Mediation and mediatisation of death and dying: A scoping review of the literature based on a decolonial perspective

Abstract

Considering the central role played by the media in communicating information and meaning of the shared world, this book chapter aims to map the scientific production on the mediation and mediatisation of death and dying based on a decolonial perspective to describe the state of this field of media studies. This scoping review of empirical studies indexed in Web of Science and Scopus before May 2023 (n = 33) was guided by the Arksey and O'Malley (2005) recommendations and the PRISMA 2020 reporting guidelines for reviews (Page et al., 2021). The data shows a preponderance of publications on the Global North. The main research topics in the media are death (n = 18; 54.55%) and online mourning practices (n = 15; 45.45%). Most studies make casual and confused use of the concepts of mediation and mediatisation. We contend that the use and generalisation of results in the Global South require some caution.