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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The portrayal of older people in prime time television series
— the match with gerontological evidence | | Author(s) | Eva-Marie Kessler, Katrin Rakoczy, Ursula M Staudinger |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 24, part 4, July 2004 |
| Pages | pp 531-552 |
| Source | http://journals.cambridge.org/ |
| Keywords | Television [media] ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Germany. |
| Annotation | Empirical studies in several disciplines have investigated images of older people in the mass media, but analyses to date have failed systematically to apply gerontological concepts and to compare the portrayal of old age with "real-world" evidence. A model of older people's internal and external resources was used to assess the portrayal of older people in prime-time drama series. Three hours of programmes broadcast over 6 weeks in 2001 of 32 prime-time television series were examined. The ages of 355 portrayed characters were estimated, and the socio-economic, health-related and psychological resources of the 30 characters rated as 60 or older were assessed. Observational categories and rating dimensions were developed on the basis of the resource model. Older people were heavily under-represented, especially women and those of advanced old age. Furthermore, the representation of older people's social participation and financial resources was overly positive. Finally, older women and men were portrayed in traditional gender roles. The antecedents and consequences of the biased portrayals (of old and young people) are discussed from a psychological perspective. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-040716002 A |
| Classmark | UKL: TOB: 767 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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