My new book, Representing Death in the News: Journalism, Media and Mortality has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Here is the cover blurb, with thanks to Simon Cottle for the kind words.

‘In this remarkably lucid and accomplished study Folker Hanusch explores the social construction of death in the news. A must-read for all those interested in how mediated death and dying enters into public life and private thoughts.’
– Simon Cottle, Professor of Media and Communications, Cardiff University, UK.

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the relationship between the news media and death. Driven by a perceived ubiquity of death and dying on television, in newspapers and on the internet, many scholars have attempted to more closely examine aspects of this coverage. The result is that there now exists a large body of scholarly work on death in the news, yet what has been lacking is a comprehensive synthesis of the field. This book seeks to close this gap by analyzing the scholarship on death in the news by way of a thematic approach. It provides a historical overview, looks at the conditions of production, content and reception, and also analyzes emerging trends in the representation of death online. This fascinating account provides a much-needed overview of what we currently know about death in the news and offers food for thought for future studies in the field.

The book is available direct from Palgrave Macmillan or from any good bookstores, including Amazon.