus was heavily involved in…and when we asked for a global cessation of coverage, the number of suicides reduced significantly and then stopped”. However, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), available data tell us that this is problematic; the suicide rate in Bridgend actually went up following the cessation of journalistic coverage in the years 2010 – 13, and, although the numbers have dropped in 2012 – 14, they are now on the rise again in 2013 – 2015 (the most recent stats available). (Interested scholars can consult Ann Luce’s book, The Bridgend Suicides: Suicide and the Media, for further study.) What this example illustrates is that the current model of effects within suicidology simply cannot withstand scrutiny. For if the Bridgend suicides did not 'stop' or even reduce suicide rates in simplistic terms following the cessation of journalistic reporting, then the casual link between the two cannot hold. Indeed, it would certainly seem, at the very least, to throw a spanner in the works. (As an aside, suicide rates decreased following the highly publicized suicide of Kurt Cobain).



This is puzzling, but once we started trawling the literature in suicidology, a worrying trend emerges. That the publication of a seminal article 42 years ago (‘The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: Substantive and Theoretical Implications of the Werther Effect’, David P. Phillips, 1974) has become a cornerstone of the field and has led to over 100 studies ‘proving’ a direct causal link between media reportage and suicide rates (Phillips, 1974. Described by the author as ‘the Werther Effect’, the basic gist is that “a media stimulus” – in this case, media reports of suicide but we could extend that to include entertainment media – demonstrates a causal link as “the transmission of a health state” (Pirkis, 2009: 269). There isn’t space to tease out the problems with the research and the huge imaginative leaps by the author, but this can be summed up in the following way: ‘We know that the Werther Effect is real: depictions of suicide in the news and entertainment media can undoubtedly lead to imitative behaviours, as evidenced by statistically significant increases in completed and attempted suicide rates” (Pirkis, 2009: 270). What this tells us from the off, is that the fields of media/ cultural studies and suicidology are at loggerheads and that it has become urgent for a dialogue to take place between practitioners and researchers in both arenas.



To that end, we are designing an audience project that aims to capture responses to 13 Reasons Why and hope to engage suicidologists in a democratic debate about these important and sensitive issues. We all agree that scholars in the field of suicidology are conducting vital work and that their primary aim is towards the prevention of suicide. But the enormous gulf between scholars in disparate fields is one that we would like to draw together.



We have a team of six researchers, but would like to ask for a scholar to join us who has the skills and tools for social media scraping and statistical analysis.



Many thanks for taking the time to read this and we hope that you agree that research into audiences of 13 Reasons Why is both necessary and urgent.



Yours sincerely,



William Proctor, Bournemouth University
Richard McCulloch, Huddersfield University
Ann Luce, Bournemouth University
Lesley-Ann Dickson, Queen Margaret’s University
Billur Aslan, Royal Holloway University of London
Shelley Galpin, York University



 Dr. William Proctor

Lecturer in Media, Culture and Communication
Director of 'The World Star Wars Project.'
Co-Director of 'The Game of Thrones Audiences Project.'
Co-Director of 'Transmedia Earth.'
The School of Journalism, English and Communication
Bournemouth University
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Poole
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