Presentation of dossier 19: Imaginaries of death in the media

Abstract

One of the functions of the media is to transmit cultural heritage. As a human product, they do not present definitive realities, but the diverse perspectives and versions of history of the individuals who produce their content. However, they take into account the specific socio-cultural visions and processes of their contexts of creation through the transmission and dissemination of cultural imaginaries. The cultural elaboration of death is no exception. Imaginaries of death have been produced and reproduced on the basis of collective conventions materialized in the imaginary throughout different eras and particular contexts. Once they materialize in a physical reality and this image comes into contact with a subject who interprets it and reacts to it, this physical reality that carries the imaginary becomes a means of communication. The dossier proposed here is the product of collaboration between the Academic Body of Image, Memory and Social Research of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, the Academic Body of Communication and Interdisciplinary Studies of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo and the contributions of a researcher from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. The articles developed in this proposal give an account of these imaginaries of death. Materialized in various media, they become means of communication through which subjects represent, interpret and configure not only their understanding of death, but also how to die, how to act when someone dies, how to represent the death of others, how to worship the personification of death or represent various imaginaries in which death and religious traditions are mixed. The articles in this dossier examine two types of sources that represent different ways of materializing death imaginaries: those that analyse printed documents, such as photographs, newspapers and graphics about death; and those that analyse digital and/or audiovisual media.