A musical matter of life and death: the morality of mortality and the coverage of Amy Winehouse's death in the UK press

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper focuses on a sample of UK newspapers covering the period of Winehouse's death and funeral (23 July -8 August 2011). The implicit ‘news values' embedded in the content are contextualised through reference to earlier media coverage of Winehouse. It is shown that the media employed a variety of strategies to represent and construct Winehouse's life and death, thereby determining the nature of the readers' ‘appetites' to consume death as the culmination of the subject's life ‘story'. While some of the sources examined are typical of the reporting of any celebrity death, this research also exposes discourses exclusively utilised for popular musicians whose deaths are framed as ‘punishment' for reckless behaviour.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)182-199
Number of pages18
JournalMortality
Volume17
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2012

Bibliographical note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Mortality on 16/05/2012, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13576275.2012.674305.

Keywords

  • death
  • celebrity
  • music
  • morality
  • media
  • journalism

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A musical matter of life and death: the morality of mortality and the coverage of Amy Winehouse's death in the UK press'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this