ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a short introduction to historical media portrayals of public death. It discusses the author methodological approach to the topic, that is, media ethnography and the context of the ethnographic study. The chapter focuses on empirical cases to illustrate the theoretical reflection on ritualisation of public death. It examines the ritualisation of public death in Nordic countries as a cultural practice carried out in relation to and through the media. The chapter discusses the public death rituals as recurring and patterned forms of symbolic communication that allow the author's, through coverage, to attach themselves to the end of biological life in the framework of media-related world. Death as the end of biological life is one of the crucial constituents in every society. The ritualisation of death in the media always involves power. The latest development in media history is the twentieth century globalisation of communication through digitalisation and the Internet and emergence of social media in the t.
