Identifying opportunities to reduce suicide and mental illness stigma in Australian news outlets’ social media posts

New research has identified significant room for improvement in how Australian news organisations portray mental illness and suicide on social media in ways that reduce audience exposure to content that could perpetuate stigma and cause harm.

A systemic search and analysis of 22 Australian media organisations’ Facebook accounts, conducted using Meta’s CrowdTangle database for posts about mental illness or suicide over a 1-year period, identified high levels of unhelpful and potentially harmful content.

The study, conducted by the University of Melbourne in partnership with Everymind and SANE, recommended that media professionals working in social media roles be aware of and trained to use the Mindframe guidelines.

Problematic content and language included sensationalist or stigmatising terms and narratives, trivialising people’s lived and living experiences, and focusing on how individuals’ “suffering”.

“To ensure stigma and other harms are not perpetuated via social platforms, it is important for media and communications professionals who have a social media role to be aware of and trained to use the Mindframe guidelines to ensure that their work aligns with these standards,” the authors concluded.

“Based on the current findings, aligning news social media posts to align with responsible reporting guidelines is not expected to negatively impact on engagement.”

Co-author, Dr Anna Ross of the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health, observed that with social media continuing to grow in popularity as a news source for Australians, portrayal and framing of suicide and mental health concerns was an important aspect for media outlets to consider.

“This study was the first to examine how mental illness and suicide are portrayed on social media by Australian news organisations,” Dr Ross said.

“Our findings show that roughly half of Australian news Facebook posts align with responsible media guidelines – however, problematic content, such as sensationalist or trivialising language and stigmatising quotes, is still prevalent.”

“With social media now the most popular news source for Australians – particularly among younger generations – it’s important that news shared on social platforms aligns with responsible media guidelines to ensure this does not further perpetuate stigma or increase public harms.”

The full paper can be accessed here.