6533b7d2fe1ef96bd125ebe8
RESEARCH PRODUCT
Celebrities' Memorial Afterlives: Obituaries, Tributes, and Posthumous Gossip in the Romanian Media Deathscape.
Mihai Stelian Rususubject
Health (social science)HistoryFamous PersonsRomaniamedia_common.quotation_subjectRomanianCommunication05 social sciencesMedia studies050801 communication & media studies050109 social psychologyCritical Care and Intensive Care Medicinelanguage.human_languageNewspaper0508 media and communicationsGossipPreceptAgency (sociology)Digital ArchiveslanguageHumans0501 psychology and cognitive sciencesLife-span and Life-course StudiesReputationmedia_commondescription
Cross-culturally, dead are protected from posthumous negative evaluations by the universal “nil nisi bonum” precept that governs the ethics within the community of mourners. In this study, we set out to test the observance of this injunction against posthumous gossiping in the Romanian public deathscape. Obituaries and other posthumous articles ( N = 1,148) were collected that covered the deaths of 63 celebrities who passed away between 2013 and 2016. Materials were gathered from the digital archives of three Romanian news sources (a news agency, a “quality” newspaper, and a tabloid), published one week after the moment of death. The findings show that 22% of the articles do contain negative evaluations of the deceased. The percentage rises to 36.4% if we restrict the sample to only those celebrities with a controversial anthumous reputation (19 of 63). These results indicate that celebrities are not spared from critical assessments after they pass away.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-12-17 | Omega |