Aims: While public debates about road safety often foreground concerns about cognitive impairment, little is known about how mainstream media construct the relationship between dementia and driving; in this context, we examined the media discourse regarding cognitive impairment and driving.
Methods: Articles published in Australia and New Zealand, over the last 12 months, that contained terms that denoted cognitive impairment and driving in the title were identified. A lexical analysis was conducted using Leximancer– data-mining software that identifies frequently occurring and co-occurring words and amalgamates these to form and visually map concepts that reflect themes within the text, illustrating how words within media accounts travelled together.
Results: Drawing on 91 articles, the concept map suggested two key findings. First, the most prominent concept, ‘dementia’, was coupled with concepts such as ‘signs’, ‘diagnosis’, ‘reduce’, ‘risk’, and ‘condition’ – this suggests that media discourse frequently anchored dementia within biomedical framings. The proximity of concepts such as ‘leading’, ‘cause’, and ‘Australians’ suggests a tendency to generally portray dementia as a growing national concern. Second, the next prominent concept, ‘family’, encompassed concepts such as ‘change’ and ‘driving’. This suggests media narratives that positioned family members as intermediaries in decisions about driving cessation and care, often emphasising emotional labour and safety responsibilities.
Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that recent media coverage constructs dementia-and-driving primarily through biomedical and risk-oriented lenses. These patterns may reinforce stigma and oversimplified understandings of capacity and capability, underscoring the need for more balanced reporting that reflects heterogeneity and lived experience.