While most extant studies have suggested that the Werther effect can be found via news and electronic media, whether books would have a similarly independent role on suicide suggestion remains unknown. Based on the Google Books N-gram corpus, we constructed the first macro-level index of suicides via books (ISB) and examined the potential association between ISB and actual completed suicides in the United States between 1950 and 2000. To rule out the possible influence of alternative mass media, we construct relevant measures by using the New York Times corpus and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The results from Granger causality test reveals that suicides in nonfiction rather than fiction books significantly predict actual suicide rates during the second half of the twentieth century, extensively controlling for suicides in other media as well as context factors. With such novel application of massive content analysis using data of unprecedented size, we contribute to the extant literature not only by adding to our understandings of the important role of media in shaping the process of suicide contagion but also the dynamics of suicidal behavior and the relevant cultural trends that may not be adequately measured with traditional social science methods.

尽管大多数现有研究表明，可以通过新闻和电子媒体发现维特效应，但书籍在自杀建议中是否具有类似的独立作用仍然未知。我们基于Google图书的N-gram语料库，构建了第一个通过图书进行的自杀的宏观指标（ISB），并研究了1950年至2000年间ISB与美国实际完成的自杀之间的潜在关联。在替代大众媒体的影响下，我们使用《纽约时报》语料库和“互联网电影数据库”（IMDb）构建相关措施。格兰杰因果关系检验的结果表明，非小说而非小说书籍中的自杀显着预测了20世纪下半叶的实际自杀率，并广泛控制了其他媒体中的自杀以及上下文因素。通过使用前所未有的规模的数据进行大规模内容分析的这种新颖应用，我们不仅为现有文献做出了贡献，不仅增加了我们对媒体在塑造自杀传染过程中的重要作用的理解，而且还增强了自杀行为的动力学以及相关的知识。传统社会科学方法可能无法充分衡量的文化趋势。