Keywords
news
elderly people
age exclusion
discriminatory practices
How to Cite
Abstract
Introduction. In Ukraine, there is a steady increase in the number of people in the category of 60+, which affects the quality of their lives, relations between generations. Traditionally, respect for older people as bearers of experience, prudence, and wisdom is leveled off, while gerontophobic stereotypes of old age as a threat to the spread of ageism, including the media, are growing. The aim of the research is to identify discriminatory gerontophobic practices in the news of electronic media and to illustrate the multi-vector discursive field of ageism. Research methods. The search for an empirical basis was held using content analysis of news submitted during 2020 by 40 central and 129 local media. Age meanings were recognized at the level of individual lexical units, phrases and broader contexts. An interdisciplinary discursive approach was also used to analyze the collected material. Results and discussions. The specificity of gerontological ageism in the media is established, which consists in its institutional nature, has an open and latent form, promotes gerontophobic stereotypes that degrade human dignity, move retirees to the periphery of public life, thereby minimizing their social rights. It has been proved that all this happens as a result of the process of exclusion, which is based on the principle of removing age groups from the social community on the principle of «we are not like them, we are better than them». The process of age exclusion marked by ageism is heterogeneous: on the one hand, it occurs due to the medicalization of old age, its devaluation in the practices of marginalization, improvisation, infantilization, dehumanization and trivialization, and on the other hand, under the guise of social solidarity, protection and attention to the elderly, i.e. patronage. It is shown that the selected discriminatory practices are the result of the selection of information that tends to be sensational, causes an emotional reaction, brings a person out of an inert state, worries. Conclusions. The revealed news content testifies to the unjustified spread of hate speech, which can be equated to aggression, harassment of pensioners as victims of rapists and fraudsters. It can be argued that this is not only a problem of gerontophobia in the media, but also in society as a whole. The media disseminate what is in society, and hence, determine what attitude to old age is cultivated in the mass consciousness.
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