International epidemiological data have emphasised that COVID-19 poses a particular threat to older adults. As media coverage plays an important, direct role in shaping official responses to unfolding crisis situations, the aim of this paper was to analyse the portrayal of older people and COVID-19 by mainstream New Zealand news media. We undertook a qualitative document analysis (QDA) of New Zealand coverage during March 2020. From a total sample pool of 482 articles obtained from the database Knowledgebasket, 91 articles met our inclusion criteria. Our analysis of this coverage found that older people were most often referred to as an nameless, homogeneous ‘other’ group who were overwhelmingly framed as being at risk and passive. Only a third of articles framed older people as active. Older people's agency and ability to navigate threats to their health and wellbeing were under-represented in news coverage. Coverage stigmatised older people as passive and inherently, rather than situationally, vulnerable and neglected the diversity of their social circumstances and intersecting identities, including ethnicity. We conclude this article with suggestions informed by our findings for promoting equitable media coverage of older New Zealanders’ in the context of pandemics.

Introduction

While COVID-19 has affected people the world over, epidemiological data have emphasised that the virus is a particular threat to older adults (Ministry of Health 2020b). In line with public health strategies adopted in Italy and Spain, on 21 March 2020 the Aotearoa New Zealand government required people aged 70 and over to remain at home at all times (Ministry of Health 2020a). While the general New Zealand population was required to self-isolate under level 4 restrictions imposed on 25 March the distinction between people over 70 and everyone else was established early on by the four-level alert system and the different freedoms it allowed (Baker et al. 2020). This age-based approach has played an important, ongoing role in shaping public perceptions of COVID-19 and has remained a central pillar of New Zealand's public health response (Ministry of Health 2020b).

During crises, journalists operate as ‘first-line responders’ with the responsibility of swiftly ‘crystalising the feelings of a nation’ (Rupar 2020). Media reporting provides the public with important raw materials with which to make sense of crisis situations (Altheide and Schneider 2013). Media coverage of disaster events, of which the COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly constitutes an instance, is ‘often rooted in judgments about the social value of disaster victims and on conceptions of social distance and difference’ that are couched in ‘broader societal and cultural metanarratives’ (Tierney et al. 2006, p. 62). Media coverage plays an important and direct role in shaping official responses to unfolding crisis situations and often operates to promote greater social control of already structurally disadvantaged groups (Tierney et al. 2006). It also helps to convey who matters during crises and who are thus legitimate recipients of community and government support (Flett 2020).

Media have long been acknowledged as a powerful vehicle for cultural beliefs about ageing (Miller et al. 2015; Fraser et al. 2016; Makita et al. 2019). While older people tend to be under-represented in media coverage, when present they are typically framed in relation to a range of stereotypes (Loos and Ivan 2018). Positive representations of older people include framing them as ‘active agers’ who are wise, loving grandparents and/or leisure-orientated retirees (Rozanova 2010; Allen and Wiles 2014; Stephens 2017). However, many Western societies are also steeped in anti-ageing mentalities; negative images tend to proliferate which frame older people as frail and dependent (Miller et al. 2015). These representations can promote resentment by supporting an ‘intergenerational warfare’ frame that presents older people as a burden on younger, economically engaged individuals (Rozanova et al. 2006). There is also a tendency to misrepresent older people as a homogeneous group (Loos and Ivan 2018; Makita et al. 2019). These stereotypes not only conflate a culturally, ethnically, socioeconomically and geographically diverse segment of the population, but also ignore older people's agency and ability to promote and sustain social connections and manage other aspects of health and wellbeing (Wiles and Jayasinha 2013; Morgan et al. 2019).

How older people are portrayed in the media matters. Messages are often internalised and influence how individuals of all ages view themselves, others and how they behave (Gilleard and Higgs 2007; Fraser et al. 2016). In research conducted in New Zealand prior to the pandemic, we found media shaped older adults’ feelings of social connection (Morgan et al. 2019). The same media that made older New Zealand Europeans (NZE) feel included in wider society left older Chinese and Koreans feeling socially excluded because of perceived racism and their invisibility within this coverage (Morgan et al. 2019). Pandemic media coverage, if conducted in this vein, could contribute to older people feeling socially excluded (Weldrick and Grenier 2018) and lead others, particularly those from younger generations, to question older citizens’ worthiness to receive national support and goodwill (Flett 2020). The aim of this media analysis is therefore to explore how the New Zealand media represented older people during COVID-19.

Materials and methods

Results

From a total sample pool of 482 articles, 91 articles met the inclusion criteria. The characteristics of these papers are reported in . Of these, 37/91 articles focused predominantly or exclusively on aspects of older people's COVID-19 experience or some related response. In terms of attributed direct quotes in articles, older people in the context of COVID-19 were largely talked about by others, including government officials and politicians (35), non-for-profit/advocacy groups (30) and service providers (32). Rather than being sought out, named and quoted directly or paraphrased, older people were indirectly referenced but not quoted in 56/91 of articles. Older people were framed as being at risk (83/91) and passive (50/91). Older people were represented as being active with respect to the pandemic response in only a third of articles. Of these 30 articles, 23 combined the frames of active and at risk/passive. Cited articles are presented in .

Older people as passive

While frequently interconnected with the framing of older people as at risk, the framing of older people as passive included representations of older people as waiting to be protected by other more active members of their families or communities. This portrayal was amplified by the way that older people were often spoken for rather than included in discussions about their support and care.

Older people as active

Articles that drew on active framing were far more complex and presented a more nuanced representation of older people. They conveyed a strong sense that older people were carefully navigating the threat that COVID-19 poses to their health whilst trying to maintain their independence where possible and gather and interpret information as best they could. They also more typically included the voices of older people, rather than others talking about them.

Discussion

In New Zealand news media representations of older people and COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic, older people were disproportionately portrayed as at risk, passive and unable to speak for themselves. While the concept of being at risk was a primary framing for older people in early coverage, risk itself was represented in surprisingly unstable and generically rhetorical ways. We identified discrepancies in media reports that resulted in different age cut-offs such as >70 or >80 being judged as risky. We contend this slippage offers an insight into the way risk categories are created through social processes rather than being reflections of enduring biological facts. The media play an important role in the social process of ascribing risk, through their capacity to represent emerging medical knowledge as facts. Journalist's role in ascribing risk was also evident in their increasingly focus on older people's risk of loneliness and social isolation following the lockdown measures. This was presented as based in scientific knowledge (Armitage and Nellums 2020) which many media used to emphasise that older people were at risk on two fronts: the biological and the social.

We contend that the ascription of risk in these media accounts reflects a form of ‘structural violence’ because older people were stigmatised as inherently, rather than situationally, vulnerable (Farmer 1999; Link and Phelan 2001). This interpretation is further supported in the way older people were also frequently represented as passive and ‘othered’. For example, government officials, not-for-profit spokespersons and service providers were given far more column inches than older people themselves. Older people were most often referred to as a nameless, homogeneous other group characterised as elderly. This positioning undermines older people's agency to navigate threats to their health and wellbeing, as well as to define and articulate aspects of their identity and experience(Wiles and Jayasinha 2013; Morgan et al. 2019).

The homogenised representation of older people as at risk and passive was connected to their framing as worthy recipients of public consideration and support like all New Zealanders (Cousins 2020). ‘Good’ communities were those which protected their older people by pre-emptively cancelling events and setting up roadblocks to stop the spread of the virus. While this framing is to some degree paternalistic, during the time period studied New Zealand media coverage notably deviated from the more pernicious discourses identified internationally that privileged the economy over the health and safety of older populations (Flett 2020). A small set of New Zealand articles alluded to the ‘boomer remover’ discourse, which aligns with a traditional ‘intergenerational warfare frame’; but only to challenge it (Rozanova et al. 2006). Contrary to international coverage of rest homes as places of abandonment, New Zealand coverage focused on older residents as a ‘problem to be managed’ to ensure their safety. New Zealand COVID-19 coverage therefore offers an insight into the complex social value of older people in New Zealand (Tierney et al. 2006). While older people were certainly members of what Prime Minister Ardern called the ‘team of 5 million’, in general they were cast as observers rather than actors in the collective response to the pandemic. Future media coverage ought to recognise the valuable individual, neighbourhood and community-level contributions older people have made and continue to make to the national COVID-19 response, for example, by naming them and using direct quotes where possible.

Articles that directly quoted older people tended to emphasise older people's pragmatism when responding, often pre-emptively, to the COVID-19 threat. Those older people who were quoted appear to have internalised notions of their higher susceptibility, as they cited their potential risk as the reason for altering their social lives and personal behaviour Nonetheless, these articles still homogenised older people through subtle practices of quoting people who epitomised ‘active ageing’ principles, for example, by being active in formalised volunteer or organisational roles in the community (Wiles and Jayasinha 2013). The voices of less active older people were absent from the coverage, markedly people who were socially isolated prior to self-isolation measures and/or people with long-term disabilities. This process of othering older people who do not fit a very specific and narrow notion of ‘successful ageing’ further reinforces negative stereotypes about older people who have ‘failed’ to maintain social connections and remain engaged (Holstein and Minkler 2003; Rozanova et al. 2006). Such coverage thus subtly reinforces the connection between ‘real’ old age with dependency, frailty and invisibility as identified in previous US- and Canadian-based media analyses (Miller et al. 2015; Fraser et al. 2016).

Although ethnicity was not reported in any coverage, it is possible to draw inferences about the lack of cultural diversity in the sample. For example, kaumātua and kuia were mentioned in four articles, but quoted in one instance (ART24). COVID-19 coverage therefore follows the pattern of under-representation of Māori in New Zealand media in general, which has been identified as entrenching the marginalisation of indigenous issues and the ‘ongoing maintenance of problematised social relations’ (Rankine et al. 2014, p. 228). Subsequent media coverage and academic research exploring the ways Māori have navigated the social and economic challenges of COVID-19 further corroborate our finding that there was limited representation of older people from diverse ethnicities in initial pandemic coverage (Pihama and Lipsham 2020; Taylor 2020). For media reporting to align with the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi's commitment to ensuring Māori have an equitable voice in public life according to their Treaty partner status there needs to be greater representation of older Māori in subsequent COVID-19 coverage (Rankine et al. 2014).

We argue that by misrepresenting older people as a single group of able-bodied and typically white individuals, New Zealand news media followed trends of ‘visual ageism’ recognised in pre-pandemic media (Loos and Ivan 2018). The question of whose experiences and views receive media attention matters because such coverage influences how socially connected older people feel to their wider community. It also shapes how government subsequently conceives of and attends to different citizens’ needs (Krekula 2007; Morgan et al. 2019; Flett 2020). Challenging the stigmatising processes involved in the homogenisation of older people in the context of coverage of COVID-19 requires a multi-level response confronting beliefs and attitudes held by dominant groups about older people in society whilst also addressing the power structures that enable these messages to circulate (Link and Phelan 2001).

Limitations

Limitations of the study include the discrete focus of this study on the month of March 2020, meaning that subsequent developments in the portrayal of older people by New Zealand media have not been captured. This paper presents on a sub-sample of information-rich articles rather than capturing every article about older people in the New Zealand media, which limits the generalisability of the findings. We note, however, that this sampling strategy had a strong rationale from previous media analyses. As our analysis was restricted to news media, we have not captured the range of discussions occurring over social media, which being orientated toward a younger demographic may comprise different framings of older people and COVID-19. Our analysis focuses on what was said in the media but it might also be useful to investigate how these messages were received by New Zealanders from diverse backgrounds.

Conclusion

This media analysis concludes that older people were primarily portrayed as at risk or passive in the coverage of COVID-19 by the New Zealand news media. Older people were nonetheless framed as deserving of national and regional support; a feature that has set New Zealand's national COVID-19 public health response apart from other nations’. To ensure a more complex, diverse and active picture of older New Zealanders in the context of COVID-19, older people's voices need to be more directly included in the news coverage.

Acknowledgements

We thank the Auckland Medical Research Foundation for providing the financial support this this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.