With the Antarctic region featuring more and more in discourse around anthropogenic climate change, understanding public support for research in the region is increasingly important. We examine public support for Antarctic science in Australia, drawing on findings from a nationally representative survey of just over 1000 adults conducted in 2021–2022. Key results reinforce earlier findings in other national contexts - for example, that older people and men are more likely to support Antarctic scientific research than younger people and women. They also reveal new information, including a correlation between particular sources of media coverage and support for Antarctic research. Our data have implications for where and how the public engagement efforts of government agencies and non-governmental organizations could most usefully be applied. While the survey is focused on Australia, it points to complexities around public support for Antarctic research that could be productively investigated in other national and in international contexts.

Recent studies provide evidence that the coverage of older people's issues in the mass media during the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by a (re-)emergence of negative stereotypes surrounding the question of age. However, these studies primarily relied on written materials. As visual imagery has the power to attract greater attention than words, this study set out to investigate the visual portrayal of older adults in the mass media. Via web crawling, we identified a total of 3,560 articles with keywords such as ‘older adults’ and ‘COVID-19 pandemic’ in the four most popular online news sites in Germany during the first phase of the pandemic. We applied visual content analysis to assess the frequency of a diverse set of characteristics of older adults in the cover photos of the articles in question (N = 604). Older individuals were most often depicted as physically weak, alone, professionally taken care of, passive, living at home or in a nursing home, and cognitively inactive. The images – mostly of female passing persons – were characterised by a stereotypical presentation that evokes distance to the subject by cropping out any faces. Our results reflect findings on the negative media representation of older adults as homogenously vulnerable in verbal materials during the COVID-19 pandemic in contrast to increasingly diverse representations in pre-pandemic times. This stereotypical misrepresentation of older adults can be interpreted as visual ageism, which is amplified by their visual othering. Our findings demonstrate the need for the media to reflect upon these practices as negative age stereotypes have an impact on mental health for people of all ages.

Older adults have been statistically proved to be at a higher risk of getting severely infected by the coronavirus COVID-19, evoking sweeping narratives of compassionate ageism surrounding them in different discourses. By analysing the media content, scholars from different areas have alerted us about the amplified ageism aroused by the pandemic crisis. However, we are still short of empirical evidence to learn how ageism is constructed in diverse sociocultural contexts in the wake of this global pandemic crisis. This study provides the case of Hong Kong to reflect on how ageism, as a set of social inequalities, is constructed. By examining 814 articles collected from the three most popular newspapers with different political orientations in Hong Kong, this study uses quantitative and qualitative content analysis to examine how older people have been generally represented. Then it further compares how these representations have been influenced by the media's liberal or conservative preferences. Third, it examines the relationship between the political orientation of newspapers and how different forms of ageism are constructed. The findings indicate that despite the liberal or conservative inclination of the three newspapers, they portray the older population as frail, dependent and deprived not only at the biomedical level but in all aspects of life. This study also reveals that the newspapers with a populist inclination in both camps have shown more hostile attitudes in representing compassionate ageism. In contrast, liberal and conservative-leaning media affirmed the government's dominant role in taking full responsibility for caring for the older population. The findings indicate that the polarised ageism frame cannot fully explain the underpinnings of ageism and implied policy processing in different contexts.

Research shows that older people tend to not only be underrepresented on television (TV), but also to be represented within a number of fixed types. These correspond to cultural myths about ageing, which emphasise vulnerability and decline but also increasingly stress the individual's responsibility for successful ageing. This paper analyses the representation of older people on Flemish public TV, using qualitative content analysis to identify patterns of representation in a sample of 44 programmes broadcast in 2019 and 2020, including the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. To complement our own analysis, we also interviewed eight experts on ageing. Our research shows that representations of older people on Flemish public TV tend to gravitate towards two types related to different age groups: vulnerable and passive old-old people (over 80 years old), particularly those in nursing homes who feature prominently in reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic; and dynamic and active young-old people (65–80 years old), connected to the ideals of successful ageing. The two predominant types correspond to cultural myths about ageing and are also connected to recurrent themes: sexual intimacy, loneliness and death. Our research highlights the need for a more diverse representation, reflecting the variety of individual life conditions and the functional age of older people.

In order to check whether (un)civilised behaviour can be a valid indigenous intergroup comparison dimension for Chinese people, three studies were conducted based on stereotypic explanatory bias (SEB). Study 1 examined the media representation of Chinese and Western (un)civilised behaviours, and the SEB results suggested ingroup derogation of Chinese people regarding civilised behaviour. Study 2 aimed to use a more empirical approach to further analyse Chinese intergroup bias for civilised behaviour at both implicit and explicit levels. Chinese participants’ SEB results indicated ingroup derogation and outgroup favouritism were at the implicit level; however, ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation were at the explicit level. Study 3 was designed to examine how stereotypes that were verified in Study 2 would be changed by manipulating the presentation of extreme, stereotype-relevant information in the form of an internet blog. These findings suggest that (un)civilised behaviour can be a valid indigenous intergroup comparison dimension for Chinese people who perceive themselves as a disadvantaged group compared to Westerners on this dimension. Finally, theoretical contribution and practical implications for social change are discussed.