Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:13:44.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The portrayal of elderly men and women in Hungarian television news programmes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2020

Gábor Kovács Open the ORCID record for Gábor Kovács [Opens in a new window] ,
Petra Aczél Open the ORCID record for Petra Aczél [Opens in a new window]  and
Tamás Bokor Open the ORCID record for Tamás Bokor [Opens in a new window]
Gábor Kovács*
Affiliation:
Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Communication Theory, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
Petra Aczél
Affiliation:
Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Communication Theory, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
Tamás Bokor
Affiliation:
Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Communication Theory, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mass media research on the portrayal of older people has primarily focused on television series and advertisements. News programmes on television have received little attention. We argue that viewers perceive characters on the news as more direct and more accurate representations of social reality than fictional characters, and therefore portrayals on the news are more likely to be integrated in viewers’ stereotypes about elderly people or used as standards of comparison. In order to explore potential differences in the representation of senior men and women, we conducted a quantitative content analysis on a sample of 754 elderly people who appeared on the evening news programmes of four major Hungarian television channels with high viewership. Each character was coded in terms of 115 qualitative variables. Our results indicate that older men are portrayed significantly more often than women as affluent, elegant, knowledgeable, powerful and actively working. By contrast, women are more commonly shown as kind, family-oriented, in ordinary roles (e.g. as the ‘woman in the street’) and engaged in less-productive activities such as shopping. Based on previous research on the role of mass media in the socialisation process as well as social comparison theory, we discuss how these imbalances in the representation of older men and women may affect viewers of different age groups, genders and social status.

Keywords

older peopletelevisiongender differencescontent analysissocial comparison
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 41 , Issue 9 , September 2021 , pp. 2099 - 2117
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agresti, A (2002) Categorical Data Analysis, 2nd Edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bandura, A (2009) Social cognitive theory of mass communication. In Bryant, J and Oliver, MB (eds), Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, 3rd Edn. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 94–124.Google Scholar
Bell, J (1992) In search of a discourse on aging: the elderly on television. The Gerontologist 32, 305–311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cassata, M, Anderson, P and Skill, T (1980) The older adult in daytime serial drama. Journal of Communication 30, 48–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elliott, JA (1984) The daytime television drama portrayal of older adults. The Gerontologist 24, 628–633.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Festinger, L (1954) A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations 7, 117–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Filipp, S-H and Mayer, A-K (1999) Bilder des Alters: Altersstereotype und die Beziehungen zwischen den Generationen [Images of Old Age: Age Stereotypes and Inter-generational Relationships]. Stuttgart, Germany: Kohlhammer.Google Scholar
Fleiss, JL (1981) Statistical Methods for Rates and Proportions, 2nd Edn. New York, NY: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Fung, HH, Li, T, Zhang, X, Sit, IMI, Cheng, S-T and Isaacowitz, DM (2015) Positive portrayals of old age do not always have positive consequences. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 70B, 913–924.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, JP, Wheeler, L and Suls, J (2018) A social comparison theory meta-analysis 60+ years on. Psychological Bulletin 144, 177–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerbner, G, Gross, L, Signorielli, N and Morgan, M (1980) Aging with television: images on television drama and conceptions of social reality. Journal of Communication 30, 37–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibb, H and Holroyd, E (1996) Images of old age in the Hong Kong print media. Ageing & Society 16, 151–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heidrich, SM and Ryff, CD (1993) The role of social comparisons processes in the psychological adaptation of elderly adults. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 48, 127–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hess, TM, Auman, C, Colcombe, SJ and Rahhal, TA (2003) The impact of stereotype threat on age differences in memory performance. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 58B, 3–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hess, TM, Hinson, JT and Statham, JA (2004) Explicit and implicit stereotype activation effects on memory: do age and awareness moderate the impact of priming? Psychology and Aging 19, 495–505.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hilton, J and Von Hippel, W (1996) Stereotypes. Annual Review of Psychology 47, 237–271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jürgens, HW (1994) Untersuchungen zum Bild des älteren Menschen in den elektronischen Medien [Studies on the Portrayal of Older People in the Electronic Media]. Kiel, Germany: Unabhängige Landesanstalt für das Rundfunkwesen.Google Scholar
Kessler, E-M and Schwender, C (2012) Giving dementia a face? The portrayal of older people with dementia in German weekly news magazines between the years 2000 and 2009. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 67B, 261–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessler, E-M, Rakoczy, K and Staundinger, UM (2004) The portrayal of older people in prime time television series: the match with gerontological evidence. Ageing & Society 24, 531–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessler, E-M, Schwender, C and Bowen, CE (2010) The portrayal of older people's social participation on German prime-time TV advertisements. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 65B, 97–106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kimura, D (1999) Sex and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koncz, K (2014) Nők a parlamentben 1990–2014 [Women in the parliament 1990–2014]. Statisztikai Szemle 92, 513–540.Google Scholar
Koskinen, S, Salminen, L and Leino-Kilpi, H (2014) Media portrayal of older people as illustrated in Finnish newspapers. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being 9, 25304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kotter-Grühn, D, Kleinspehn-Ammerlahn, A, Gerstorf, D and Smith, J (2009) Self-perceptions of aging predict mortality and change with approaching death: 16-year longitudinal results from the Berlin Aging Study. Psychology and Aging 24, 654–667.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kovács, G, Aczél, P and Bokor, T (2018) Magyar egyetemisták vélekedései az idősekről [Hungarian university students’ beliefs about the elderly]. Jel-Kép 39, 62–93.Google Scholar
Levy, B (1996) Improving memory in old age through implicit self-stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, 1092–1107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, BR (2003) Mind matters: cognitive and physical effects of aging self-stereotypes. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 58B, 203–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, BR and Myers, LM (2004) Preventative health behaviors influenced by self-perceptions of aging. Preventative Medicine 39, 625–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, BR, Zonderman, AB, Slade, MD and Ferrucci, L (2009) Age stereotypes held earlier in life predict cardiovascular events in later life. Psychological Science 20, 296–298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lobo, P and Cabecinhas, R (2018) Retratos de género nas notícias televisivas: uma análise das desigualdades por detrás da representação numérica [Gender portraits in television news: analysing inequalities behind the numerical representation]. Estudos em Comunicação 26, 81–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macharia, S (2015) Who Makes the News? Global Media Monitoring Project 2015. London: World Association for Christian Communication. Available at http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/global/gmmp_global_report_en.pdf.Google Scholar
Mares, M-L and Cantor, J (1992) Elderly viewers’ responses to televised portrayals of old age: empathy and mood management versus social comparison. Communication Research 19, 459–478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehta, CR and Patel, NR (2012) IBM SPSS Exact Tests. Available at www.sussex.ac.uk/its/pdfs/SPSS_Exact_Tests_22.pdf.Google Scholar
Miller, DW, Leyell, TS and Mazacheck, J (2004) Stereotypes of the elderly in U.S. television commercials from the 1950s to the 1990s. International Journal of Aging and Human Development 58, 315–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neuendorf, KA (2002) The Content Analysis Guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
O'Brien, LT and Hummert, ML (2006) Memory performance of late middle-aged adults: contrasting self-stereotyping and stereotype threat accounts of assimilation to age stereotypes. Social Cognition 24, 338–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinquart, M (2002) Good news about the effects of bad old-age stereotypes. Experimental Aging Research 28, 317–336.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prieler, M, Kohlbacher, F, Hagiwara, S and Arima, A (2011) Gender representation of older people in Japanese television advertisements. Sex Roles 64, 405–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, BW, Walton, KE and Viechtbauer, W (2006) Patterns of mean level change in personality traits across the life course: a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin 132, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robinson, JD, Skill, T and Turner, JW (2004) Media usage patterns and portrayals of seniors. In Nussbaum, JF and Coupland, J (eds), Handbook of Communication and Aging Research, 2nd Edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 423–450.Google Scholar
Sedick, S and Roos, V (2011) Older people's portrayal in the print media: implications for intergenerational relations. Journal of Psychology in Africa 21, 549–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheskin, DJ (2004) Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical Procedures, 3rd Edn. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.Google Scholar
Stern, SR and Mastro, DE (2004) Gender portrayals across the life span: a content analytic look at broadcast commercials. Mass Communication and Society 7, 215–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, TL, Chipperfield, JG, Perry, RP and Weiner, B (2012) Attributing illness to ‘old age:’ consequences of a self-directed stereotype for health and mortality. Psychology and Health 8, 881–897.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vasil, L and Wass, H (1993) Portrayal of the elderly in the media: a literature review and implications for educational gerontologists. Educational Gerontology 19, 71–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilinska, M and Cedersund, E (2010) ‘Classical ageism’ or ‘brutal economy’? Old age and older people in the Polish media. Journal of Aging Studies 24, 335–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wills, TA (1981) Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulletin 90, 245–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zell, E and Alicke, MD (2013) Local dominance in health risk perception. Psychology and Health 28, 469–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, YB, Harwood, J, Williams, A, Ylänne-McEwen, V, Wadleigh, PM and Thimm, C (2006) The portrayal of older adults in advertising: a cross-national review. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 25, 264–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Kovács et al. Supplementary Materials

Kovács et al. Supplementary Materials

Download Kovács et al. Supplementary Materials(File)
File 34.1 KB