 Jade and the journalists: Media coverage of a young British celebrity dying of cancerTony Walter Social Science & Medicine, 2010, vol. 71, issue 5, 853-860 Abstract: In contemporary western societies, dying usually occurs in old age, out of sight in hospitals and institutions; how then do lay people learn what dying is like? Since the 1970s, one source of information in Anglophone societies has come from individuals who have chosen to publicise their dying of cancer. This article examines the most high profile case of this to date in the UK; in 2009, celebrity Jade Goody publicised in tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines the final weeks of her dying of cervical cancer. What did she and her media say and write about dying? This article examines the print coverage of her final weeks, and four different voices are identified: those of Goody, of journalists, of her publicist, and of photographers, each representing her dying somewhat differently. Two major themes are discussed: Jade's struggles to retain autonomy (challenged by her disease and by other people), and the framing of her final weeks not primarily as a typical media cancer story of heroism, but as one of redemption in which she attained social respectability through dying. Keywords: UK; Dying; Celebrity; Journalism; Jade; Goody; Pathography; Heroism; Redemption; Media (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:5:p:853-860 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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