[Air-l] mtg. Wednesday

[Greg Elmer]

Do you have something for me to read over for Wednesday? Do you still want to meet?
-Greg

Greg Elmer, PhD
Bell Globemedia Research Chair
Director, Infoscape Research Lab, www.infoscapelab.ca
Rogers Communications Centre/School of Radio-TV Arts 
Ryerson University
350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario
Canada      M5B 2K3

416-979-5282
_______________________________________________
Co-Editor, 
Space and Culture: An International Journal of Social Spaces
http://www.carleton.ca/space/

----- Original Message -----
From: Yukari Seko <yukaseko at yorku.ca>
Date: Thursday, January 18, 2007 2:02 am
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Japanese suicide reference
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org

> Dear Dr. Chris,
> 
> I cannot help but replying you since it is the very topic I am 
> currently working
> on for my master's thesis!!
> 
> Since the first online suicide was "scooped" by Mainichi news paper 
> in December
> 2002, several group suicides have been reported by the media and 
> graduallyknown as "Net Shinju (Net Group Suicide)"
> The biggest case was happened in October 2004 in which 7 people who 
> only met on
> a suicide-related discussion board took their life together.
> 
> The followings are English article featuring on the incident;
> http://english.aljazeera.net/news/archive/archive?ArchiveId=7207
> http://www.pimejapan.com/society/articolo_13102004a.htm
> 
> Since I used to work with the journalist Tetsuya Shibui reported in 
> thesearticles, I personally knew some of those who committed online 
> suicides through
> him. Shibui's ethnographical works on Net group suicide are (albeit
> journalistic) the best resources for this issue. Unfortunately, 
> Englishtranslation of his books are yet unavailable, but I'm using 
> the followings for
> my thesis by translating them;
> 
> Shibui, T. (2005). Net Group Suicide: Why "Maria" Chose to Die.
> Tokyo;Shinkigen-sha
> --------(2004). Net Group Suicide. Tokyo;NHK publications
> 
> However, I personally disagree with the perspective that online 
> suicide appears
> to be "a frightening increase in the number of group suicides 
> arranged over the
> Internet through chat rooms dedicated to discussing suicide."  
> Apparentlyvigorous documentations in the media have informed 
> suicidal people a less
> violent way of killing themselves (death of carbon monoxide with 
> charcoalburners) and brought several copy-cat cases, but in some 
> occasions, the same
> online interactions help suicidal people to change their mind. This 
> type of
> grass-roots support is something absent from their offline life. 
> Although the
> number of online suicides is quite small, suicide-related websites are
> increasingly removed from webspace. The growing regulation of suicidal
> discourses in Japanese cyberspace is what I want to investigate in 
> next few
> years...
> 
> Hope it helps,
> 
> Yukari Seko
> 
> -- 
> M.A. candidate
> Joint Programme in Communication and Culture Studies
> Between York/Ryerson Universities
> Comcult GSA Webmaster (York)
> http://www.yorku.ca/cocugsa/
> yukaseko at yorku.ca
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