As societies are ageing and mediatizing at the same time, it becomes both timely and relevant to develop particular perspectives on the role and meaning of media for older people. The diversity and inequality in the lived experience of the ageing population in the new media environment constitute a blind spot in current research. In this essay, we bring literatures of (cultural) ageing studies and (new) media studies into conversation with each other by asking what future directions for research on older people and their media lives from the particular perspective of social diversity could be. We propose three key interventions: developing a focus on social stratification and inequality broadly conceived; designing research with a life course perspective rather than reducing people to age groups; and focusing empirical work looking at the various ways people 'do' media in an ensemblematic way.

<p>Based on a pilot study of online news making and commenting in Denmark, the article discusses the relationship between online political news making and democracy. Empirical insights on the dynamics of user engagement and debates on mainstream Danish online news platforms are used to delineate the contours of the online public sphere. It is argued that the new digital media should be discussed not only as a new forum for political participation but also in relation to traditional forms of representative democracy. The analysis comprises the technical features and apps that are designed by online news providers in Denmark to facilitate the constitution of new “voice publics”. How these voice publics are designed as an element of news making and news distribution and, as such, linked to the old “representative” and “attentive publics” of news consumption is investigated.<strong></strong></p>

Computers, tablets, smartphones and mobile phones enable people to act across contexts. For individuals born during the first half of the twentieth century, these social infrastructures for agency arrived late in the life course. This article presents an analysis of a set of interviews that were thematically coded to reveal ways in which the infrastructures figured in reflexive practices among older single-dwelling women. The interviews were patterned by the shared image of a ‘media world’ and the hypothesis of the indispensability of newer media for living a socially integrated life in today’s society. Control of media connected with feelings of dis- or empowerment; ultimately media amplified the participants’ feelings of being autonomous actors. I argue that the newer media infrastructures extend the scope and need for reflexivity and augment the reflexive ageing associated with the continued activity and autonomy of the third age.

In this introductory article we offer a frame for understanding the relationship between the ageing body and the media as the focus for this special issue. As societies age, issues of representations of old bodies and people’s practices and embodied experiences with media technologies requires a deeper investigation. At the same time, contemporary society is undergoing processes of mediatization, which invites us to think of the ways in which media can be said to play a role in changing practices or changing representations regarding the older body. The introduction is concerned with this duality: the changing sociocultural conditions for the ageing body and the changing authority of media and its role for the ageing body. Finally, we briefly introduce the articles that are part of the special issue ‘The ageing body and the media’.

During the 20th and 21st century, media such as radio, telephone, television, computers and cell phones moved into everyday life as taken-for-granted elements. Based on observations and life-history interviews with 22 older women, this article discusses how media technology is materially involved in the experience of growing old. The analysis reveals two aspects of this. First, different technology stands out from its background presence as problematic because the media no longer enable the experiences they used to. Second, disconnects with and through media technology direct attention towards the declining body. The participants embody ‘old age’ by linking their experience with media to two cultural constructions of material ageing: generation and natural ageing. I argue that inasmuch as everyday life has become mediatized, the experience of growing old also takes place with and through media technology. This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.