“Remember this picture when you take more than you need”: Constructing morality through instrumental ageism in COVID-19 memes on social media

Graham, Megan E.

doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101024

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Amidst this sad reality, the dissemination of information to the public has been the subject of various analyses. Findings from this work have noted the worldwide ageist nature of editorial lines, the devaluation of older adults (Søraa et al, 2020;Naughton et al, 2021;Graham, 2022;Jeong et al, 2022;Ylänne, 2022) and the tendency to separate the discourses ascribed to older adults from those used to describe the rest of society (Dionne and Turkmen, 2020;Allen and Ayalon, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Tragedy and value of life of older persons in long-term care homes during COVID-19: a critical discourse analysis

Lessard,

Oyinlola,

Sussman

2024

Ageing and Society

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media provided daily coverage of this unprecedented crisis in the history of the 21st century. Some topics, such as how the virus affected older adults, were widely covered. The way in which COVID-19 was documented evoked a ‘tragedy’ narrative through consistent reporting about the suffering it was causing and the deleterious consequences it had on specific populations, including residents of long-term care homes (LTC). This article explores how reports on COVID-19 in LTC homes in a national newspaper (The Globe and Mail) fuelled a tragedy discourse that modulated the value of life of older adults living in those environments. We used critical discourse analysis and analysed 74 articles focusing on older persons residing in LTC homes in two Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario) during COVID-19. This article offers a brief overview of the notion of tragedy and how the discourse of tragedy is intertwined with humanitarian crises, life and death, and the value of life. Our findings revealed the construction of three types of tragedies that shape our societal values around life and death in LTC: the tragedy of the threat to life, the tragedy of the unfortunate (old, vulnerable and lacking in agency) and, finally, the tragedy of historical neglect and abandonment. Our findings suggest that the nature of reporting on life and death in LTC homes during the COVID-19 pandemic provoked a sense of fear and pity for a passive other. Re-thinking what gets reported in the media, including whose voice is represented/missing and how tragedy narratives are balanced with contesting stories, could elicit more sentiments of solidarity and action rather than reinforce pity, distancing and immobilisation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Tragedy and value of life of older persons in long-term care homes during COVID-19: a critical discourse analysis

Lessard,

Oyinlola,

Sussman

2024

Ageing and Society

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“…Discourse analysis was the most used method for analysing the posts. Various types of discourse analysis, such as multimodal discourse analysis (Dynel 2020(Dynel , 2022Lotfy & Soliman 2021;Ogoanah & Ojo 2021), genre-based discourse analysis (Han & Kuipers 2021), critical discourse analysis (Graham 2022;Haider & Al-Abbas 2022), multimodal critical discourse analysis (Inyabri et al 2021), and feminist critical discourse analysis (Lomotey 2020) were used in the studies. This method enabled the researchers to focus on the production and distribution processes of the COVID-19 humour.…”

Section: Sample Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the future, more corpus-based research might facilitate more large-scale investigation of multiple characteristics of a feature, especially from a linguistic perspective, resulting in a fuller understanding of its use.Different methods were used for data collection in the reviewed studies. Purposive sampling (Hussein & Aljamili 2020; Khan et al 2020; Ajayi & Akinrinlola 2021; Chibuwe & Munoriyarwa 2022; Dynel 2022; Martínez-Cardama & García-López 2021; Raj & Jayaprakash 2021; Tunde Asiru & Bello 2021; Haider & Al-Abbas 2022; Kadri & Jumrah 2022; Marfo et al 2022; Matamoros-Fernández et al 2022; Phillips-Kumaga et al 2022; Uwen & Ushie 2022; Younes & Altakhaineh 2022), random sampling (Lomotey 2020; Glăveanu & de Saint Laurent 2021; Inyabri et al 2021; Aronson & Jaffal 2022), convenience sampling (Mahat-Shamir & Kagan 2022), and the virtual snowball sampling(Graham 2022) were commonly used. Extraction of relevant data by the use of tags(Dynel 2020(Dynel , 2022Inyabri et al 2021;Matamoros- Fernández et al 2022), keywords (Lomotey 2020; Cancelas-Ouviña 2021; Murru & Vicari 2021; Graham 2022; Matamoros-Fernández et al 2022; Younes & Altakhaineh 2022), and hashtags (Dynel 2020; Han & Kuipers 2021; Norstrom & Sarna 2021; Marfo et al 2022) was observed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond laughter and smiles

Bageshwar

Zafar

2023

EJHR

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Amid the deluge of serious social media posts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, humorous posts brought users much-needed respite. This article reviews studies on social media-based COVID-19 humour in 42 research articles that were selected from four databases, viz. Science Direct, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, and Web of Science. After the classification and analysis of the articles on the basis of some key features, a detailed description and discussion of the findings have been carried out. The results concerning the characteristics and functions of COVID-19 humour reveal that most studies investigated image-text memes; the most important feature found was ‘humour,’ in addition to others like sarcasm, irony, satire, criticism, juxtaposition, and locality. Intertextuality played a significant role in the structure of humorous posts, especially those related to specific countries. Additionally, it shows that although research on COVID-19 humour on social media is still in an early phase, several findings appear stable across various studies included in this review. Moreover, most humour studied is not only about the virus or the disease itself, but also focuses on absurd situations individuals found themselves in due to the pandemic and the lockdown that followed.

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“…The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exacerbated issues of ageism toward older adults. Existing studies have found that ageism (such as negative stereotypes, beliefs, and discrimination toward older adults) has become rampant on social media platforms ( Graham, 2022 ; Meisner, 2021 ; Ng & Indran, 2022 ), including Twitter. A recent report by the World Health Organization and the United Nations (2021) notes that ageism leads to reduced mental and physical health, social isolation, early mortality, and costs society billions of dollars every year.…”

Section: Background and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Twitter to Understand COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Ageism During the Pandemic

Bacsu,

Andrew,

Azizi

et al. 2023

The Gerontologist

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Background and Objectives During the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, older adults in high-income countries were often prioritized for inoculation in efforts to reduce COVID-19 related mortality. However, this prioritization may have contributed to intergenerational tensions and ageism, particularly with the limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines. This study examines Twitter discourse to understand vaccine-related ageism during the COVID-19 pandemic to inform future vaccination policies and practices to reduce ageism. Research Design and Methods We collected 1,369 relevant tweets on Twitter using the Twint application in Python from December 8, 2020 to December 31, 2021. Tweets were analyzed using thematic analysis, and steps were taken to ensure rigor. Results Our research identified four main themes including: i) blame and hostility: ‘It’s all their fault’; ii) incompetence and misinformation: ‘clueless boomer’; iii) ageist political slander; and iv) combatting ageism: advocacy and accessibility. Discussion and Implications Our findings exposed issues of victim-blaming, hate speech, pejorative content, and ageist political slander that is deepening the divide of intergenerational conflict. Although a subset of tweets countered negative outcomes and demonstrated intergenerational solidarity, our findings suggest that ageism may have contributed to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among older adults. Consequently, urgent action is needed to counter vaccine misinformation, prohibit aggressive messaging, and promote intergenerational unity during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

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“Remember this picture when you take more than you need”: Constructing morality through instrumental ageism in COVID-19 memes on social media

Cited by 5 publications

References 42 publications

Tragedy and value of life of older persons in long-term care homes during COVID-19: a critical discourse analysis

Tragedy and value of life of older persons in long-term care homes during COVID-19: a critical discourse analysis

Beyond laughter and smiles

Using Twitter to Understand COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Ageism During the Pandemic

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