Healthy Ageing and Mediated Health Expertise

The media are, for many older people, one of the most important sources of information about health. In this article, I examine older people’s experiences and use of media to acquire knowledge about health issues relating to their own life. Key questions concern how media influence older people’s perceptions of health and to what extent they trust the media in relation to health issues. The study demonstrates that the media do not have a uniform influence among older people. For some, the media function as a guide to maintaining and experimenting with an active lifestyle in late life; for others, the media are met with a skeptical attitude as they are not trusted as a source of reliable and unequivocal information on health issues. The study is based on a qualitative interview study with men and women between 65 and 86 years.