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Societal Age Stereotypes in the U.S. and U.K. from a Media Database of 1.1 Billion Words

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  • Reuben Ng

    (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260, Singapore
    Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260, Singapore)

Abstract

Recently, 194 World Health Organization member states called on the international organization to develop a global campaign to combat ageism, citing its alarming ubiquity, insidious threat to health, and prevalence in the media. Existing media studies of age stereotypes have mostly been single-sourced. This study harnesses a 1.1-billion-word media database comprising the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English—with genres including spoken/television, fiction, magazines, newspapers—to provide a comprehensive view of ageism in the United Kingdom and United States. The US and UK were chosen as they are home to the largest media conglomerates with tremendous power to shape public opinion. The most commonly used synonym of older adults was identified, and its most frequently used descriptors were analyzed for valence. Such computational linguistics techniques represent a new advance in studying aging narratives. The key finding is consistent, though no less alarming: Negative descriptions of older adults outnumber positive ones by six times. Negative descriptions tend to be physical, while positive ones tend to be behavioral. Magazines contain the highest levels of ageism, followed by the spoken genre, newspapers, and fiction. Findings underscore the need to increase public awareness of ageism and lay the groundwork to design targeted societal campaigns to tackle ageism—one of our generation’s most pernicious threats.

Suggested Citation

  • Reuben Ng, 2021. "Societal Age Stereotypes in the U.S. and U.K. from a Media Database of 1.1 Billion Words," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-10, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:16:p:8822-:d:619045
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. Reuben Ng & Becca Levy, 2018. "Pettiness: Conceptualization, measurement and cross-cultural differences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, January.
    5. Reuben Ng, 2018. "Cloud Computing in Singapore: Key Drivers and Recommendations for a Smart Nation," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 6(4), pages 39-47.
    6. Stuart Soroka & Patrick Fournier & Lilach Nir, 2019. "Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(38), pages 18888-18892, September.
    7. Reuben Ng & Si Qi Lim & Su Ying Saw & Kelvin Bryan Tan, 2020. "40-Year Projections of Disability and Social Isolation of Older Adults for Long-Range Policy Planning in Singapore," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(14), pages 1-8, July.
    8. Reuben Ng & Kelvin Bryan Tan, 2021. "Implementing an Individual-Centric Discharge Process across Singapore Public Hospitals," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-7, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. Reuben Ng & Nicole Indran, 2021. "Societal Narratives on Caregivers in Asia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-15, October.

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