Media Portrayal of Older Adults Across Five Canadian Disasters

Abstract

We conducted a constructivist grounded theory approach in which discourse analysis was used to explore how Canadian news media portrays older adults and aging in a disaster context. We analyzed 119 articles covering five Canadian disasters and identified four themes: (a) stereotypes of older adults are presented on a positive–negative continuum in journalistic coverage of disasters, (b) journalistic coverage tends to exclude perspectives of older adults from relevant discourse, (c) journalists assess the value of losses for older adults—“home” as a central concept, and (d) disasters are framed as disrupting retirement ideals. A model was created to provide an overview of the journalistic coverage of older adults in disaster contexts. Understanding how old age and aging are presented by the media in a disaster context is important because it has further implications for informing and structuring disaster risk reduction policies.