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Death in the News: The Public Invigilation of Private Emotion

Jane Littlewood

Michael Pickering

Two sociological views of death in modernity are currently dominant. They are that death is not acknowledged in public, and that a public discourse does exist, the discourse of medicine. The article criticises both these views in the light of how news media portray the extraordinary deaths of otherwise ordinary UK citizens. The news media focus in particular on the emotions of survivors - of considerable interest to British people unsure of proper grieving behaviour. When it comes to death, journalists and photographers are in the forefront of psychological `instruction' - something students of both death and the media have failed to notice, let alone research.

Key Words: death • mass media • public • private • emotion

Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 4, 579-596 (1995)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038595029004002


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