Public Relations and Death

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-138-09848-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Routledge New Directions in PR & Communication Research

This volume for the first time examines the intricate and often obscured interplay between death and public relations across historical periods and within contemporary society. Beyond its natural inevitability, death has functioned as a potent instrument for image and reputation management, the legitimization of authority, and the construction of collective memory. From antiquity to the digital era, communicative practices have employed death not merely to commemorate the deceased, but also as a mechanism to consolidate dynastic power, disseminate ideological frameworks, and exert influence over the living. Relations to death and relations through death shape the society’s past, present and future.

This generative study explores the tensions between individual memory and official historiography, the strategic use of selective commemoration to legitimate political and cultural power, and the role of public relations in shaping narratives of life and death across the arts, media, and political discourse.

This comprehensive volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of public relations, communication studies, promotional marketing and public diplomacy as well as critical historiography, thanatology, sociology, political philosophy, garbology, and discursive approaches to age and death.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Xifra, Jordi

Dimitrov, Roumen

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Tod, Sterbehilfe: Soziale und Ethische Themen
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Public Relations
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Thanatologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Marketing
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Verhaltensökonomik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction  1. Death as Element of PR Historicity  2. Legitimating Power Through Selective Commemoration and Forgetting  3. Sites of Memory  4. Counter-Commemorations  5. Discourses of Death  6. Postself: Managing After-Death Identity and Image  7. Death in the Arts and Media  8. George A. Romero: (Un)Dead and Activist Public Relations Art  9. Rubbish, Public Relations and Immortality  10. Death and Promotion  11. Public Relations, Thanatopower and Necropolitics  12. Is Public Relations Dead?

Über Autor(innen)

Roumen Dimitrov is Honorary Academic of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Jordi Xifra is Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.