Ferreday Online Suicide

Reading Disorders: Online Suicide and the Death of Hope by Debra Ferreday examines suicide in media. She starts her literary work by giving insight to the Abraham Biggs and “Bridgend suicide cult” cases. She then discusses the fears surrounding online suicide that could lead to “the death of hope” in media. Next, she criticizes Abigail Bray’s article that describes “reading disorders” and how online relationships connect with social media. Ferreday argues in her article that “reading disorders” inhibits our ways of hopeful thinking through media, which dismisses the potential of digital media on building connections. Most of Ferreday’s article is dense, which make it hard for readers to comprehend the main ideas of this literary work. Reading through this article was difficult due to the organization and diction of the article.

Starting the article with two accounts of suicide in the media was a captivating way to engage the audience because it grabs readers’ attention and brings real-world experience to her article. However, examining each case on respects to her argument makes readers become lost in translation and lose focus. This creates a distraction for readers to continue reading to the end of the article. On page 416 of the article, the first mention of “reading disorders” appears. The true definition of a “reading disorder” was not defined properly. This make it harder for readers to understand Ferreday due to the lack of understanding of what a “reading disorder” is in context of her argument. She supports her statements by using different sources as supporting evidence. The random transition between the different sources to support her argument aids in creating confusion for readers as well as lack of drive to read this literary work to completion. The structure of the article determines the easiness of comprehension of the main