Diversity and age stereotypes in portrayals of older adults in popular American primetime television series

Abstract

To examine the prevalence and diversity of older adults on primetime television, and age stereotyping in these portrayals, we analysed the contents of 112 episodes of popular American television series aired between 2004 and 2018. We identified 6.6 per cent of characters as aged 65 and older – a slight improvement to the values reported in previous studies. However, older adult characters are still grossly under-represented, considering the actual proportion of older adults in the general population of the United States of America. Further, the typical older character was young-old, male, Caucasian, middle-class, able-bodied and straight – if his sexuality was referenced. Older women still face double discrimination in media representations. In addition, older adult characters with ethnicities other than Caucasian and African American are virtually invisible in primetime fiction series. Similarly, old-old characters, sexual minorities and persons with disabilities are particularly rare among older adult characters in this type of programming. Finally, portrayals of 51.9 per cent of characters included at least some elements of age stereotypes, most of which were positive. The most commonly applied positive and negative stereotypes were found to be the golden ager and the shrew, respectively. The findings are discussed in the context of the dominant discourse of ageing and the potential implications of how various social groups perceive ageing and older adults.

Algorithmic Bias in Image-Generating Artificial Intelligence: Prevalence and User Perceptions

“…Diversity in college students has been an important social topic in the past, because certain ethnic groups, as well as females, did not have equal access to colleges throughout history. Meanwhile, the topic of diversity in older people has received less public attention, with older people being portrayed homogeneous, if at all, in public media (Markov & Yoon, 2021;Westwood, 2023). As a result, viewers could be less sensitized for a lack of diversity in older people.…”

“…We suggest that in case of portrayal of people in STEM, underrepresentation of older people could become more apparent for certain social groups than others. Especially females and POC could suffer from being unseen (Markov & Yoon, 2021;Westwood, 2023). Hence, we explore algorithmic bias of image-generating AI, with a focus on STEM, regarding three characteristics of gender, ethnicity, and age.…”

Imagen y representación de estereotipos y arquetipos en la ficción audiovisual televisiva española: de Cites a El Pueblo como casos de educomunicación en series

“…Previous research highlights that a bias is produced in the cases of social minorities (Igartua, Barrios and Ortega, 2012;Mastro, 2009) or new social trends (Markov & Yoon, 2021). Thus, more and more fiction series are being produced with the aim of attenuating certain characteristics and creating a series of innovative content and representations, with protagonists and characters who carry out actions that are normally pigeonholed as other behaviour types (Lozano, 2020).…”

The faceless and vulnerable other – the visual portrayal of older people on German online news sites within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…There are also gendered aspects of ageing in the media wherein positive attitudes are more often ascribed to individuals read as male than female (Hurd et al, 2014;Kovács et al, 2021), who are, in turn, depicted as vulnerable (Kessler et al, 2004;Wells, 2007;Kessler and Schwender, 2012;Pritchard and Whiting, 2015). While raising awareness of the capabilities and agency of older people, an overly positive representation tends to disguise both age-related challenges and the heterogeneity of the age group as a whole (Ylänne, 2015;Markov and Yoon, 2021).…”