Irish print media portrayals of people with traumatic brain injury

Traumatic Brain Injury is the result of a sudden trauma to the head that leaves the person sustaining it either dead or with a permanent disability and impairment. Where there is relatively little social contact between people with Traumatic Brain Injury and the general public, people construct their meanings regarding them from the media. This article draws on research conducted to investigate how people with Traumatic Brain Injury were portrayed by print media in Ireland? The findings were generated vis-a-vis framing analysis of print media articles dating from the year 2010 and were contextualised using Clogston's(1989) media models of disability. The research investigated whether articles portrayed Clogston's traditional or progressive media models of disability. The paper finds that the vast majority of articles examined used the traditional model to portray people with Traumatic Brain Injury, in that the emphasis was on the impairment of the individual, rather than the civil rights of the person.