Roumen Dimitrov

Jordi Xifra

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.

Public Relations and Death

Mainstream public relations overvalues noise, sound and voice in public communication. But how can we explain that while practitioners use silence on a daily basis, academics have widely remained quiet on the subject? Why is silence habitually famed as inherently bad and unethical? Silence is neither separate from nor the opposite of communication. The inclusion of silence on a par with speech and non-verbal means is a vital element of any communication strategy; it opens it up for a new, complex and more reflective understanding of strategic silence as indirect communication. Drawing on a number of disciplines that see in silence what public relations academics have not yet, this book reveals forms of silence to inform public relations solutions in practice and theory. How do we manage silence? How can strategic silence increase the capacity of public relations as a change agent? Using a format of multiple short chapters and practice examples, this is the first book that discusses the concept of strategic silence, and its consequences for PR theory and practice. Applying silence to communication cases and issues in global societies, it will be of interest to scholars and researchers in public relations, strategic communications and communication studies.

Roumen Dimitrov

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