Suicide is an ever-present and contested topic. Suicide has been historically punished, shunned,
and stigmatized. Discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation has been offloaded to different
institutions with varying degrees of success. The present day, however, boasts a new arena for
discussion of suicide: social media. All technology, including social media, has affordances, the
different features that enable or constrain relational activity on their sites. Current discussion of
suicide often takes place on social media, where individuals are anonymous, and discussion of
any topic can run free. Suicide is no exception. This thesis seeks to explore how these
communities of suicidal discussion use discourse analysis, a methodology sorely missing from
suicide research and especially research on the discussion of suicide online. This thesis painted a
picture of suicidal discussion online by analyzing 170 posts on Reddit’s r/SuicideWatch and
Tumblr’s #suicide and #suicidal ideation. I informed by utilizing the history of our understanding
of suicide and social media affordances. I found four analytical categories: Ranting/Venting,
Expressing/Visualizing, Justifying/Explaining, and Supporting/Understanding. These four
categories show how individuals arrive on social media like Reddit and Tumblr to soliloquize
and express their suicidality in social media platform-specific ways. Individuals tend to justify
their suicidality while explaining their contexts to ambiguous audiences on the internet. The
ambiguous audience can respond with non-stigmatizing and non-patronizing support and
understanding on social media, using the affordances of comments, likes, and other social media
affordances