A case study design

The current project takes the research design of a case study (Yin, 2003) which primarily looks at the emergence and evolution of the Bridgend suicide problem in the British national press in the two-year period between 2008 and 2009. The case study researcher does not always aim to study cases that are extreme or extraordinary but to provide an apt context for certain research questions to be answered (Bryman, 2012). As Best (2003) points out with regard to the study of different social problems, researchers do not need to study satanic ritual abuse to advance knowledge; they can still do so by offering an in-depth analysis of their chosen topic, no matter how mundane that might be.

My selection of the Bridgend case as a research topic was based on my conviction that it constituted a matter of great importance, which deserved to be studied in its own right: its seriousness was almost self-evident, since it involved the sudden deaths of more than twenty young people in the South Wales area. As explained in Chapter One, the spatio-temporal clustering of suicides is not an unusual phenomenon and there have

been numerous studies looking at different suicide clusters around the world (Tousignant et al., 2005; Cheng et al., 2007; Exeter and Boyle, 2007; Gould et al., 2014; Ueda, 2014).

As a case study of suicide clustering, the Bridgend phenomenon may indeed not be so extraordinary, but this does not mean that an in-depth analysis of the way it developed and the social factors that potentially contributed to it like that offered by Jones et al.

(2013) is insignificant. This thesis will add to the examination of the local suicide problem and consider the 2008 local incidents within the wider socio-economic context of Bridgend, but only for contextual purposes. Its main focus will be the news coverage of the relevant events and the construction of the Bridgend problem by the national press and that is precisely where its originality lies. The Bridgend suicides may have been common as a case study of suicide clustering, but as a media phenomenon constitute a case study of unique empirical value. The issue was widely covered in the news. It was not a one-off case, but one whose ‘media life’ extended over several months, generating plenty of follow-up stories. Moreover, it was an exceptional case not just in terms of the way in which the local suicides were reported in the press, but most importantly in terms of the questions it raised in journalistic circles over the professional standards surrounding the reporting of such delicate situations. The element of media reflexivity and specifically the dual role of journalists as both constructors of and possible contributors to the local problem differentiated Bridgend from the average suicide story;

it rendered Bridgend an empirically rich case whose analysis would offer an in-depth understanding of media responsibility in relation to suicide coverage.

It needs to be acknowledged that as a case study my project is self-contained and not concerned with generalizability (Bryman, 2012). My findings are intrinsically related to the Bridgend events appearing in the news in the 2008-2009 period, which means that it would in all probability be inappropriate to view them as directly applicable anywhere outside this specific temporal and geographical context. Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that the Bridgend case constitutes a media phenomenon that goes beyond Bridgend. In the post-Leveson era, the issue of media responsibility is more pressing than ever. The discussion of the Bridgend suicides during the Leveson Inquiry attests to the broader significance of this particular case in the field of suicide reporting.

The Bridgend case has clear policy implications relating to the way in which media professionals and the new press regulator will handle similar sensitive cases in the future.

Consequently, the current study undoubtedly has much to contribute to future research on suicide reporting as a media practice and on social problems construction.

Due to its media focus, my thesis is not based on primary suicide research, but on a secondary-level analysis of suicide news reports; yet, the sensitivities related to suicide as a subject matter are present in it all the same. Fincham et al. (2008) underline the emotional toll that working with disturbing secondary data can often take on researchers.

They argue that, despite the distance separating them from those directly affected and that they knowingly enter the research process with some expectation of what they might find, there is a high likelihood that researchers also experience a considerable amount of distress as a result of their contact with death-related material. Their argument refers to the study of suicide files in a coroner’s office, but my personal encounter with the Bridgend-related articles suggests that this is also valid for suicide news stories. By saying this, it is hardly my intention to equate my experience of suicide in the context of this project to that of people who knew the victims or who were actively involved in the subsequent inquests into their deaths, for example, coroners or police officers. Such a comparison would be inappropriate, to say the least. My actual point is that the emotions surrounding suicide as a social event are so strong that they inevitably pervade any attempt to make sense of it, be it on a familial, official or academic, primary or secondary level. After all, the researcher is, as aptly pointed out by Fincham et al. (2008), also part of a late modern culture which marginalises death and denies suffering. Within this culture, suicide is considered a taboo topic. Even if deliberate and well-organised, the study of suicide reports, which usually comes down to reading about the victims’

hopeless lives, their emotional turmoil and the pain of the grieving families, is, according to the aforementioned authors, likely to bring researchers before their own distress and to make them more aware of their own mortality. I consider this to be an accurate account of my engagement with the Bridgend-related articles for the purposes of this research, especially given the high number and the young age of victims, which rendered the analysis even more disturbing.

What helped me cope with the distressing nature of my research topic was my conviction that such a study of suicide reporting was absolutely necessary and that there were a lot of lessons to be learnt from the Bridgend experience. As already mentioned, journalists are nowadays not mere constructors of powerful suicide narratives aiming to sell more papers. They are much more actively involved not just in explaining, but even in causing, or, at least, triggering the problem. Researchers like Hawton and Williams (2001) and Pirkis et al. (2009) acknowledge that modification of suicide reporting could make an actual difference in the field of suicide prevention. In fact, it is argued that,

unlike other contributory factors to suicide such as socio-economic deprivation, mental health conditions or heredity, journalists’ attitude towards the subject can easily change and that is precisely where the significance of suicide reporting lies (Hawton and Williams, 2001). Consequently, the value of a study on the latter, and, correspondingly, on any risks or benefits deriving from it, is not limited to a theoretical analysis of the corresponding discourse. Apart from looking more closely at how media representations of the matter can affect public understandings of and policy responses to it, such a study can also have a positive influence on distressed and susceptible individuals, whose lives are at stake. The analysis of the Bridgend coverage in this thesis aims to contribute to this end by influencing future suicide reporting; particularly, by illustrating, through the case in question, what journalists need to do, or, in most cases, to abstain from doing, so as to report suicide responsibly and therefore not to push those at risk over the edge.

The present project is, to a large extent, consistent with Cohen’s (2002 [1972]) disaster analogy and, more specifically, with his ‘warning-impact-reaction’ model. It documents how the initial warnings about the Bridgend matter were missed only to appear much later in the national British press due to certain events of exceptional newsworthiness; how each new suicide in the area was made sense of in the context of all the preceding incidents; how this conception of the problem amplified the level of the perceived threat, consequently intensifying the degree of public concern and the calls for action; finally, how this concern translated into policy. On a horizontal level, my thesis studies the transition of the Bridgend case across the different stages of the social problems process (Best, 2008). On a vertical level, it looks at the different themes pervading this process and forming the frames through which the local suicides are explained.

In my research, I have adopted a mixed methods approach, which is primarily based on the qualitative analysis of the collected data, since this is, according to Kral et al.

(2012), the most suitable to provide a substantive understanding of the complexity of suicide. Particularly, in order to examine the nature and social implications of the constructed Bridgend problem, I have employed the following research methods:

 Qualitative or ethnographic content analysis and

 In-depth interviews.

However, before justifying my choice of methods and discussing any further what each of them consists in, it is necessary to first specify the criteria which data collection was based on.