In media studies, the concept of mediatisation explains social change as another broader transformation of social and cultural life, assuming that there is a dependence on the exposure of individuals to the media (Strömbäck, 2008). In this transformation of society through the media, cultural and social processes (e.g. politics, religion, death and others) are influenced by the linear nature of the replicability of media forms in the public and private spheres. The concept of mediation, however, is understood as a bidirectional process of transmission that captures a variety of dynamics within media flows: production, circulation, interpretation or reception, and recirculation of interpretations back into production or social and cultural life in general (Couldry, 2008). This study aims to map the scientific production on the mediation and mediatisation of death based on a decolonial perspective to describe the state of this field of media studies. This scoping review of empirical studies indexed in Web of Science and Scopus before May 2023 (n = 33) was guided by the Arksey and O'Malley (2005) recommendations and the PRISMA 2020 reporting guidelines for reviews (Page et al., 2021). The data shows a preponderance of publications on the Global North. The main research topics in the media are death (n = 18; 54.55%) and online mourning practices (n = 15; 45.45%). Most studies make casual and confused use of the concepts of mediation and mediatisation. We argue that some caution is needed regarding the use and generalisation of results to other nations.

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