Keywords

1 Introduction

In contemporary societies the socially constructed nature of the ageing phenomenon [1] is embodied in the discursive “requalification” of ageing linked to a positive terminological plurality of adjectives [2]. The term “active ageing” is the successor to concepts such as “healthy ageing” or “successful ageing” [3,4,5,6]. In fact it was produced and has been conveyed essentially through political discourse. In 1997 the World Health Organization, inspired by the United Nations Principles for Older Persons, presented the concept of “active ageing”, defined as “the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age” [7].

Like other European countries, Portugal is also a country with a considerable aged population. In the last Census (2011) [8], the population over 65 was 19%. Currently the population over 65 years old represents 20,9% [9]. According to PORDATA, in 2016 the longevity index was 48.8% and the ageing index was 148.7. The last metric represents the relationship between the elderly population and the young population, meaning that there are 148.7 elderly people per 100 young people in Portugal. The average life expectancy in Portugal is 80.6 [10]. According to the annual estimates of the resident population, the Portuguese female population above the age of 65 is 23.2%.

The process of construction of social representations is social because it happens in a particular social context and determining composed of ideologies, values and shared social categorization systems through communication and social interaction; as well as produces and translates social relations [11]. The changing nature and transformative of the society leads to the construction of shared social representations associated with a collective identity [2, 11], which assumes the media as an element of social connection. A multiplicity of discourses propagated by the media and digital media systematically create and recreate identities about social groups producing social representations anchored to stereotypes [12].

The paradigm of ‘active ageing’ proposes a redevelopment of old age, promoting positive conceptions, and an extension of the social and economic participation of older people against the persistence of stereotyping that associates this stage of life the uselessness, illness and dependence. Taking into account the importance of the digital world in the interaction and the construction of social identities, this paper aims to understand how it is represented the “old age” in digital storytelling and if cyberspace can be, for its disaggregated distribution of contents, a reconstruction tool of meanings and serving less conventional representations of old age and ageing. “What representations of old age and elderly are prevalent in the digital world?” is the research question that guides this paper.

The new paradigm of communication is social-oriented and based on social media platforms, social networks and user-created content. Therefore, it is focused on the social use of technology. All elements become collective, in the sense in which they are shared: content, distribution, interaction, practices, context [13]. The purpose of this paper is to analyse social representations of old age in social media through a hashtag connected to an intergenerational active ageing project that aims to deconstruct stereotypes of age and gender.

1.1 Social Representations in Cyberspace

As the Internet is a markedly symbolic space [13], information and the context of interaction have become major elements in the process of reformulating spatial temporal notions and social representations [13, 14]. The concepts of user generated content and user- generated media make it possible to maximize the notion of participation in the Internet through the formation of social networks. In the context of this kind of structure, threaded networks [14] and hashtag networks are essential for understanding the development of new practices and, therefore, relationships based on content streaming’s, designed by appropriations of social representations. Conversations on social networks and social media platforms enable the analysis of content systems, interactions and social representations based on the perspective of distributed outputs that induces collective consumption [15].

In the context of Communication Sciences, research on social networks in cyberspace uses multiple theoretical and methodological approaches [16]. One issue that should be emphasised is the fact that it is possible to identify and study social networks on platforms with diverse characteristics and purposes and where different aspects can be analysed. Most research on online social networks and social media has focused on social networking platforms and studied the potential of information transmission; social capital and temporal patterns for messages [17].

Social networks on the Internet derive from the appropriation of technical tools, transforming them into channels of content and conversation circulation based on different social representations of the world. There are patterns of connectivity in and on network that have metamorphosed the digital culture [13]. The concepts of user-generated content and user-generated media make it possible to maximize the notion of participation in the Internet through the formation of social networks of contents that are constantly changing, in a logic of viral speed, where social representations are decontextualized, disaggregated and consumed collectively. In the context of this type of structure, semantics is essential for understanding the development of new practices and, consequently, relationships based on streaming of contents, drawn by appropriations of social representations [13].

Social media embody a world of mediated social interactions, where communication is recontextualised several times for the distribution of disaggregated and the semantic indexing. Practices within the new social tools demonstrate individual behaviours based on and in networks. In this sense, the behaviours, attitudes and values are presented in permanent mutation. The social media are used to create ties and capital from decontextualized social representations. Image publishing platforms, by disaggregated content distribution, change the user perspective. Collective narratives are materialized in decontextualized images. The social era and the beginning of the massification of the prosumer [13, 16]-the consumer converted into a user, substantially alter the patterns of consumption.

Cyberspace, as it constitutes a new space of sociability, also generates new practices and forms of social relations based on social representations of the world with their own codes and structures [13]. However, these codes will not be entirely new, but rather a reformulation of the already known forms of sociability, now adapted to the new spatial-temporal conditions [14]. At a time when the notion of consumption is changing with the passage from “going online” to “being online” [13], and digital discourse is a pressing sociocommunication reality in social change, we consider it urgent to rethink in the light of contemporaneity the idea posed by Jean Baudrillard [18] that consumption translates to systematic manipulation of signs. Based on the assumption that those who are not represented in the media universe are not socially relevant, we agree that traditional media and digital media currently represent reconfigured Greek “ágora”, where everything is discussed and decided and where everyone wants to participate. The media play a crucial role in defining and reinforcing the cultural characters of a society. Among its potential attributions are the modelling of conceptions about ageing and the place and role of the elders.

1.2 Gender Representations and Stereotypes

Family in the contemporary world is in profound change. Since the twentieth century, the family organisation has undergone reconfigurations due to changes in the social role of women. The traditional model of the masculine lost the strength that characterized it [3]. There have been some changes in the attribution of roles to men and to women within and outside the family. Even though, the media continues to perpetuate gender conceptions that determine the conventional gender roles where male is associated to the public life and business, and female to domesticity, private life and affections. There is a certain mystification based on normalization of the act of ageing [3], referring the elderly to a perpetuation of these gender roles to a stage where they are labelled as “retired” and therefore inactive [1].

In determining a social construction of gender roles and attributes in relation to biological sex, there are historical and cultural factors of our society that lead to social representations of masculine and feminine that are distinguished and hierarchized in terms of importance [3, 19]. Oakley [20] proposed the term gender to refer to the socially constructed character of the differences between men and women, thus rejecting the naturalizing and essentialist explanations for inequality. Different social representations are created on the attributes and personal characteristics, competences, interests and motivations of men and women, in the scope of work and the family, that translate into social practices in keeping with these representations [19, 20]. However, and traditionally, roles and responsibilities are assigned to men in the public domain, livelihood and outcome orientation, competitiveness, independence and strength, and women’s roles are anchored in the private domain, the care of others /domesticity, based on more emotional, relational and aesthetic characteristics [19].

Social representations of gender determine “who does what” on the basis of “how women are” and “how men are” [19]. These representations are normative and impose themselves in the definition of different capacities, roles and functions between women and men [3]. According to these gender roles and stereotypes, the male group, considered the dominant group, is not limited to one role or function as with women. These are seen as dependent and submissive beings whose characteristics refer them to the family and domestic field [19]. These representations will be reflected in the roles played by men and women in the various spheres, as well as in the expectations of their behaviour.

Gender issues tend to be invisible in older people [19] and the media perpetrate this assumption as a normalization, and consequent sociability, of the condition of being old [21]. There are a large number of studies related to research on how the senior public is represented in literature, print media and even cartoons. Given its great impact on society is in this logic of corroboration of the media image of the elderly, television is the most investigated medium [21]. In one of the first studies on the representation of the elderly in television, Gerbner et al. [22] identified that there is an attribute that is perpetuated in all analyses into this matter regardless of time or space to unfold. It refers to a tendency for underrepresentation of older television characters, contrasting this situation with its growing significance in population demography [21, 22].

Several authors have focused on the study of the representation of the elderly in advertising, concluding that this social group are subject to a tendency under-representation in television advertising. Numerous studies underline that within the underrepresentation of the elders, the female gender is even less represented than the masculine [21, 23]. This situation is further reinforced by the fact that women over 50 are incomparably more vulnerable than men to a categorization of pejorative stereotypes [24]. Lindsey [25] also argues that in age-based cultures, media discourses present gender intersected with social class and race. In this regard, Kjaersgaard [26] consider that the low representation of the elderly in media, particularly in advertising, focuses on a certain type of sexism that celebrates the younger women and tends to devalue or even ignore the older ones.

Bailey et al. [27] refers that “stereotypical representations of girls as sexualized objects seeking male attention are commonly found in social networking sites”. However, as gender became invisible through the ageing process, this idea is not connected to the elderly. As elderly are seen as a homogeneous group, though as a group they get more diverse the older they become [28,29,30], their social representations in digital media is anchored to society’s traditional perceptions of them. As Aroldi et al. [31] stated, “media play different roles at different moments of this social construction of a shared identity, and that these roles are strongly affected by a lot of variables, both socio-cultural and technological”.

1.3 Digital Media: Inclusion, Active Ageing and Inter-generational Approaches

The trend of population ageing in contemporary European societies determines the need to pay attention to the heterogeneous nature of the situation and experiences of elderly people. In fact, diverse life experiences are connected to different forms of ageing [32]. The promotion of “active ageing” implies optimizing health, safety, independence, mobility and participation opportunities in order to achieve the highest quality of life for the elderly [7]. Digital media may represent an opportunity for inclusion and improve quality of life of citizens, especially for senior individuals. However, demographic and socio-cultural changes push the elderly towards social and digital exclusion.

Low levels of media and digital literacy (competences that enable people to understand the media and use digital tools effectively) induce a condition of sub-citizenship [2] that is anchored to the difficulty of mobilizing civic knowledge, digital capital, and participation in public life. In the Portuguese case, in 2016 there were 26% of the population who have not used the Internet, mostly among the elderly and less educated [27]. According to a OberCom report from 2014 [33], the rate of Internet use in Portugal declines significantly with age, with a percentage of 31% users in the 55–64 age group and only 11,6% in the age group over 65 years of age. Social exclusion is a reality for millions of people around the world and this social phenomenon can lead to a global sense of injustice [2] as it enhances distorted media representations as a contributing factor to the categorization of “disadvantaged groups” that can be characterized in a multidimensional scale, which includes indicators of the absence of social rights.

This idea may be address from an inter-generational approach [34]. Age and generations are central concepts within this perspective [35]. Comunello et al. [34] reflected on “generational semantics” that “are produced by senior citizens to interpret their own relationship with ICT deals with the perception of both personal abilities and socially expected performances and might be shaped by their own perception of age and ageing”. In this sense, media environments may be considered as “generational contexts” [36] following the idea that different age-based groups arrange the technological experience in a similar way according to cultural backgrounds [37] and interactions. Therefore, it may shape a social construction of a “generational identity” [37] that arises from discursive practices and appropriations of the media and digital media.

Trentham et al. [38] concluded that the senior citizens might resist to ageism through social media contradicting the dominant narratives of their inability to adapt to the world of technology. boyd [39] argues that social media “allow people to gather for social, cultural, and civic purposes and they help people connect with a world beyond their close friends and family”. The engagement of citizens may depend on this tools that can be inclusive instruments to advocacy and promote social change. This is the aim of several projects of active ageing, anchored an intergenerational approach. In Portugal, the project “A Avó Veio Trabalhar” (“Grandma Came to Work”) brings together women over 65 years to produce design objects.

1.4 Active Ageing Project “Grandma Came to Work”

The proposal of the project is to get away from the traditional offers of social programs for the elderly and intends to reintegrate senior citizens from an area of the city of Lisbon into community life. Through creative challenges, the members develop design work. Currently the project has 70 participants, has a physical store and two work centers. “A Avó Veio Trabalhar” (“Grandma Came to Work”) uses the Internet, in particular social media, to disseminate the project nationally and internationally. The average age of project members is 75 years. It is not a project for women only, although these are in the majority. The participants are involved in various projects in the city, such as the DOC Lisboa film festival, the cultural weekend “Silent Festival” and even the Lisbon LGBT march. The work developed allows the elderly to fit into community life and also in the modernization process of that particular geographical area. The members of the project regularly participate in handicraft fairs and design at national and international level. The intergenerational approach also aims at the deconstruction of age and gender stereotypes.

2 Method

The aim of this paper is to map symbols and social representations of “old age” in cyberspace through the analysis of semantically indexed in the photo sharing service Instagram. We conducted a study that relied on the hashtag “#aavoveiotrabalhar” (“grandma came to work”) to call Instagram API and collected the data through the tool Visual Tagnet Explorer. The script has extracted all media items posted 2014-12-17 (16:38:41) and 2017-12-11 (09:15:35). The dataset is composed by 500 media items posted by 78 unique users with the hashtag #aavoveiotrabalhar. The tool also retrieved statistics, activity metrics and metadata.

The process of collective narrative was collected from the public stream of Instagram by the semantic indexation to the hashtag. The methodology combines quantitative analysis with a descriptive and documentary analysis of semantic classification of images collected and interactions generated in order to map a collective narration process. The main goals of this study are: (1) map the dominant discourse about the hashtag in analysis; (2) analyse most engaged media items correlating these with the dominant discourse; (3) identify the most common hashtags used with “#aavoveiotrabalhar”.

3 Results and Discussion

The day with more posts published with the hashtag #aavoveiotrabalhar was 26th July 2017 (International Grandparents Day, n = 43). The frequency of publication is essentially related to events in which project members participate. Most posts with the hashtag #aavoveiotrabalhar are published by the project mentor and project profile.

There are no comments in 54.6% of posts, as showed in Table 1. The engagement generated by the posts in terms of comments is reduced. Only 1.2% (n = 6) of the posts get more than 10 comments.

Table 1. Comments on posts.
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The engagement analysed from the likes is significant, with 49.8% of the posts having more than 28 likes. All posts received likes with an average of 42.54 (Mode = 13; Std = 53.286; minimum value = 1, maximum value = 506) (Table 2).

Table 2. Number of likes (categorized into quartiles).
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A post with 267 likes and without hashtags in the caption is from a granddaughter that posted a message when the project was in danger of ending. Two other posts have 435 and 501 likes and also no hashtag in their messages announcing the presence of the project in a design event. The post that has more likes (506) is from a Portuguese vintage store and also doesn’t have hashtags in the caption (“A cup of tea, please!”), which accompanies the photograph of a piece of embroidery that covers a cup. The posts with more likes mobilised in their captions the hashtags that are presented in Table 3.

Table 3. Hashtags in the captions of the top ten posts according to likes.
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Interestingly, the most called hashtags on messages are related to events (e.g. #popinthecity), deconstruction of old stereotypes (e.g. #oldisthenewyoung or #lovelyhumansofportugal), trademarks (e.g. #Lanidor). However, there is evidence of genderization in hashtags like #fashionista #diva #granny. It is also important to point out that there is concern about indexing the streaming content of hashtags with more users to publicize the project (e.g. #follow4follow or #picoftheday).

In the “Hashtag” field, the user can enter keywords. It is possible to verify that some are common with those that are also used in captions when comparing Tables 3 and 4. The most commonly used hashtag is the one that identifies the project (#aavoveiotrabalhar). Also issues related to geotagging (#Lisbon, #lisbonlovers) and location (Fermenta - name of the project store) are evident. The #oldisthenewyoung (n = 123) and #oldisbeautiful (n = 92) hashtags again stand out as forms of deconstruction of idadaist stereotypes. The streaming indexing of hashtags with many followers is also evidence in this table (#ig_captures, #Ignant, #Huntgram, #myfeatureshoot, #p3top, # oh_mag, #Pixeispt, #Igerslisboa, #igersportugal, #followforfollow, #followforfollow, #Igerslx #Instapic). The characterization of the works produced in the project (#Handmade, #Embroidery, #bordadosobrefotografia), the association to projects of entrepreneurship (#gerador) and events (#Lisboalive) are also present in the mobilisation of hashtags (Table 4).

Table 4. Hashtags of the posts.
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Table 5. Filters on images posted.
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Most images have no filters (n = 255, 51%), which allow to understand a representation of the project participants in a realistic perspective. It should be noted that images with filters (n = 245, 49%) correspond mostly to products created by project members and events in which they participate (Table 5).

4 Conclusion and Limitations

This paper aimed to map social representations of “old age” in digital narratives semantically indexed in Instagram in order to answer to the research question: “What representations of old age and elderly are prevalent in the digital world?”. The dominant discourse present in the 500 analysed posts is clearly related to the ideas of empowerment, stereotype deconstruction and promotion of active ageing. In an age where the notion of ageing is undergoing change, with powerful social and individual impacts, digital discourse is a major socio communicational factor in social change. Images and representations of old age are social constructions in a constant state of change, related to socio-economic and political contexts, and the collective digital narratives have the same influence on the self- and hetero- categorisation of the elderly as the offline discourses. This explains how the digital discourse can transform the social representations old age and participate in the creation of new identities and social relations that impel change in the concept of ageing held by contemporary societies.

In cyberspace, the social dimension of a shared construction of meanings and representations replaces the physical place. The idea of territory is diluted in simulacra of presence, feelings of belonging, permanence and own codes. The technique, through the tools of computer-mediated communication, creates mechanisms of interaction that are assumed as spaces of collective narratives and shared social representations [13]. We have verified this aspect in the study. Indeed, the hashtags used in streaming analysed classified images, allowing the creation of shared social construction. The hashtags are assuming the logic of the semantic Web as a new social practice. In fact, “Do-It-Yourself media tools” as a way to enhance network connectivity can introduce a new modality of sociability, as they enable new forms of communication and interaction [13]. The semantic Web itself is already changing the media and landscape of the Internet, as we know it. The involvement of users, meanings, actions and social contexts in collective environments are increasingly built on the basis of object-oriented sociability. From the multiple hashtags published in the streaming analysed, we find that the most predominant ones relate to events, deconstruction of stereotypes related to old age, and trademarks. In the process of collective narrative of #aavoveiotrabalhar there is a central discourse promoting active ageing through the deconstruction of preconceived ideas about the elderly (#oldisthenewyoung, #Oldisbeautiful, #lovelyhumansofportugal), in particular of older women (#fashionista, #diva, #granny). The induction of social change is done through social representations presented in a realistic perspective of images (images with no filters: n = 255, 51%), where the participants of the project appear as protagonists in different contexts of real life, regardless of age (#91yearsold, #lata_65). Social change and changes in the traditional social representations of the elderly can be potentially altered by projects such as the one presented in this paper.

The main limitations of this study are related to quantitative perspective analysis. In future studies, it will be interesting to analyse captions of images and comments in a qualitative content analysis approach. It would also be interesting to study through the analysis methodology of social networks ties and communities, which are created by the indexed content in order to understand how this induces new relationships and social practices that may promote social change.