A Processual Concept of Media Generation

Abstract

With a focus on elderly people this article puts forward a concept of media generation as a thickening of one or more age groups of people who in their media appropriation share a specific experience space of mediatization and subsequently, based on their personal media biographies, develop a shared self-image as a media generation. Such a conceptualisation grasps media generation as a process. It operates with the central aspects of media relatedness, media-generational specifics of appropriation, and self-positioning. This offers an understanding of elderly people after retirement as members of a mass-media media generation. As the qualitative empirical analysis presented in this article demonstrates, members of this mass-media media generation define themselves in contrast to younger media generations.