What’s in a name: how language influences our perception of suicide

Communication scientists show that word choice in media reports on suicide has a measurable impact on public opinion. In an empirical study published in Social Science & Medicine , an international team of researchers from the University of Munich, KU Leuven and the Medical University of Vienna show that the specific German word used in media reports of suicides has a measurable impact on how readers perceive and evaluate the act of suicide. The impact of newspaper reports. The authors recruited 451 individuals for the web-based study and divided them into three groups. The participants read short newspaper reports on suicides, which differed from one another only in the German word used to refer to the act itself - Suizid , Selbstmord ('self-murder') or Freitod ('free death). The texts given to members of each group used only one of these terms. Participants were then asked to summarise the content of what they'd read in their own words and to fill in the blanks in a word puzzle designed to test implicit memory.