新聞報道におけるいじめと自殺の関係—「大津いじめ自殺」事件記事の時系列内容分析

Relationships between Bullying and Suicide as Described in Newspapers: Time-series content analyses of news reports for the case of “Otsu bullying-related suicide”

抄録

　「いじめ自殺」報道の特徴と影響を検討するため，大津いじめ自殺事件報道の時系列内容分析を行った。新聞データベースより抽出した報道記事362件を対象とし，作成基準で記事を評価し時期ごとに分類・比較した。また本件報道と自殺者数・いじめ認知件数の関連を検討した。その結果，報道過熱時はいじめの手段・場所が自殺よりも詳細に報じられていた。報道過熱年の未成年自殺者は前年とほぼ同数であった一方，同年のいじめ認知件数は前年比2.8倍に急増した。「いじめ自殺」の事件報道では，いじめの詳細が強調され，報道による群発自殺増加（ウェルテル効果）よりも，事件の責任者追及（スケープゴーティング現象）が顕著に観察されることが分かった。

　Introduction：A case of bullying-related suicide of a male junior high-school student from October 2011 in Japan was repeatedly and robustly reported by mass media. To evaluate the media effects of reporting bullying-related suicide, we conducted time-series content analyses of the newspaper reports of the case.

　Methods：We collected 362 articles from two newspaper databases using the search terms of “suicide” and “Otsu city.” Next, we investigated the following items from these articles：date of each article, article length, real-name reporting, insertion of photographs of the corpse, privacy protection of the bereaved family, descriptions of suicide motives, information related to suicide support and prevention, information related to bullying support and prevention, descriptions of the scene details for the suicide, and descriptions of bullying scenes. The obtained data were sorted by time series and evaluated.

　Results：When the media interest heated up, the bullying scenes were reported more concretely than were the suicide scenes (p＜0.001, sign test). Although the annual number of suicidal youths with school problems remained almost unchanged in 2012, the annual number of bullying cases was about three times higher in 2012 than it was in 2011.

　Conclusion：We found that the details of bullying rather than those of suicide tend to be emphasized, and the scapegoat phenomenon is more remarkably observed than the Werther effect is in reports of bullying-related suicide.