Public Relations and Death

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 legitimisation 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.

Sommario

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?

Info autore

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.

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Roumen Xifra Dimitrov, Dimitrov Roumen, Xifra Jordi
• Editore: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 29.12.2025
• EAN: 9781138098480
• ISBN: 978-1-138-09848-0
• Pagine: 236
• Serie: Routledge New Directions in PR & Communication Research
• Categorie: Scienze sociali, diritto, economia > Media, comunicazione > Scienze della comunicazione; Business & Economics / General, Public Relations, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Public Relations, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Death & Dying, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Consumer Behavior, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Marketing / General, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Communication Studies, Communication Studies, Sociology: work & labour, Medical Sociology, Sociology: death and dying, Sociology: work and labour, Sociology: Death & Dying