Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31337/oz.81.4.3
Conceptualization of Death: Front Pages of the Most–Read Croatian Daily Newspaper 24sata
Boris Beck
; Fakultet političkih znanosti, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Davor Trbušić
; Hrvatsko katoličko sveučilište, Zagreb, Hrvatska
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Death on the front page of the most–read Croatian daily newspaper 24sata functions
as a spectacle: news acquires value only within the matrix of murder, accidents,
tragedies, or catastrophes, which is ultimately exploited for monetization. This paper
employs qualitative discourse analysis to investigate the key rhetorical and discursive
strategies used in the depiction of death. The findings indicate that the reporting
on death is multimodal, encompassing textual elements, photography, illustrations,
and the conceptualization of the newspaper’s layout, often utilizing binary oppositions
such as up/down and black/white. The figurative language of the headlines
predominantly features metaphors of struggle, necessity, and structure, intertwined
with factual content, as well as hyperbolization and the extensive use of epithets. Furthermore,
there is a conspicuous absence of any afterlife conceptualization; death is
presented as an absolute boundary beyond which nothing remains.
Keywords
discourse analysis; media spectacle; representation of death; tabloidization
Hrčak ID:
349805
URI
Publication date:
1.10.2026.
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