Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-19T14:12:17.582Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ageing, old age and older adults: a social media analysis of dominant topics and discourses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2019

Meiko Makita Open the ORCID record for Meiko Makita [Opens in a new window] ,
Amalia Mas-Bleda ,
Emma Stuart  and
Mike Thelwall
Meiko Makita*
Affiliation:
Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, Research Institute in Information and Language Processing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK
Amalia Mas-Bleda
Affiliation:
Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, Research Institute in Information and Language Processing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK
Emma Stuart
Affiliation:
Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, Research Institute in Information and Language Processing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK
Mike Thelwall
Affiliation:
Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, Research Institute in Information and Language Processing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: meikomakita@wlv.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Whilst representations of old age and older people in traditional media have been well documented, examinations of such representations within social media discourse are still scarce. This is an unfortunate omission because of the importance of social media for communication in contemporary society. In this study, we combine content analysis and discourse analysis to explore patterns of representation on Twitter around the terms ageing, old age, older people and elderly with a sample of 1,200 tweets. Our analysis shows that ‘personal concerns/views’ and ‘health and social care’ are the predominant overall topics, although some topics are clearly linked with specific keywords. The language often used in the tweets seems to reinforce negative discourses of age and ageing that locate older adults as a disempowered, vulnerable and homogeneous group; old age is deemed a problem and ageing is considered something that needs to be resisted, slowed or disguised. These topics and discursive patterns are indeed similar to those found in empirical studies of social perceptions and traditional media portrayal of old age, which indicates that social media and Twitter in particular appears to serve as an online platform that reproduces and reinforces existing ageist discourses in traditional media that feed into social perceptions of ageing and older people.

Keywords

ageingageismcontent analysisdiscourseold ageolder peopleTwitter
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , February 2021 , pp. 247 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, D, Russell, PS, Vauclair, CM and Swift, H (2011) Ageism in Europe and the UK. Findings from the European Social Survey. London: Age UK. Available at https://www.ageuk.org.uk/Documents/EN-GB/For-professionals/ageism_across_europe_report_interactive.pdf?dtrk=true.Google Scholar
Ambady, N, Shih, M, Kim, A and Pittinsky, TL (2001) Stereotype susceptibility in children: effects of identity activation on quantitative performance. Psychological Science 12, 385–390.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
American Society of Plastic Surgeons (2017) 2017 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report. Available at https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/News/Statistics/2017/plastic-surgery-statistics-report-2017.pdf.Google Scholar
Arnold-Cathalifaud, M, Thumala, D, Urquiza, A, Ojeda, A and Cathalifaud, MA (2008) Young people's images of old age in Chile: exploratory research. Educational Gerontology 34, 105–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Australian Human Rights Commission (2013) Fact or Fiction? Stereotypes of Older Australians (Research report 2013). Available at https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/age-discrimination/publications/fact-or-fiction-stereotypes-older-australians-research.Google Scholar
Avers, D, Brown, M, Chui, KK, Wong, RA and Lusardi, M (2011) Use of the term ‘elderly’. Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy 34, 153–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barak, B, Mathur, A, Lee, K and Zhang, Y (2001) Perceptions of age-identity: a cross-cultural inner-age exploration. Psychology and Marketing 18, 1003–1029.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bargh, JA, Chen, M and Burrows, L (1996) Automaticity of social behavior: direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, 230–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, AE and Robbins, C (2008) The multiple sources of women's aging anxiety and their relationship with psychological distress. Journal of Aging and Health 20, 32–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Biggs, S (2004) Age, gender, narratives, and masquerades. Journal of Aging Studies 18, 45–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binstock, RH (1985) The oldest old: a fresh perspective or compassionate ageism revisited? The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society 63, 420–451.Google ScholarPubMed
Binstock, RH (2004) Anti-aging medicine and research. A realm of conflict and profound societal implications. Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 59A, 523–533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braun, MT (2013) Obstacles to social networking website use among older adults. Computers in Human Behavior 29, 673–680.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, MB and Lui, L (1984) Categorization of the elderly by the elderly: effects of perceiver's category membership. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 10, 585–595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunton, RJ and Scott, G (2015) Do we fear ageing? A multidimensional approach to ageing anxiety. Educational Gerontology 41, 786–799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buffel, T, De Donder, L, Phillipson, C, Dury, S, De Witte, N and Verté, D (2014) Social participation among older adults living in medium-sized cities in Belgium: the role of neighbourhood perceptions. Health Promotion International 29, 655–668.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bürkle, A, Moreno-Villanueva, M, Bernhard, J, Blasco, M, Zondag, G, Hoeijmakers, JHJ, Toussaint, O, Grubeck-Loebenstein, B, Mocchegiani, E, Collino, S, Gonos, ES, Sikora, E, Gradinaru, D, Dollé, M, Salmon, M, Kristensen, P, Griffiths, HR, Libert, C, Grune, T, Breusing, N, Simm, A, Franceschi, C, Capri, M, Talbot, D, Caiafa, P, Friguet, B, Slagboom, PE, Hervonen, A, Hurme, M and Aspinall, R (2015) MARK-AGE biomarkers of ageing. Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 151, 2–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chappell, NL (2003) Correcting cross-cultural stereotypes: aging in Shanghai and Canada. Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology 18, 127–147.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cheung, CK, Chan, CM and Lee, JJ (1999) Beliefs about elderly people among social workers and the general public in Hong Kong. Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology 14, 131–152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cuddy, AJC, Norton, MI and Fiske, ST (2005) This old stereotype: the pervasiveness and persistence of the elderly stereotype. Journal of Social Issues 61, 267–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahmen, N and Cozma, R (2009) Media Takes: On Aging. Styleguide for Journalism, Entertainment and Advertising. International Longevity Center – USA/Aging Services of California. Available at https://racegendermediaatou.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/media-takes-book.pdf.Google Scholar
de Medeiros, K (2005) The complementary self: multiple perspectives on the aging person. Journal of Aging Studies 19, 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Díaz-Prieto, C and García-Sánchez, JN (2016) Psychological profiles of older adult Web 2.0 tool users. Computers in Human Behavior 64, 673–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
European Commission (2009) Integenerational Solidarity (Analytical report). Available at http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/flash/fl_269_en.pdf.Google Scholar
Featherstone, M and Hepworth, M (1991) The mask of ageing and the postmodern life course. In Featherstone, M, Hepworth, M and Turner, BS (eds), The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage, pp. 371–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleiss, JL (1981) Statistical Methods for Rates and Proportions. New York, NY: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Gellis, ZD, Sherman, S and Lawrance, F (2003) First year graduate social work students’ knowledge of and attitude toward older adults. Educational Gerontology 29, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gendron, TL, Welleford, EA, Inker, J and White, JT (2016) The language of ageism: why we need to use words carefully. The Gerontologist 56, 997–1006.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gullette, MM (2004) Aged by Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hardy, C, Harley, B and Phillips, N (2004) Discourse analysis and content analysis: two solitudes? Qualitative Methods 2, 19–22.Google Scholar
Harper, S (1997) Constructing later life/constructing the body: some thoughts from feminist theory. In Jamieson, A, Harper, S and Victor, C (eds), Critical Approaches to Ageing and Later Life. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, pp. 160–174.Google Scholar
Harwood, J, Giles, H, McCann, RM, Cai, D, Somera, LP, Ng, SH, Gallois, C and Noels, K (2001) Older adults’ trait ratings of three age-groups around the Pacific rim. Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology 16, 157–171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harwood, J and Roy, A (1999) The portrayal of older adults in Indian and U.S. magazine advertisements. Howard Journal of Communications 10, 269–280.Google Scholar
Heckhausen, J, Dixon, RA and Baltes, PB (1989) Gains and losses in development throughout adulthood as perceived by different adult age groups. Developmental Psychology 25, 109–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hepworth, M (2000) Stories of Ageing. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Hess, TM, Auman, C, Colcombe, SJ and Rahhal, TA (2003) The impact of stereotype threat on age differences in memory performance. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 58B, P3–P11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honeycutt, C and Herring, SC (2009) Beyond microblogging: conversation and collaboration via Twitter. In Proceedings of the Forty-second Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press.Google Scholar
Hummert, ML, Garstka, TA, Shaner, JL and Strahm, S (1994) Stereotypes of the elderly held by young, middle-aged, and elderly adults. Journal of Gerontology 49, P240–P249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hurd, LC (1999) ‘We're not old!’: older women's negotiation of aging and oldness. Journal of Aging Studies 13, 419–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Java, A, Song, X, Finin, T and Tseng, B (2007) Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities. In Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 Workshop on Web Mining and Social Network Analysis (WebKDD/SNA-KDD ’07), pp. 56–65. Available at https://ebiquity.umbc.edu/_file_directory_/papers/369.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jung, EH and Sundar, SS (2016) Senior citizens on Facebook: how do they interact and why? Computers in Human Behavior 61, 27–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, S (1992) Alarmist demography: power, knowledge, and the elderly population. Journal of Aging Studies 6, 203–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, S (2002) Growing older without aging? Positive aging, anti-ageism, and anti-aging. Generations 25, 27–32.Google Scholar
Kaufman, SR (1985) The Ageless Self: Sources of Meaning in Late Life. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Kessler, E, Rakoczy, K and Staudinger, UM (2004) The portrayal of older people in prime time television series: the match with gerontological evidence. Ageing & Society 24, 531–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, H, Jang, SM, Kim, SH and Wan, A (2018) Evaluating sampling methods for content analysis of Twitter data. Social Media + Society 4, 1–10. doi:10.1177/2056305118772836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kite, MA and Wagner, LS (2002) Attitudes towards older adults. In Nelson, TD (ed.), Ageism: Stereotyping and Prejudice Against Older Persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 129–161.Google Scholar
Kite, ME, Deaux, K and Miele, M (1991) Stereotypes of young and old: does age outweigh gender? Psychology and Aging 6, 19–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kite, ME and Johnson, BT (1988) Attitudes toward older and younger adults: a meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging 3, 233–244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kontos, PC (2003) ‘The painterly hand’: embodied consciousness and Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Aging Studies 17, 151–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornadt, AE (2016) Do age stereotypes as social role expectations for older adults influence personality development? Journal of Research in Personality 60, 51–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krippendorf, K (2004) Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Landis, JR and Koch, GG (1977) The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 33, 159–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lasher, KP and Faulkender, PJ (1993) Measurement of aging anxiety: development of the Anxiety about Aging scale. International Journal of Aging & Human Development 37, 247–259.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laslett, P (1989) A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Lee, MM, Carpenter, B and Meyers, LS (2007) Representations of older adults in television advertisements. Journal of Aging Studies 21, 23–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, ME (2013) Modeling the rate of senescence: can estimated biological age predict mortality more accurately than chronological age? Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 68A, 667–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, BR (1996) Improving memory in old age through implicit self-stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, 1092–1107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, BR, Ashman, O and Dror, I (2000) To be or not to be: the effects of aging stereotypes on the will to live. OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying 40, 409–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, BR, Chung, PH, Bedford, T and Navrazhina, K (2014) Facebook as a site for negative age stereotypes. The Gerontologist 54, 172–176.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, BR, Slade, MD, Kunkel, SR and Kasl, SV (2002) Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, 261–270.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liang, J and Luo, B (2012) Toward a discourse shift in social gerontology: from successful aging to harmonious aging. Journal of Aging Studies 26, 327–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Y, Kliman-Silver, C and Mislove, A (2014) The tweets they are a-changin’: evolution of Twitter users and behavior. In Proceedings of the Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Available at http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM14/paper/download/8043/8131.Google Scholar
Löckenhoff, CE, De Fruyt, F, Terracciano, A, McCrae, RR, De Bolle, M, Costa, PT, Aguilar-Vafaie, ME, Ahn, C, Ahn, H, Alcalay, L, Allik, JJ, Avdeyeva, TV, Barbaranelli, C, Benet-Martínez, V, Blatný, M, Bratko, D, Cain, TR, Crawford, JT, Lima, MP, Ficková, E, Gheorghiu, M, Halberstadt, J, Hřebíčková, M, Jussim, L, Klinkosz, W, Knežević, G, de Figueroa, NL, Martin, TA, Marušić, I, Mastor, KA, Miramontez, DR, Nakazato, K, Nansubuga, F, Pramila, VS, Realo, A, Rolland, JP, Rossier, J, Schmidt, V, Sekowski, A, Shakespeare-Finch, J, Shimonaka, Y, Simonetti, F, Siuta, J, Smith, PB, Szmigielska, B, Wang, L, Yamaguchi, M and Yik, M (2009) Perceptions of aging across 26 cultures and their culture-level associates. Psychology and Aging 24, 941–954.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luo, B, Zhou, K, Jin, EJ, Newman, A and Liang, J (2013) Ageism among college students: a comparative study between U.S. and China. Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology 28, 49–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lynch, SM (2000) Measurement and prediction of aging anxiety. Research on Aging 22, 533–558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macia, E, Duboz, P, Montepare, JM and Gueye, L (2015) Social representations of older adults [magget] in Dakar. Ageing & Society 35, 405–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macia, E, Lahmam, A, Baali, A, Boëtsch, G and Chapuis-Lucciani, N (2009) Perception of age stereotypes and self-perception of aging: a comparison of French and Moroccan populations. Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology 24, 391–410.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Macrae, H (2018) ‘My opinion is that doctors prefer younger people’: older women, physicians and ageism. Ageing & Society 38, 240–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manikonda, L, Meduri, VV and Kambhampati, S (2016) Tweeting the mind and instagramming the heart: exploring differentiated content sharing on social media. In Proceedings of the Tenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2016). Available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.02718.Google Scholar
Mathews, M and Straughan, PT (2014) Results from the Perception and Attitudes Towards Ageing and Seniors Survey (2013/2014). Institute of Policy Studies Working Papers Series. Available at https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2220.Google Scholar
Megret, F (2010) The Human Rights of the Elderly: An Emerging Challenge. Available at http://www.thehealthwell.info/node/13197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitnitski, AB, Graham, JE, Mogilner, AJ and Rockwood, K (2002) Frailty, fitness and late-life mortality in relation to chronological and biological age. BMC Geriatrics 2, 1–8. Available at https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-2-1CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mocanu, D, Baronchelli, A, Perra, N, Gonçalves, B, Zhang, Q and Vespignani, A (2013) The Twitter of Babel: mapping world languages through microblogging platforms. PLOS ONE 8, e61981.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moody, HR (2001) Who's afraid of life extension? Generations – Journal of The American Society on Aging 25, 33–37.Google Scholar
Moreno, X, Sánchez, H, Huerta, M, Albala, C and Márquez, C (2016) Social representations of older adults among Chilean elders of three cities with different historical and sociodemographic background. Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology 31, 115–128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Musaiger, AO and D'Souza, R (2009) Role of age and gender in the perception of aging: a community-based survey in Kuwait. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 48, 50–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Narushima, M, Liu, J and Diestelkamp, N (2018) Lifelong learning in active ageing discourse: its conserving effect on wellbeing, health and vulnerability. Ageing & Society 38, 651–675.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neuendorf, KA (2004) Content analysis – a contrast and complement to discourse analysis. Qualitative Methods 2, 33–36.Google Scholar
North, MS and Fiske, ST (2012) An inconvenienced youth? Ageism and its potential intergenerational roots. Psychological Bulletin 138, 982–997.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Öberg, P and Tornstam, L (1999) Body images among men and women of different ages. Ageing & Society 19, 629–644.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okoye, UO and Obikeze, DS (2005) Stereotypes and perceptions of the elderly by the youth in Nigeria: implications for social policy. Journal of Applied Gerontology 24, 439–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perrin, A (2015) Social Media Usage: 2005–2015. Pew Research Center. Available at https://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/.Google Scholar
Portal Mayores (2009) Percepción de los españoles sobre distintos aspectos relacionados con los mayores y el envejecimiento (Datos de mayo de 2009). Madrid. Available at http://www.imsersomayores.csic.es/documentos/documentos/pm-barometro-cis-mayo-2009-01.pdf.Google Scholar
Prieler, M, Kohlbacher, F, Hagiwara, S and Arima, A (2015) The representation of older people in television advertisements and social change: the case of Japan. Ageing & Society 35, 865–887.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinlan, N and O'Neill, D (2008) ‘Older’ or ‘Elderly’ – are medical journals sensitive to the wishes of older people? Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 56, 1983–1984.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramos Soler, I and Papí Gálvez, N (2012) Personas mayores y publicidad: representaciones de género en television. Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico 18, 753–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, JW and Kahn, RL (1997) Successful aging. The Gerontologist 37, 433–440.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Royal Society for Public Health (2018) That Age Old Question. How Attitudes to Ageing Affect Our Health and Wellbeing. Available at https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/a01e3aa7-9356-40bc-99c81b14dd904a41.pdf.Google Scholar
Sánchez Palacios, C, Trianes Torres, MV and Blanca Mena, MJ (2009) Negative aging stereotypes and their relation with psychosocial variables in the elderly population. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 48, 385–390.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sandberg, L (2013) Affirmative old age – the ageing body and feminist theories on difference. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 8, 11–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, CJ and Simonetto, D (2017) Public sociology on Twitter: a space for public pedagogy? American Sociologist 48, 233–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Settersten, RA and Mayer, KU (1997) The measurement of age, age structuring, and the life course. Annual Review of Sociology 23, 233–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siiner, M (2019) Let me grow old and senile in peace: Norwegian newspaper accounts of voice and agency with dementia. Ageing & Society 39, 977–997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slevec, J and Tiggemann, M (2010) Attitudes toward cosmetic surgery in middle-aged women: body image, aging anxiety, and the media. Psychology of Women Quarterly 34, 65–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sloan, L, Morgan, J, Burnap, P and Williams, M (2015) Who tweets? Deriving the demographic characteristics of age, occupation and social class from Twitter user meta-data. PLOS ONE 10, e0115545.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, SL, Pieper, K and Choueiti, M (2015) The Rare & Ridiculed: Senior Citizens in the 100 Top Films of 2015. Available at http://annenberg.usc.edu/sites/default/files/2017/05/30/MDSCI_Rare and Ridiculed Report Final.pdf.Google Scholar
Statista (2019) Twitter: Number of Monthly Active Users 2010–2019. Available at https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/.Google Scholar
Steele, CM (1997) A threat in the air. How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. The American Psychologist 52, 613–629.Google ScholarPubMed
Sung, KT (2004) Elder respect among young adults: a cross-cultural study of Americans and Koreans. Journal of Aging Studies 18, 215–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Syed, MA, McDonald, L, Mirza, RM, Smirle, C, Lau, K, Relyea, E, Austen, A and Hitzig, S (2017) An age-friendly project on social isolation and loneliness: lessons from Toronto's Chinese community. IAGG 2017 World Congress. Innovation in Aging 1, 770.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thelwall, M (2009) Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative Web Research for the Social Sciences. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool.Google Scholar
Townsend, L and Wallace, C (2016) Social Media Research: A Guide to Ethics. Aberdeen, UK: University of Aberdeen. Available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_487729_en.pdf.Google Scholar
Tulle, E (2016) Living by numbers: media representations of sports stars’ careers. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51, 251–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Twitter (2017) Giving You More Characters to Express Yourself. Available at https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/product/2017/Giving-you-more-characters-to-express-yourself.html.Google Scholar
Unger, J, Wodak, R and KhosraviNik, M (2016) Critical discourse studies and social media data. In Silverman, D (ed.), Qualitative Research. London: Sage, pp. 277–293.Google Scholar
United Nations (2017) World Population Ageing 2017 (ST/ESA/SER.A/408), 124. Available at http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/WPA2017_Report.pdf.Google Scholar
Uotinen, V (2005) I'm as Old as I Feel. Subjective Age in Finnish Adults (Thesis) (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research No. 63). Available at https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/13358.Google Scholar
Vaughan, L (2001) Statistical Methods for the Information Professional: A Practical, Painless Approach to Understanding, Using, and Interpreting Statistics, Vol. 367. Medford, NJ: Information Today.Google Scholar
Victor, CR (2005) The Social Context of Ageing: A Textbook of Gerontology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vincent, JA, Tulle, E and Bond, J (2008) The anti-ageing enterprise: science, knowledge, expertise, rhetoric and values. Journal of Aging Studies 22, 291–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vroman, KG, Arthanat, S and Lysack, C (2015) ‘Who over 65 is online?’ Older adults’ dispositions toward information communication technology. Computers in Human Behavior 43, 156–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wangler, J (2014) Internalization or social comparison? An empirical investigation of the influece of media (re)presentations of age on the subjective health perception and age experience of older people. In Kriebernegg, U, Maierhofer, R and Ratzenböck, B (eds), Alive and Kicking at All Ages: Cultural Constructions of Health and Life Course Identity. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, pp. 117–130.Google Scholar
Wheeler, SC and Petty, RE (2001) The effects of stereotype activation on behavior: a review of possible mechanisms. Psychological Bulletin 127, 797–826.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wodak, R (2014) Discourse and politics. In Flowerdew, J (ed.), Discourse in Context. Contemporary Applied Linguistics. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 321–346.Google Scholar
Wodak, R and Fairclough, N (1997) Critical discourse analysis. In van Dijk, TA (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction. London: Sage, pp. 258–284.Google Scholar
Woodward, K (1995) Tribute to the older woman. In Featherstone, M and Wernick, A (eds), Images of Ageing. London: Routledge, pp. 79–98.Google Scholar
Wright, SL and Canetto, SS (2009) Stereotypes of older lesbians and gay men. Educational Gerontology 35, 424–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ylänne, V, Williams, A and Wadleigh, PM (2009) Ageing well? Older people's health and well-being as portrayed in UK magazine advertisements. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 4, 33–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yun, RJ and Lachman, ME (2006) Perceptions of aging in two cultures: Korean and American views on old age. Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology 21, 55–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, YB, Harwood, J, Williams, A, Ylänne-McEwen, V, Wadleigh, PM and Thimm, C (2006) The portrayal of older adults in advertising: a cross-national review. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 25, 264–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar