Abstract
The goal of this commentary is to highlight the ageism that has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 20 international researchers in the field of ageing have contributed to this ...document. This commentary discusses how older people are misrepresented and undervalued in the current public discourse surrounding the pandemic. It points to issues in documenting the deaths of older adults, the lack of preparation for such a crisis in long-term care homes, how some ‘protective’ policies can be considered patronising and how the initial perception of the public was that the virus was really an older adult problem. This commentary also calls attention to important intergenerational solidarity that has occurred during this crisis to ensure support and social-inclusion of older adults, even at a distance. Our hope is that with this commentary we can contribute to the discourse on older adults during this pandemic and diminish the ageist attitudes that have circulated.
Age is the only social category identifying subgroups that everyone may eventually join. Despite this and despite the well-known growth of the older population, age-based prejudice remains an ...understudied topic in social psychology. This article systematically reviews the literature on ageism, highlighting extant research on its consequences and theoretical perspectives on its causes. We then identify a crucial gap in the literature, potential intergenerational tensions, speculating how a growing-older population-and society's efforts to accommodate it-might stoke intergenerational fires, particularly among the younger generation. Presenting both sides of this incipient issue, we review relevant empirical work that introduces reasons for both optimism and pessimism concerning intergenerational relations within an aging society. We conclude by suggesting future avenues for ageism research, emphasizing the importance of understanding forthcoming intergenerational dynamics for the benefit of the field and broader society.
Abstract
Objectives
This study examined public discourse and sentiment regarding older adults and COVID-19 on social media and assessed the extent of ageism in public discourse.
Methods
Twitter data ...(N = 82,893) related to both older adults and COVID-19 and dated from January 23 to May 20, 2020, were analyzed. We used a combination of data science methods (including supervised machine learning, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis), qualitative thematic analysis, and conventional statistics.
Results
The most common category in the coded tweets was “personal opinions” (66.2%), followed by “informative” (24.7%), “jokes/ridicule” (4.8%), and “personal experiences” (4.3%). The daily average of ageist content was 18%, with the highest of 52.8% on March 11, 2020. Specifically, more than 1 in 10 (11.5%) tweets implied that the life of older adults is less valuable or downplayed the pandemic because it mostly harms older adults. A small proportion (4.6%) explicitly supported the idea of just isolating older adults. Almost three-quarters (72.9%) within “jokes/ridicule” targeted older adults, half of which were “death jokes.” Also, 14 themes were extracted, such as perceptions of lockdown and risk. A bivariate Granger causality test suggested that informative tweets regarding at-risk populations increased the prevalence of tweets that downplayed the pandemic.
Discussion
Ageist content in the context of COVID-19 was prevalent on Twitter. Information about COVID-19 on Twitter influenced public perceptions of risk and acceptable ways of controlling the pandemic. Public education on the risk of severe illness is needed to correct misperceptions.
Evidence suggests that agist biases may operate implicitly (i.e., automatically and unconsciously) to affect discriminatory attitudes and behaviors toward older adults. However, few studies have ...tested the malleability of implicit age bias. The present study tests the effect of a framing intervention on implicit age bias in a nationally representative sample of American adults.
Participants (N = 767) were randomly assigned to read 1 of 3 framed messages, to an unframed message about aging, or to a control message unrelated to aging. Framed messages emphasized (a) the contributions of older adults to society; (b) aging as a process of accumulating wisdom and energy; and (c) mechanisms through which prejudice against older adults operates. Participants subsequently completed an aging implicit association test (IAT) to assess implicit bias.
Relative to the control condition, participants in the 3 framed message conditions displayed lower implicit age bias. No differences were observed between participants in the control condition and those who read the unframed message.
Findings indicate that reframing messages about aging can decrease implicit bias against older adults. This study highlights ways for communicators to promote a positive understanding of the aging process, thereby mitigating sources of implicit prejudice.
Ageism has unfortunately become a salient phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, triage decisions based on age have been hotly discussed. In this article, I first defend that, ...although there are ethical reasons (founded on the principles of benefit and fairness) to consider the age of patients in triage dilemmas, using age as a categorical exclusion is an unjustifiable ageist practice. Then, I argue that ageism during the pandemic has been fueled by media narratives and unfair assumptions which have led to an ethically problematic group homogenization of the older population. Finally, I conclude that an intersectional perspective can shed light on further controversies on ageism and triage in the post-pandemic future.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a suspected surge of ageism in America and has imposed critical health and safety behavior modifications for people of all ages (Ayalon et al., 2020; Lichtenstein, ...2020). Given that older adults are a high-risk group, maintaining their safety has been paramount in implementing preventive measures (i.e., more handwashing, social distancing); however, making such behavior modifications might be contingent on how one views older adults (i.e., ageist stereotypes). Therefore, the goal of the current pre-registered study was to explore if hostile and benevolent ageism relate to pandemic-related fear and behavior change. An online survey assessing responses to the pandemic was taken by 164 younger and 171 older adults. Higher hostile ageism predicted lower pandemic-related behavior modification. Those high in benevolent ageism reported lower behavior change, but also reported higher pandemic-related fear; however, when pandemic-related fear was considered a mediator between the two, the directionality between benevolent ageism and behavior change switched, indicating a suppression effect. These findings highlight that ageist attitudes do predict responses to the pandemic and that hostile and benevolent ageism are distinct facets that have unique implications during a health pandemic.
Memes and meme factories are increasingly the new fronts for ageism online. To address the lack of studies exploring memetic expressions of ageism, this study utilized multimodal discourse analysis ...to analyze 98 image macros from five meme factories in Singapore. Expressions of ageism were consistently found in how the meme visually and discursively portrayed older adults, and three ageist themes of infantilization, barbarization, and fetishization were identified. Memes that infantilized older adults often portrayed them as immature and illiterate despite their age and emphasized their dependence on others. Memes that barbarized older adults portrayed them as being uncultured or having inferior cultural tastes, while memes that fetishized older adults positioned them as an object of sexual fetish. The intersections of ageism with sexism, classism, and racism were also noted. Practical implications of these findings were discussed, and several recommendations were offered for meme factories to reduce visual ageism.
Is Ageism Acceptable When it Comes From a Familiar Partner? Horhota, Michelle; Chasteen, Alison L; Crumley-Branyon, Jessica J
The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences,
04/2019, Letnik:
74, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This study investigated the perceived acceptability of benevolent and hostile ageist behaviors targeting older adults and whether the acceptability varied depending on the age of the perceiver and ...the relationship between the person engaging in the ageist behavior and the recipient of the ageist behavior.
Young, middle-aged, and older adult participants rated the acceptability of 13 benevolent and 17 hostile ageist behaviors targeting older adults for five different relationship types: younger family members, same-age family members, familiar service workers, unfamiliar service workers, and friends.
Participants, regardless of age, rated benevolent ageism to be more acceptable than hostile ageism. Young adults were more accepting of hostile ageist acts than middle-aged and older adults were. However, overall acceptability of hostile ageist acts was low. Familiarity with the perpetrator also affected perceptions of the acceptability of ageist acts.
Perceptions of the acceptability of ageism targeting older adults differed as a function of participant age, ageism type, and relationship type. Findings are discussed in light of social identity theory and intergroup contact theory.
OBJECTIVES
In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) a pandemic. High morbidity and mortality rates of COVID‐19 have been observed among older adults ...and widely reported in both mainstream and social media. The objective of this study was to analyze tweets related to COVID‐19 and older adults, and to identify ageist content.
DESIGN
We obtained a representative sample of original tweets containing the keywords “elderly,” “older,” and/or “boomer” plus the hashtags “#COVID19” and/or “#coronavirus.”
SETTING
Tweets posted between March 12 and March 21, 2020.
MEASUREMENTS
We identified the type of user and number of followers for each account. Tweets were classified by three raters as (1) informative, (2) personal accounts, (3) personal opinions, (4) advice seeking, (5) jokes, and (6) miscellaneous. Potentially offensive content, as well as that downplaying the severity of COVID‐19 because it mostly affects older adults, was identified.
RESULTS
A total of 18,128 tweets were obtained, of which a random sample of 351 was analyzed. Most accounts (91.7%) belonged to individuals. The most common types of tweets were personal opinions (31.9%), followed by informative tweets (29.6%), jokes/ridicule (14.3%), and personal accounts (13.4%). Overall, 72 tweets (21.9%) likely intended to ridicule or offend someone and 21.1% had content implying that the life of older adults was less valuable or downplayed the relevance of COVID‐19.
CONCLUSION
Most tweets related to COVID‐19 and older adults contained personal opinions, personal accounts, and jokes. Almost one‐quarter of analyzed tweets had ageist or potentially offensive content toward older adults. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:1661‐1665, 2020.
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