Pressens bildrepresentation om äldre under Covid-19 2020 : En kvantitativ och kvalitativ bildanalys av äldres representation i Aftonbladet och Dagens Nyheter

• Main Authors: Johansson, Jesper, Johansson, Victoria
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för medier och journalistik (MJ) 2021
• Subjects: ageism; media; journalism; elderly; covid-19; coronavirus; stereotypes; discrimination; semiotic; qualitative analysis; quantitative analysis; Media and Communications; Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-101690

The recommendations in Sweden following the coronavirus has led to a group of elderly people feeling discriminated – as some might not relate to the stereotypical view of people above the age of 70. This is just somewhat example how a negative stereotype towards elderly people could take form. A view similar like this towards elderly people that includes prejudicial attitudes or negative stereotypes is a form of discrimination, and goes by the name of ageism – which also might be our most accepted form of discrimination today. Sweden is a home for over 1.6 million people above the age of 70, which makes up for around 16 % of the total population. That makes the group a large target for discrimination. It might not be easy to reach out to all these people by yourself, but it’s certain that big media corporations have the power to do so. Our goal with this thesis was to study how two of the largest dailies in Sweden – Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter image distribution of the elderly people look like in terms of representation during the restrictions and recommendations of the coronavirus. In order to achieve this we used Lars Anderssons interpretation of ageism as our theoretical starting point, but also Stuart Hall’s theory about representation to answer in which way elderly people are being represented. The first level of analysis for this thesis was quantitative, as we wanted to see in frequencies which way the subject for this study is portrayed. This then gave us a broader picture we can work with for our qualitative analysis, where we then focused on analyzing semiotically of the elderly looks like in the news pictures during the given time frame for this study from 1ˢᵗ of April to 30ᵗʰ September. The results presented in this thesis did not share a similar result with most of the recent studies in the same field – which reveals how elderly people are portrayed in a negative ageing stereotype as well as underrepresented in the media.