Social Media & Behavioral Contagion: Do Celebrity Suicides trigger Copycat Suicides?


Speaker


Abstract

Prior studies have suggested that widely publicized celebrity suicides often lead to an increase in copy-cat suicides. This is also known as the Werther effect. Given the prevalent use of social media, social-media based conversations after the suicide of a celebrity create significant buzz and generate publicity. However, whether the Werther effect can be caused by social-media conversations on celebrity suicides remains an empirical question. In this study, we test this effect by examining whether and how social media impacts copy-cat suicides using a data set collected from Twitter.