The third in a series of posts investigating news media coverage of propeller accidents. We continue with our study using news media coverage of the Gabby DeSouza February 5, 2011 boat propeller accident as our example. This one follows our Phase 2 The Hospital Stay Wordle.

This time we analyzed several news media articles of her release from St. Mary’s Medical Center (the hospital). The specific articles we used are listed briefly below:

• Palm Beach Post. March 24, 2011
• Sun Sentinel. March 24, 2011
• WPBF. March 25, 2011.

Now we would anticipate seeing thanks and gratitude being expressed, some comments from family members, and lots of hugs from the medical staff and other caregivers.

The Propeller Accident News Media Coverage Phase 3 (Released From Hospital Stay) Wordle is below.

Gabby DeSouza Propeller Accident Released From Hospital Wordle

As we expected, we see lots of family, gratitude, and recovery words in the wordle including: home, mother, Thankful, amazing, recovering, walk, community, happier, thank, family, support, out pouring, mom, finally.

Some traumatic words are back prominent again: propeller, amputated, prosthetic, surgeries as family members reflect on why she was here.

Her name is smaller than her mother’s name, and “boat” is much, much smaller than it was on the Breaking News Reports Wordle. The focus now is on thankfulness and going home.

We encourage our readers to compare the series of wordles we developed of the news media coverage of the Gabby DeSouza boat propeller accident. We may add some more in the future if we see another wave of news coverage. We suspect there will be a series of follow up articles in February 2012 marking the one year anniversary of her accident.

As always, we welcome your comments.