Project monitors the portrayal of older adults in Saskatchewan media
A Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism project will monitor the way older adults are portrayed in the provincial media during a two-week period in February 2019.
This will be the second time that volunteers in different sized communities in south and central Saskatchewan will monitor news sources for stories about older adults.
The media monitoring will be done as part of the Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism's Ageism and Media project.
The previous monitoring process took place in February 2017 and the second monitoring period will collect additional data.
Ageism and Media Coordinator Linda Anderson has been speaking to media outlets in the province about this project and the results from the initial monitoring process, which was published in a 28-page report.
“When we saw the results we knew that not only the media needs to have some awareness raising about ageism and how accepting we are of it, but so does the general public, because media usually reflects the attitudes of the general public,” she said.
The Ageism and Media Committee arranged a roundtable discussion with some retired and active journalists, and there has been various 20-30 minute long meetings with different media outlets.
“I think that's proven to be a very good tactic,” she said. “We've been received very well in media outlets and have had good conversations, because not only do we talk about our research and what we found, but also our style guide.”
The style guide, Words are Powerful, was produced by the Ageism and Media Committee as an outcome of the 2017 research study. The guide provides tips for journalists and writers about language.
There are examples of problematic language that creates ageist stereotypes and the guide provides suggestions for person centred language that reflects the uniqueness and intrinsic value of each person.
The style guide suggests that adjectives such as spry, little, feeble, or frail should be considered carefully when it is used to refer to an older person, because it can be demeaning and it can diminish the dignity of the person in the story.
“Elderly” is another word the style guide suggests must be used sparingly, because it implies frail, incapacitated or diminished.
“Seniors” can be a trigger word for ageist stereotypes and the style guide suggests that the term “older adult” is usually a more accepted and accurate word.
Journalists and writers might not even be aware they are using words that promote ageist stereotypes, because those are the words they hear around them all the time.
“So they can improve by not using that language, by thinking about what their words are, and how they're using it,” she said.
Another way for journalists to address ageism is to consider ways to include the voices of older adults in ordinary stories about the community.
“Something is going on in the community and if you're getting some quotes from people, maybe phone up an older adult and make sure you get that quote besides not only the younger people or the kind of official government, city councillors, or town councillors,” she said.
“I think those are the two major ones. Looking a little more closely at ways in which you can include older adult voices and secondly be more aware of the language that you use and the other subtle things like placement in paper and whether you use a photograph. Those kind of things that raise up the value of the story and make it more noticeable.”
The Ageism and Media project is part of a larger three-year impact project, Reducing Isolation of Seniors Collective (RISC), by several organizations in Saskatchewan to reduce social isolation of older adults in south and central Saskatchewan.
RISC is one of nine collective impact projects across Canada that is receiving federal funding from Employment and Social Development Canada as part of the New Horizons for Seniors Program.
The RISC participants are SSM, the Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan, Canadian Red Cross, and the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit.
The goals of this impact project are to increase the proportion of older adults who have support and help when they need it, to increase the number of older adults who participate regularly in activities, and to increase the proportion of older adults who feel connected to and valued by family, friends and acquaintances.
SSM is carrying out the Ageism and Media project to evaluate the perceptions about older adults in society.
These societal attitudes are often portrayed through the media and these messages can have an influence on how older adults view themselves and how they are valued within communities.
The first media monitoring process took place from Feb. 6-18, 2017. The 39 monitors coded 354 news stories, which consisted of 305 articles, 42 television news stories and seven radio news stories, while 18 items were analyzed qualitatively.
“We wanted to be as objective as we possibly could to see what were the messages coming through media,” she said.
“We were looking at the news stories that relate to Saskatchewan journalists and Saskatchewan media outlets as much as we could, and so we trained monitors. Many of the monitors, I would say the majority of monitors, were older adults themselves and that was actually part of the research intent, because if you have an older person who is monitoring and hearing and reading and seeing, then their responses are out of their reality, their experience.”
A key finding by monitors was that it was difficult to find stories about older adults and they were not represented as often as they might have been.
“Weekly newspapers, community newspapers, actually did the best on having stories about older adults,” she said. “On radio very few were found, television some.”
According to Anderson the better representation of older adults in community newspapers are due to the realization by these newspapers that older adults are a large part of their market.
“The older adults like newspapers, we read newspapers,” she said. “So there's a better relationship, but not saying it can't be improved.”
In many cases these newspaper stories were related to ageist stereotypes, for example they were about events such as a 100th birthday and one monitor noted that any stories about older adults in a smalltown community newspaper were placed next to the obituaries.
The monitors identified foundational stereotypes about older adults in all the different media and those stereotypes were often conveyed through language use.
There were some age positive stories in the media during this monitoring period, for example about the contributions of older adults to their community.
“We were a little bit more inclined to get stories that were celebrating what somebody has done in the past,” she said.
“They're retired now, they were really great and now they're retiring, but there was the occasional one that was about an older adult, they may be retired from their former career, but they were active in their community. Those are golden.”
The next period of media monitoring will take place Feb. 9-22, 2019.
It will be using the same analysis format as the initial monitoring to gather comparable data and to determine if there are any changes to the number and type of stories about older adults in the Saskatchewan news media.
Anderson hopes the Ageism and Media project will help to convey a broader message to society that the growing demographic of older adults is an amazing asset to their communities.
“There is a wealth of experience and wisdom and energy to do things that will help our communities and we shouldn't only think of it as these are some old people whose needs we have to somehow meet and spend money to do it, but to start looking at the value of their contributions,” she said. “You think about any non-profit and volunteer organizations in your community. Who is carrying the load? I'll be willing to bet that the largest proportion is being carried by older adults.”
More information about the Ageism and Media project, including the report about the 2017 monitoring results and the Words are Powerful style guide, is available on the SSM website under the section for resources and programs.
The website address is: www.skseniorsmechanism.ca