AUDIENCE RECEPTIVENESS, THE MEDIA, AND AGED SUICIDE, 19664980 STEVEN STACK* Wayne State University ABSTRACT: zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The literature on imitative suicides has been marked by poor theory, including the neglect of the concept of audience responsiveness. Drawing from a symbolic interactionist perspective, the present paper incorporates Blumer’s con- cept of audience receptivity. It takes the elderly as the social age group apt to be most receptive to publicized suicide stories, given their suicidogenic life circum- stances such as economic strains, social isolation, and physical illness. Time series techniques are applied to national data on monthly suicide rates and televised publicized news stories on suicide. Months with publicized suicides are found to have 10 additional elderly suicides (mean elderly monthly suicides is 369). The imitative suicide effect was increased to 19 suicides when the analysis was re- stricted to stories about elderly suicides, a finding that suggests age identification in imitative suicide. Further analysis found an effect for both females and males, in spite of lower suicidal behavior associated with the aged female role. Nonce- lebrity suicide stories were unrelated, however, to elderly suicide. The suggestion effects were independent of changes in unemployment and season. INTRODUCTION In spite of the fact that the elderly have the highest suicide rate of any age group, there has been relatively little work on the subject of elderly suicide, compared to the substantial attention paid to youth suicide (Miller 1979; Osgood and McIntosh 1986). The significance of elderly suicide as a public health problem is, in addition, increasing. While research based on data through the 1970s illustrated a decline in aged suicide rates (e.g. Manton et al 1987; Marshall 1978; McIntosh 1984, 1985), elderly suicide rates have been increasing in the 1980s in the US (Gottschalk 1986) *Direct all correspondence to: Steven Stack, Department of Sociology, W ayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA JOURNAL OF AGING STUDIES, Volume 4, Number 2, pages 195-209 Copyright 0 1990 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0890-4065.