Old age and death in the French news media: from representation to existential limit situations
Type
conference speech
Date Issued
2025-04-05
Author(s)
Abstract
Ageism has been identified as a global phenomenon in need of further acknowledgment and critical reflections by both scholars and practitioners (Ayalon, 2020; Ehni & Wahl, 2020; Hopf et al., 2021; World Health Organization, 2021). In the many shades in which ageism is expressed, stereotypes contribute to regimes of representation that essentialize older adults and reduce them to others (Hall, 1997; van Dyk, 2016). One of the prominent ageist stereotypes regards the conflation of old age with death (Gilleard & Higgs, 2013; Hazan, 1994; World Health Organization, 2021).
This paper is an invitation for aging and/or media and communication scholars to rethink the death and old age stereotype to go beyond discussions of ageist representations. To this end, I suggest to (re)consider old age and death as limit situations as understood in Existential Media studies (Ess, 2020; Lagerkvist, 2022; Scannell, 2014). Building on Jaspers existential philosophical work, the media scholar Lagerkvist (2022) defines a limit situation as “encounters with death, crisis, guilt, and conflict (…) moments in life that may be transformative if we seize them as we face the limits of what we can control” (Lagerkvist, 2022, p.3).
This paper is rooted in the findings of a two-year long ethnographic work, which included a critical discourse analysis of mainstream news media portrayal of aging in France. As I disentangle competing news media narratives about aging and death, I show that approaching the stereotypical association of old age with death as a limit situation has the power of both unveiling the “social arrangements which we impose upon the aged members of our society” that hide behind a stereotype (Hazan, 1994, p.32) and opening an anti-ageist, troubling, fruitful existential understanding of aging.
This paper is an invitation for aging and/or media and communication scholars to rethink the death and old age stereotype to go beyond discussions of ageist representations. To this end, I suggest to (re)consider old age and death as limit situations as understood in Existential Media studies (Ess, 2020; Lagerkvist, 2022; Scannell, 2014). Building on Jaspers existential philosophical work, the media scholar Lagerkvist (2022) defines a limit situation as “encounters with death, crisis, guilt, and conflict (…) moments in life that may be transformative if we seize them as we face the limits of what we can control” (Lagerkvist, 2022, p.3).
This paper is rooted in the findings of a two-year long ethnographic work, which included a critical discourse analysis of mainstream news media portrayal of aging in France. As I disentangle competing news media narratives about aging and death, I show that approaching the stereotypical association of old age with death as a limit situation has the power of both unveiling the “social arrangements which we impose upon the aged members of our society” that hide behind a stereotype (Hazan, 1994, p.32) and opening an anti-ageist, troubling, fruitful existential understanding of aging.
Language
English
Keywords
aging communication media death
Event Title
1st Conference of the ECREA TWG on Aging and Communication Studies - The power of stereotypes
Event Location
Lleida, Spain
Event Date
05/04/2025
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Contact Email Address
m.poux-berthe@live.fr