Suicide-Related Groups and School Shooting Fan Communities on Social Media: A Network Analysis

Abstract

As network structure of virtual communities related to suicide and school shooting still remains unaddressed in scientific literature, we employed basic demographics analysis and social network analysis (SNA) to show common features, as well as distinct facets in the communities’ structure and their followers’ network. Open and publicly accessible data of over 16,000 user accounts were collected with a social media monitoring system. Results showed that adolescents and young adults were the main audience of suicide-related and school shooting fan communities. List of blocked virtual groups related to school shooting was more extensive than that of suicide, which indicates a high radicalization degree of school shooting virtual groups. The homogeneity of followers’ interests was more typical for subscribers of suicide-related communities. A social network analysis showed that followers of school shooting virtual groups were closely interconnected with their peers, and their network was monolithic, while followers of suicide-related virtual groups were fragmented into numerous communities, so presence of a giant connected component in their network can be questioned. We consider our results highly relevant for better understanding the network aspects of virtual information existence, harmful information spreading, and its potential impact on society.