How Does the Media Represent Women and Voluntary Assisted Dying? Lexical and Thematic Analyses of Media Accounts

Background: There is a limited understanding of how the media represents women and voluntary assisted dying. Given the media can shape public perceptions, this potentially contributes to health care inequities among women. Objectives: To analyze media accounts of women and voluntary assisted dying. Design: Guided by agenda-setting theory, lexical and thematic analyses were conducted of 163 media articles about women and voluntary assisted dying. Setting: The media articles were published in Australian and New Zealand publications, given the introduction of voluntary assisted dying in these nations. Measurements: The lexical analysis involved the use of Leximancer to establish patterns in the discourse, while thematic analysis was used to construct themes from the patterns identified. Results: The lexical concept map was devoid of a theme that denoted women or carers. Furthermore, the lexical analysis suggested that, when the articles made references to a “woman,” they were likely to refer to the act of intentionally ending a person’s life or a person’s age, while unlikely to refer to acts of support. Complementing these findings, four themes were constructed from the media articles using thematic analysis—namely, advocacy, autonomy and choice, quality of life, and support, largely from family members and friends. Conclusions: With few exceptions, women did not feature prominently in discourse on voluntary assisted dying within the media articles. Given agenda-setting theory, this finding is important as there are missed opportunities to harness the media’s influence on societal views about women and voluntary assisted dying, and promote death literacy, particularly among women.