#11876. “Hoping for life means waiting for death”: Emotional anchoring and themata in media reporting on paediatric organ donation

July 2026publication date
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Journal’s subject area:
Sociology and Political Science;
Social Psychology;
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Abstract:
Paediatric organ donation rates do not match the demand for paediatric organ transplants. Paediatric donations require parents to consent to donate the organs of their child, yet little research exists on how paediatric donation is understood outside of the medical world. Drawing from social representation theory, we examined how paediatric donation was portrayed by the media, the primary source of information about organ donation. Common themes coalesced around the paediatric donation decision, what the decision means for parents, and the experiences of paediatric transplant recipients and their families. Donation and transplantation were portrayed either as a contradiction, where a child was required to die in order for a child to live, or as mutually beneficial, where donation was a positive outcome of a tragic death. Interpreted within a dialogical framework, we suggest that notions of contradiction and mutual benefit are generated by the underlying thema life/death, and shaped in tandem by the paediatric context. Importantly, this study highlights the need to investigate the interplay between emotional contradiction, mutual dependence, and parental decision-making about paediatric organ donation.
Keywords:
emotional anchoring; media analysis; paediatric organ donation; social representations; themata

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