Media representations of age

Aries- Childhood seen as a separate from adulthood, time of innocence

Gordon et al - media focuses on children as the victims, media reports of child abuse, or child murderes, they need to be protected from the adult world, media highlights the deprivation chuldren might face (material/cultural deprivation)

Wayne - young adults are negatively portrayed, Links to Cohens (1970) youth subcultures presented as folk devils which created a moral panic within the adults.

  • Barely any adolescences voices and opinions within the media (Gretta Thunberg, mocked and ridiculled for being ‘woke’ and ‘sensitive’).

Adolescene have a stronger online platform and knowledge, they have a stringer sense of social justice, they are ridiuled for being overly sensitive and have too much of a woke culture, saying they are overly privileged cause they don’t face the same issues older generations faced.

Williams and Ylanne - Did a content analysis on represnetations of the elderly, found that any viewed the elderly as nostalgic (fromthe goldern era of society) and as mentors.

Media representations take an extreme look on the scale and life cycle of age from the young and the eldery.

  • However the media recognise that the middle (millenials) are the ones that are the most consumers/target audiences, so are warry of how they are represented as to not alienate them and focus more on their social characteristics.

negative representations of elderly

Cuddy and Fisk - Marginalisation of elderly in US sitcoms

Biggs - focused on the representation of the elderly as incompetent in us tv

  • However this is changing due to the purchasing power and gray pound in comparison with the limited earning potential of younger individuals, so their media representations is altering depending on the basis of how much of an active consumer they are.

Evaluations

P - Digitalisation of media has changed representations based on age

E - Postmodernists, globalisation, Batchelor - social Issues raised more in teen dramas.

P - Negative stereotypes are challenged on social media creating greater inclusivity

E - Postmodernsists, Jenkins, Citizen journalism, participatory culture, audiences are speaking up about social issues more due to the interactivity of new media, audiences are making their own media so they are no longer passivley consuming the stereotypical representations and adopting them a apart of their values and norms, fragmented society.

E - Twitter (X), people share their opinions, cancell culture, Creation of certain communities (reddit)