Mediated Death

How do the dead live among us today?

Approaching death from the perspective of media and communication studies, anthropology, and sociology, this book explains how the all-encompassing presence of mediated death profoundly transforms contemporary society. It explores rituals of mourning and the livestreaming of death in hybrid media, as well as contemporary media-driven practices of immortalization. Sumiala draws on examples ranging from the iconic deaths of Margaret Thatcher and David Bowie to those of ordinary people ritualized on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. In addition, this book examines digital mourning of global events including the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Coronavirus pandemic.

Mediated Death is a must-read for scholars and students of communication studies, as well as general readers interested in exploring the meaning of mediated death in contemporary society.​

Preface



1 Mediating Death

2 A Brief History of an Idea

3 The Event of Death

4 Rethinking Mourning Rituals

5 Ritual Contestations

6 Rituals Connect and Separate

7 The Quest for Post-Mortality



Bibliography

Index

‘Mediated Death resolves the fundamental question of why and how we ritualize death. Lucid, thoughtful, and filled with insightful examples, it lays out the rich connections linking mediated death and social life, etching new contours that undergird their symbiotic relationship.’
Barbie Zelizer, University of Pennsylvania

‘Johanna Sumiala has written a wonderful book. A book that, by exploring the dilemmas of mortality as we experience them in and through our hybrid environments of mediation, offers us more than an eloquent treatise of mediated death. It gifts us with a profound reflection on the new rituals of loss, mourning, and community in 21st-century modernity.’
Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics and Political Science

Johanna Sumiala is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki.​