Why Ageing is More Important than Being Old: Understanding the Elderly in a Mediatized World

We are living in an ageing society: Western civilisations are growing older and the elderly constitute an increasing segment of the general population of developed nations and especially within the EU. We are also living in societies, which are characterised by processes of mediatization. Media are permeating almost all areas of social life: private, public, and professional; in the ‘far-reaching entanglement of media technologies with the everyday practices of our social world’ referred to as ‘deep mediatization’ (Hepp 2016: 918) they also become inherently relevant for the construction of reality (Couldry & Hepp 2016). These two observations are at the heart of this article, in which we aim to establish a link between the discourse on the mediatization of society and the complex and changing challenges this poses for the ageing population. We discuss how the elderly are affected by processes of mediatization and how being old changes in relation to the conditions and contexts of ageing. Regarding the old, we ask who they are, what they do with the media, and how media influence their participation in social life. Therefore, we critically review existing research on older adults as audiences and media users, especially in terms of evaluating concepts used to differentiate and study media generations. Based on two empirical case studies, we argue that the process of ageing and the contexts of growing old are more important for understanding the elderly in a mediatized world than age as a state. Older adults’ media use is rather to be analysed in terms of changes in the media biography than based on categories of ‘age’. We argue for a more nuanced approach to media practices of senior citizens – an approach grounded on empirical analyses of older adults’ everyday lifeworlds, social networks and communicative bonds, as well as general living conditions beyond media use.

The first challenge of understanding the elderly is to find them and to identify in which contexts they are addressed by existing communication research, and who and how they are depicted to be. Givskov and Deuze (2016:2) elucidate that the concern for later life periods of people within media studies has generally been rendered into research on digital divides (Droguel et al. 2015, Friemel 2016) and on the role of (digital) media in compensating for limitations in health, well-being, and social and financial resources (Laukka 2007, Naab et al. 2013, Richardson et al. 2011). However, the studies leave unclear, who ‘older adults’ actually are. The understanding varies on a wide age range from somewhat ‘over 40’ to ‘over 75’ (Wagner et al. 2010: 870). Being older, elderly, or senior apparently is relative to the contexts of observation. Additionally, older audiences are usually grasped as one group without further differentiation (Lemish & Nimrod 2015). As Lemish and Nimrod (2015) argue, older audiences are generally addressed as mostly healthy, wealthy, and well-educated people. Treating the elderly as one homogenous group in research, however, is problematic because older people are highly diverse in terms of economic, social, and cultural resources (Givskov & Deuze 2016). Furthermore, persons with chronic health conditions or dementia, but also immigrants or minorities among the elderly are blanked out as special groups. The same negligence can be concluded for other factors of living, like dwelling in urban or rural areas; having access only to precarious communication environments; being at the peripheral margins of a country or in a cultural and technological centre. While a comprehensive consideration of contextual factors might reduce the importance of age (Jansson & Andersson 2012), segmenting the current substantial group of mature media users may enhance our understanding of the media practices of the elderly and help avoid misleading generalisations about the population of the elderly in mediatized societies (Lemish & Nimrod 2015). This is also supported by findings on the digital divide among senior citizens: Friemel (2016) finds an exponential decrease of the likelihood of Internet use with increasing age (Friemel 2016: 328). Hepp, Berg, and Roitsch (2015) similarly show that older media users are the group with the most heterogeneous media use when it comes to community building and bonding with their communicative networks, family, friends, and peers. From various angles, we can thus support the need for differentiation among senior citizens in research. In the following, we discuss concepts of media generations as an approach to this aim. We then propose a more nuanced view that shifts from rather stable and static generations – and ‘the old’ as a set category – to a more dynamic and process-oriented focus on becoming old and ageing.

In recent years, we can find growing prominence of generations as a construct in audience research and increasing interest in the role of media technologies and mediated communication in the formation and experience of generations (Bolin 2016: 8). Theoretical considerations in this discourse mostly revolve around Mannheim’s (1928/1952) seminal work ‘The problem of generations’ which characterises generations by the interplay between generational site or location (Generationenlagerung); generation as actuality (Generationenzusammenhang), and generation unit (Generationeneinheit). Generational location relates to a person’s year of birth and being part of an age group within a specific historical time period. Furthermore, members of generations share the same practical concerns regarding fateful events and crucial historical occurrences, which Mannheim (1928/1952) calls generation as actuality. Considering generation unit, generational belonging is determined by a generation’s self-awareness as a community of shared experiences and the self-positioning as a community that can construct collective patterns of orientation and behaviour. Additionally, ‘generational experience is formed through fresh contact, and these experiences are held to impact on all later experience’ (Bolin 2016: 10). Thus, the first contact to a medium is considered formative for subsequent experiences (Aroldi 2011). Users learn the respective grammar of media during the formative phase of their youth and adolescence. Similar to acquiring language skills, media users appropriate new devices into their lives, but as with learning a foreign language it will always be different from the quasi-natural use of their media mother tongue (Gumpert & Cathcart 1985). Consequently, Gumpert and Cathcart (1985) elaborate that fresh media experiences which people make throughout their lives might form a stronger intragenerational connector and intergenerational boundary than the chronological order of birth cohorts: media experiences and media’s moulding forces for experiences in general are then what binds within generations and separates them from preceding and succeeding ones. However, the idea of distinct media generations emphasises differences between groups of media users. Generations are used as a means of demarcation of social units. Studies on generations commonly emphasise contrasting peculiarities of media user groups, while studies that openly compare different generations and search for intergroup commonalities are rare (Bolin 2014, 2015).

Moreover, empirical studies that make use of generation concepts are often insensitive to differences within generations. Research literature relates the ‘birth’ of a generation to the emergence, diffusion, and adoption of media technologies; setting the technological features of new media as the benchmark for their use. Media practices that do not exploit the full technological potential are marginally discussed as legitimate forms of media use. Instead concepts of diffusion of technologies understand non-users, late-adopters, or media objectors mainly as obstacles and hindrance for diffusion and thus address non-use or limited use as a condition that needs to be overcome to the end of closing gaps and patch divides (Kaun & Schwarzenegger 2014). Accordingly, media generations describe groups of media users that are assumed to exploit the potential of media in mainly homogeneous ways and thus participate in shared spaces of experience based on their respective birth cohort and media available at the formative time of youth. These perspectives suggest a strong discontinuity between a generation and its predecessors, as it links the birth of a generation foremost to the emergence of technologies. A formidable example of this understanding is the notion of digital natives that implies a significantly different communicative lifestyle – sovereignty in dealing with digital technologies and maximum communicative connectedness – for users born after a certain year (for a differentiated position on digital natives, see Bolin & Skogerbø 2013).

Although Mannheim’s elaborate concept of generations is widely referenced, a major portion of empirical work applies his concept in a way basically reduced to generation location in conjunction with the emergence of media technologies: Statements about media generations are thus often criticised for being too generalising, too deterministic, and for neglecting a life course perspective (Björkin 2015, Bolin 2016, Givskov & Deuze 2016, Siibak et al. 2014, Westlund & Weibull 2013). The rather complex theoretical conceptualisation stands in contrast to relatively straightforward empirical measurements referring to birth cohorts only. Within the last 60 years, numerous media innovations, the rise and decline of technologies, and the merging of various communicative functions and needs in convergent devices result in a plethora of diverse media ecologies. Thus, constituting generations as birth cohorts and in conjunction with specific media technologies loses explanatory value, as also potential generations multiply in this regard and last for shorter intervals (for a detailed critique Bolin 2016: 32–34, Hart-Brinson et al. 2016). As Björkin (2015: 54) points out, however, ‘it is still useful to use this notion – and, more precisely, generational cohort – as a combination of both location and actuality’ in cases where especially quantitative data does not allow further insight into aspects of generational variations. Yet, studies that make use of complementary cultural studies perspectives to acknowledge generational heterogeneities beyond birth cohorts are relatively rare (Siibak et al. 2014). Conversely, individual case studies often miss reflecting their findings with regard to a broader population (Givskov & Deuze 2016). Finally, perspectives on media generations often neglect that media users’ personal biographies are deeply entangled with the experience of social and historical change (ibid). While the media environments in peoples’ youth are formative for later life, ‘the diversity of biographies related to class and culture, social and geographical mobility, education, work trajectory, exposure to technology and so on’ (ibid: 5) result in different media experiences and therefore a different generational formation within the same age group (Hepp et al. 2015, Kortti 2011, Silverstone & Haddon 1996). Furthermore, although numerous life phases are common for many members of a generation, some life situations are non-linear as they can be entered, left, and re-entered at different points in a person’s life course (Bolin 2016: 35–37).

In sum, the aforementioned problems of over-generalisation, causal determinism, and negligence of a life course perspective are symptoms of a rather static understanding of generations within media studies. While birth cohort is used as a main constituent characteristic of media generations, most studies portrait elderly media users mainly as being old and stripped of other peculiar features. Furthermore, studies focus on intergenerational differences from a cross-sectional point of view, although some results indicate the importance of a longitudinal perspective: E.g., while the perceived usefulness of a new technology is identified as the main impediment to new media adoption (Droguel et al. 2015, Melenhorst et al. 2006), it can be argued that previous media experiences might have formed this disposition. Taking all this into consideration, this article suggests overcoming static and stable generations as units of observation, not least since this would enable more attention to important processes of generation formation. Working in a similar trajectory, Hepp and colleagues (2015) define media generations as a thickening of one or several age groups of people, who share a specific realm of experience concerning mediatization as well as generational self-understanding based in their media biography. Thereby they overcome an age-based foundation (generation location) in the understanding of generations and invite a process-oriented view. We now elaborate why a focus on the process of generational becoming and of ageing in society allows for a more open observation of the interplay between different media generations and the changes of media ensembles within individual life cycles that shape elderly users’ current media practices.

The youngest as well as the oldest people in society are addressed by research in terms of the processes of change that they are going through. The main difference being that the change of the old is reduced to an idea of constantly fading until they finally pass away instead of acknowledging the evolvement of media use during later years (Lemish & Nimrod 2015). Therefore, we argue that the process-oriented perspective should be both extended (to earlier ages and following across the lifespan and not stopping at a specific age) and intensified (taking the process perspective seriously and study change over time in practices, appropriation, and general orientations also past the inception of ‘old age’). This would then allow developing a deeper understanding of the elderly in a mediatized world, their commonalities, and in how far the media practices of elderly users are diversified and plainly individual. Especially a stronger emphasis is needed on how differently the old are ageing in various contexts, under different social and cultural preconditions, and in relation to different social bonds and networks. In his study on the digital divide among senior citizens, Thomas Friemel (2016: 327) concludes that ‘the social context seems to influence Internet use in manifold ways’. Major influencers according to his findings are encouragement by personal social networks and previous (every day) experiences and lifeworld contexts. If someone used a computer or the Internet in life before retirement it is much more likely that a person will continue to be an active onliner in later life. Friemel’s findings also stimulate a focus on inter- and transgenerational conversations for the importance of media appropriation, because senior citizens stated it was most likely that they would find it attractive to learn Internet use from friends and families. An interview study with seniors aged between 71 and 92 years comes to similar conclusions (Wangler 2015): Personal motivation and the promise of personal benefits are crucial for old agers to acquire new technological skills and to appropriate new media (devices) in their media repertoire. Given the perspective of a proper return, older adults are still open and willing to invest in acquiring new media competencies.

We discussed that the differences and how media use evolves within the elderly segments of the population are overlooked or trivialised by research while, in fact, the group is highly heterogeneous and diversified in terms of media practices and contextual factors. Our article’s empirical perspective takes up on this idea. We present the results of two analyses to substantiate our argument to switch focus from what the old do with the media once they are old to the dynamics and processes of ageing (with the media), and how transitory media use is over the lifespan. We address the following research questions:

RQ1: Do elderly media users belonging to different media generations defined as a combination of generation as location and generation as actuality use different media?

RQ2: How much does an operationalisation of generation as combination of location and actuality coincide empirically with an operationalisation of generation as unit?

RQ3: How mutable is elderly’s affiliation with a specific generation over time?

Study 1 illustrates the shortcomings of current operationalisations of media generations as well as it points out the limits of available longitudinal data. Therefore, the study investigates and compares older people’s media use based on secondary data from a longitudinal, representative German national survey. It shows that the common operationalisation of generation as combination of location and actuality has only minor predictive power with regard to elderly’s media use (RQ1). Furthermore, the study demonstrates the limits of quantitative data by comparing the empirical overlap of different generation operationalisations (RQ2). Finally, Study 1 attempts to give a first impression about the fluidity of generational belonging over the course of time (RQ3).

Study 2 inspects media practices on the microscopic level of media biographies with people from different age cohorts. It contrasts formative practices in the youth with processes of ageing throughout different life stages to examine the generational inhomogeneity with regard to the appropriation and subjective meaning over the lifespan (RQ3).

The second study focuses on media biographies of three different age groups. It was considered vital for the study to not focus only on elderly, young, or middle-aged users in mutual separation, but to address their everyday media practices and media routines in a way that would allow a perspective on shifting media repertoires, practices in different life stages, and the interplay of generations within the family and beyond (RQ3).

The main aim of this article was to reconsider the approach of media and communication research on elderly media users. It substantiated the claim to understand media generations in the sense of ageing as an ongoing process rather than in the sense of the completed status of being old. Thus, the literature review carved out that current research on elderly media users exhibits an insufficiently refined form of reasoning. The explanation for this shortcoming might be found in media scholars’ focus on the concept of generations. While the generational argument is substantially helpful to understand the formation of user collectives that withstand the test of time, it also seems to inveigle researchers to centre their attention largely on the comparison and demarcation of groups in the sense of generation as location and generation as actuality. Therefore, the present article suggests a stronger recourse to the more comprehensive perspective of Mannheim’s concept of generations in order to understand being old as the effect of ageing. The two studies presented in this article illuminate this general thought: The results of Study 1 illustrate the fluidity of generational belonging in two ways. First, the conducted analysis indicates that the commonly applied measurement of generational belonging based on generation as location and actuality has only marginal explanatory power with regard to generation specific use of electronic media. The subsequent cluster analysis empirically pools groups of people who share similar media use, thus revealing media generations based on generation as unit. However, these clusters are not congruent with the generations as a combination of location and actuality. Instead, the comparison of both measurements indicates that the radio generation and the monochrome TV generation share a large proportion of the same clusters. This result partly contradicts the assumption that both generations are solely realisations of different structures of media use opportunities, being the monochrome TV generation still working and the radio generation already being retired. Instead, it can be argued that the generation as unit implicitly takes individual life circumstances into account which leads to a more differentiated perspective on elderly media users. Furthermore, as we used rather general indicators of media experience, we suppose that a further differentiation of elderly media users might manifest on a less abstract level of people’s media use, e.g. selection of a specific program, competences and skills, tastes, motivations, rituals of usage, incorporation of media contents. Finally, our analysis demonstrates the changing of sub-generation composition within the radio generation and the monochrome TV generation over time due to a changing media environment. This argument is further stressed by Study 2. Its results explicate the importance of generations’ previous media experiences and practices as well as a generation’s previous life stages as the key to encode and understand current media behaviour. Furthermore, the investigated media biographies underline that ageing goes beyond being old by actively forming and transforming a stunningly diverse ecology of elderly media users within a mediatized world. Consequently, considering the methodological approaches to elderly media users, this article follows the demand of comprehensive research that complements the perspective of cultural studies and media studies with quantitative audience research (e.g. Siibak et al. 2014). Moreover, instead of cohort and technology centrism, research on media generations needs to bear in mind the significance of the processual character of both mediatization and ageing: ‘Generationing’ (Siibak & Vittadini 2012) is primarily determined by the dynamic of continuities and changes after the formative years in individuals’ media biographies. Finally, this might mean to recalibrate the lens of (historical) audience research. Rather than arguing from the view of a grown media offering, media scholars pay more attention to research that explains audience ecologies based on the interplay of different media users’ biographies.