The common phrase 'representation matters' asserts that media has a measurable and important impact on civic society's perception of self and others. The representation of health in media, in particular, may reflect and perpetuate a society's disease burden. Here, for the top 10 major causes of death in the United States, we examine how cinematic representation of overall and by-gender mortality diverges from reality. Using crowd-sourced data on film deaths from Cinemorgue Wiki, we employ natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze shifts in representation of deaths in movies versus the 2021 National Vital Statistic Survey (NVSS) top ten mortality causes. Overall, movies strongly overrepresent suicide and, to a lesser degree, accidents. In terms of gender, movies overrepresent men and underrepresent women for nearly every major mortality cause, including heart disease and cerebrovascular disease. The two exceptions for which women are overrepresented are suicide and accidents. We discuss the implications of under- and over-representing causes of death overall and by gender, as well as areas of future research.

翻译：“代表性至关重要”这一常见表述断言，媒体对公民社会关于自我及他人的认知具有可衡量且重要的影响。媒体对健康的呈现尤其可能反映并固化一个社会的疾病负担。本文针对美国十大主要死因，考察了电影中对总体及性别别死亡率的呈现如何与现实产生偏差。利用来自Cinemorgue Wiki的众包电影死亡数据，我们采用自然语言处理（NLP）技术，分析电影中死亡呈现相对于2021年《国家生命统计调查》（NVSS）十大死因的变化。总体而言，电影严重过度呈现自杀，其次为意外事故。在性别维度上，电影对包括心脏病和脑血管疾病在内的几乎所有主要死因均过度呈现男性而呈现不足女性。女性被过度呈现的两种例外情况是自杀和意外事故。我们讨论了总体及性别别死因呈现不足与过度的影响，以及未来研究的领域。