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 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.