Portrayals Of Old Age In The Australian Mainstream Newspapers The Australian And The Sydney Morning Herald From2008to2013

Research into media representations of older people and the impact of population ageing is meaningful in an ageing Australia. Informed by theories of media construction and framing, this study uses content analysis to explore the portrayals of old adults in two prestigious Australian newspapers: The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). It examines both the images and the issues referred by the two newspapers in their coverage of the old adults in the past five years. The study looks into the three questions: who were the seniors? In what issues were they referred? And how were they portrayed? The results show that although the seniors in the news are portrayed in diverse social roles and story context, their compositions in terms of ethnicity were homogeneous and older adults from ethnic minority groups are seldom mentioned and under-represented. When the seniors are talked about, the issues are concentrated on issues such as health, aged care, safety, pension, and workforce, and there are more negative attributes than positive attributes. The analysis argues that the Australian newspapers, by both presenting negative stereotypes and positive stereotypes of older people, misrepresent ageing and send the ageist message that ’young’ is prior to ’old’. In doing so, they run the risk of marginalizing certain groups of older adults and downplaying the actual problems and concerns of the seniors.