SOC101: Introduction to Sociology (2020.A.01)

To gain insight into the under- and misrepresentation of older people in our society, we reviewed empirical studies that focused on images of older people in print and television advertisements and television programs. Some authors, such as Ylänne, have found a steady increase in visibility of older people in the media and a switch towards more positive portrayals. As Cole noted, "during the 1970s, an emerging consensus among health professionals, social workers, and researchers insisted on a view that was the mirror opposite of ageism: Older people are (or should be) healthy, sexually active, engaged, productive and self-reliant". We examined studies conducted in Europe and North America since 1950 to explore empirical support for this change in visual ageism in print and television advertisements and television programs.
In order to explore changes in visual ageism in the media in detail, we asked the following research questions:

1.    Do changes in the visual representation of older adults in the media relate only to younger-old (third age) adults, or are older-old (fourth age) adults also represented?
     
2.    Are changes in the representation of older adults evident only in the attributes of depictions of older adults, or are they also evident in the roles in which older adults are depicted?
     
3.    Are these changes in visual ageism consistent with successful aging discourse?
    
To answer these research questions, we present a narrative literature review of empirical studies that analysed the visual representations of older people in print and television advertisements and in television programs. We took the systematic review of television advertising by Zhang et al. and a study by Ylänne on representations of ageing in the media as starting points, using key references to lead to other empirical studies. We selected only empirical studies conducted in Europe and North America because (a) most empirical studies of the representation of older people in the visual media in the past 40 years have been conducted in these socio-cultural contexts; (b) the above-mentioned changes over time in the way older people are represented in the media refer specifically to Europe and North America; and (c) successful ageing discourse is particularly dominant in the West.

Table 11.1 illustrates the literature on changes in visual ageism over time. We looked at the presence of negative versus positive visual representations over time in terms of roles (peripheral, incidental, or minor roles; major/leading roles; other roles, such as advisory roles) and in terms of attributes (positive, negative, exaggerated). Table 11.1 also shows whether each study differentiated between the younger-old and older-old, and whether the characteristics used to portray older people match the successful ageing discourse, in which older people are active, enjoy life, and maintain a healthy lifestyle (third age: younger old), or whether they are depicted as passive, dependent, and withdrawn from personal responsibility (fourth age: older old).

Table 11.1 shows that older people were underrepresented in television and print advertisements until the 1990s, when older people started to become more visible, first in television and print advertisements and around 2001 also in television programs.

These findings are in line with Vickers and Ylänne. One possible explanation for this trend could be that at a certain point older people were spotted by marketing strategists as potential consumers, which is part of the successful ageing discourse we explore below.

Since the 1990s, older people, particularly the younger-old, have increasingly been depicted as having positive attributes (see Table 11.1). The older-old age group has continued to be underrepresented in programs and advertisements and to be portrayed with fewer positive attributes than younger people. In the last 15 years, there has been a shift toward another kind of representation, that of younger older people having the positive attributes - consonant with successful ageing discourse - of being active, enjoying life, and maintaining a healthy life style. The data presented in Table 11.1 show that the change in the way older people are represented relates solely to their attributes and not to their social roles, as they continue to be depicted in minor, peripheral, and incidental roles. We found only one empirical study in which the proportion of older people portrayed in major roles was higher than in other age groups, and these findings only described the younger-old group. Kessler et al.  also noted the underrepresentation of the older-old in the television programs they analysed.

The literature shows that the changes in visual ageism are consistent with successful ageing discourse, in which especially the younger-old are depicted positively as being active, healthy, and independent. In an appeal to our pursuit of everlasting youth, the advertising industry uses images invoking eternal youth, with marketers depicting older adults as a wealthy and healthy target group. The problem of our mortality is "solved" by the concept of the third age, a long period of wellbeing, which precedes the fourth age, a short, painful descent into decay. It comes as no surprise that our desire to remain forever young should be commercially exploited; the narrative of eternal youth has deep historical roots and taps into the universal yearning to live a long and healthy life.