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“Philosophical Treatises On Life And Death”:Newspaper Coverage Of A Controversial Brain Death Case, Khadija Ejaz

Theses and Dissertations

The central concern of this multi-method research project was to investigate newspaper coverage of the controversial brain death case of Jahi McMath. This represents the first study of sense-making of the case in the news media, positioning it at the intersection of science communication and critical qualitative inquiry. First, framing theory was used to guide a textual analysis of 81 newspaper articles from high-circulation newspapers in California. This revealed four frames that first created uncertainty about brain death, thereby permitting two competing frames of Jahi being alive and also being dead to co-exist before merging into a frame that further …