Ageing, old age and older adults: a social media analysis of dominant topics and discourses

Abstract

Whilst representations of old age and older people in traditional media have been well documented, examinations of such representations within social media discourse are still scarce. This is an unfortunate omission because of the importance of social media for communication in contemporary society. In this study, we combine content analysis and discourse analysis to explore patterns of representation on Twitter around the terms ageing, old age, older people and elderly with a sample of 1,200 tweets. Our analysis shows that ‘personal concerns/views’ and ‘health and social care’ are the predominant overall topics, although some topics are clearly linked with specific keywords. The language often used in the tweets seems to reinforce negative discourses of age and ageing that locate older adults as a disempowered, vulnerable and homogeneous group; old age is deemed a problem and ageing is considered something that needs to be resisted, slowed or disguised. These topics and discursive patterns are indeed similar to those found in empirical studies of social perceptions and traditional media portrayal of old age, which indicates that social media and Twitter in particular appears to serve as an online platform that reproduces and reinforces existing ageist discourses in traditional media that feed into social perceptions of ageing and older people.

COVID-19 and the portrayal of older people in New Zealand news media

“…Media have long been acknowledged as a powerful vehicle for cultural beliefs about ageing (Miller et al 2015;Fraser et al 2016;Makita et al 2019). While older people tend to be under-represented in media coverage, when present they are typically framed in relation to a range of stereotypes (Loos and Ivan 2018).…”

“…These representations can promote resentment by supporting an 'intergenerational warfare' frame that presents older people as a burden on younger, economically engaged individuals (Rozanova et al 2006). There is also a tendency to misrepresent older people as a homogeneous group (Loos and Ivan 2018;Makita et al 2019). These stereotypes not only conflate a culturally, ethnically, socioeconomically and geographically diverse segment of the population, but also ignore older people's agency and ability to promote and sustain social connections and manage other aspects of health and wellbeing (Wiles and Jayasinha 2013;Morgan et al 2019).…”

The “Vulnerability” Discourse in Times of Covid-19: Between Abandonment and Protection of Canadian Francophone Older Adults

“…For the past four decades, researchers have studied the global media depiction of older adults 1 and have found that the older population is typically underrepresented and portrayed negatively in Western cultures (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). Worldwide, older adults are described as part of a homogeneous and vulnerable group and aging is mainly discussed in terms of significant economic and demographic problems (the expression of the "gray tsunami" is one of many examples expressing these "problems") (9)(10)(11)(12)(13).…”

Ageism in the Media : Online Representations of Older People

“…Despite the fact that social media has become omnipresent in public life, representations of older people in such media have remained insufficiently studied (Makita et al, 2021). Among the existing and limited studies exploring social media representations of older people, they were found to be predominantly represented on Twitter as a disempowered, dependent, frail and homogeneous group (see Jimenez-Sotomayor et al, 2020;Makita et al, 2019;Meisner, 2020;Soto-Perezde-Celis, 2020).…”

“…positive light in entertainment media. However, social media representations of older people have remained insufficiently studied (Makita et al, 2021).…”