Modern Senicide in the Face of a Pandemic: An Examination of Public Discourse and Sentiment About Older Adults and COVID-19 Using Machine Learning

Abstract

Objectives This study examined public discourse and sentiment regarding older adults and COVID-19 on social media and assessed the extent of ageism in public discourse. Methods Twitter data (N = 82,893) related to both older adults and COVID-19 and dated from January 23 to May 20, 2020, were analyzed. We used a combination of data science methods (including supervised machine learning, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis), qualitative thematic analysis, and conventional statistics. Results The most common category in the coded tweets was “personal opinions” (66.2%), followed by “informative” (24.7%), “jokes/ridicule” (4.8%), and “personal experiences” (4.3%). The daily average of ageist content was 18%, with the highest of 52.8% on March 11, 2020. Specifically, more than 1 in 10 (11.5%) tweets implied that the life of older adults is less valuable or downplayed the pandemic because it mostly harms older adults. A small proportion (4.6%) explicitly supported the idea of just isolating older adults. Almost three-quarters (72.9%) within “jokes/ridicule” targeted older adults, half of which were “death jokes.” Also, 14 themes were extracted, such as perceptions of lockdown and risk. A bivariate Granger causality test suggested that informative tweets regarding at-risk populations increased the prevalence of tweets that downplayed the pandemic. Discussion Ageist content in the context of COVID-19 was prevalent on Twitter. Information about COVID-19 on Twitter influenced public perceptions of risk and acceptable ways of controlling the pandemic. Public education on the risk of severe illness is needed to correct misperceptions.

Social media, ageism, and older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Our findings showed that almost a quarter of tweets downplayed the importance of COVID-19 because it was deadlier among older individuals, and that 14% contained offensive content or jokes [3]. Using our same methodology, another group of researchers analyzed 82,893 tweets published between January and April 2020 [4]. Like in our study, most tweets contained personal opinions, but with a lower proportion of tweets with ageist content of only 12%.…”

“…Like in our study, most tweets contained personal opinions, but with a lower proportion of tweets with ageist content of only 12%. Sentiment analysis found that negative tweets mostly contained words related with death and/or sickness, and that sentiments changed over time, with an increase in negative content right after the pandemic declaration and a decrease thereafter [4].…”

Ageism in the time of COVID-19

“…As highlighted by Fraser et al (2020) , the disregard for the impact of COVID-19 in care homes and the exclusion of nursing home residents from official death counts “could lead the public to conclude that their deaths were insignificant and to be expected (p. 693)” At the same time, the widespread use of the hashtag “BoomerRemover” ( Aronson, 2020 ; Monahan et al, 2020 ) signals a lack of concern over how COVID-19 is affecting older generations. Xiang et al’s (2020) analysis of posts on Twitter revealed that 1 in 10 tweets implied that the lives of older adults are less valuable, and downplayed the pandemic because it mostly affects older adults. In addition, the high mortality rates amongst older adults are considered inevitable or a normal outcome, worthy of jokes or ridicule, which is consistent with past findings showing the deaths of younger individuals are seen as more unjust than those of older people ( Chasteen & Madey, 2003 ).…”

When apathy is deadlier than COVID-19

“…To the Editor -Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many have disregarded worry since the virus "only kills old and disabled people" 1 . Aside from being inaccurate, this reflects the most disturbing theme across COVID-19: society prioritizing comfort and convenience over the safety of vulnerable groups, apparently deemed disposable.…”