Exit Stage Left: A Dramaturgical Analysis of Media Accounts of Executions in America

Despite the fact that anthropologists have long noted that rituals associated with death are central to understanding a culture's worldview, studies of capital punishment have not examined its ritualistic elements. The purpose of this paper is to address this shortcoming by examining news media portrayals of capital cases as emergent ritual dramas of death. We used narrative & content analysis methods to examine 524 newspaper reports of 100 executions that occurred between January 1, 1990 & April 30, 2005. We sought to determine the types of information reported, the structure of the reports, & their functionality in the dramaturgy of executions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for future research suggested by our analysis. Adapted from the source document.