Immersive Media and User Experience

Vol. 2 (2026)
Articles

A Corpus-Driven Discourse Analysis of Euthanasia Framing in Greek Public Text (2015–2026): A Digital Humanities Framework

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  • Kleanthi Santamouri,
  • Christos Douvlos,
  • Panagiotis Toumpos,
  • Alexandros Gazis,
  • Theodoros Vavouras
Kleanthi Santamouri
English Language Teacher, Private Primary Education, Athens, Greece
Christos Douvlos
Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Directorate of Primary Education, 10438 Athens, Greece
Panagiotis Toumpos
Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Directorate of Primary Education, 10438 Athens, Greece
Alexandros Gazis
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, United Kingdom
Theodoros Vavouras
Department of Humanities, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University, 26335 Patras, Greece; Department of Philosophy, School of Italian Language and Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

Published 2026-08-14

Keywords

  • Euthanasia,
  • Framing Analysis,
  • Digital Humanities,
  • Bioethics,
  • Greece,
  • Corporate Analysis,
  • ECHR,
  • Utilitarianism,
  • Safeguards
    • ...More
    Less
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

A Corpus-Driven Discourse Analysis of Euthanasia Framing in Greek Public Text (2015–2026): A Digital Humanities Framework . (2026). Immersive Media and User Experience, 2, 41-62. https://doi.org/10.65638/2978-8811.2026.2.05

Abstract

This paper examines how euthanasia and assisted dying are framed in Greek public discourse between 2015 and 2026. The study focuses on a corpus of public texts, including news articles, opinion pieces, institutional material, and open-access medical or bioethical sources. It combines close reading with a Digital Humanities workflow in order to study both the meaning of individual arguments and the broader patterns that appear across the corpus. The analysis shows that the Greek debate is shaped mainly by four frames: dignity and relief from suffering, autonomy and self-determination, risk of abuse and protection of vulnerable people, and wider social consequences. The study also shows that much of the debate does not remain limited to a simple opposition between support and rejection. Instead, it often moves towards questions of regulation, safeguards, medical responsibility, and institutional trust. Particular attention is given to the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The findings suggest that European legal language enters the Greek debate mainly as a vocabulary of procedures and safeguards, rather than as a direct argument for an absolute right to die. The paper therefore presents euthanasia as a moral, legal, and institutional issue, and offers a transparent method for studying sensitive bioethical debates through framing analysis and Digital Humanities tools.

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