In principle, Finnish newspaper articles were studied by adopting the same methods as applied when analysing the Japanese data. With the help of manifest content analysis, the general contents and types of representation of the baby boomers were identified, and the latent meanings of the data were assessed by means of thematic analysis approach.
Analysis of the manifest content of the editorials and comment articles in Helsingin Sanomat commenced with counting the number of boomer-related articles per year during the period between 2000 and 2015. The next step was assigning dominant topic(s) to each article. Some of the topics were distinguished deductively by drawing on my previous experiences with analysing the Japanese data, whereas others were discovered in an inductive manner directly from the data. This kind of approach was necessary because of the difference between general newspaper articles and editorials in terms of their forms and appearances. It was indeed easier to find patterns for formulating particular topics in Japanese materials, which included both general articles and editorials. In contrast, the editorials in Helsingin Sanomat appeared to encompass diverse aspects and discussions, as the editorials often integrated various information and opinion statements by the newspaper.
Hence, the initial work of identifying the manifest content of individual articles in the Finnish data produced as many as 70 different topics. This inevitably led to a reformulation of topics by comparing the names of tentative topics, their contents and their relations. The reviewing and refining process resulted in the following 17 topics: (1) shortage in the workforce, (2) prolonging working life, (3) stance on working, (4) post-retirement lifestyles, (5) employment and unemployment, (6) pension reform, (7) population ageing and sustainability of social security system, (8) social and economic impact of population ageing, (9) attitude toward ageing and the ageing experience, (10) ageism in working life, (11) unhealthy behaviour and health promotion, (12) care and service for the elderly, (13) policy measure for public economy, finance and administration, (14) impact of recession, (15) boomer image in society, (16) transition of power between generations and (17) intergenerational gaps and conflicts. A small number of preliminary topics that did not fall within the scope of the above topics was called ‘other’. The topics falling into the category of ‘other’ included popularity of choosing vocational school, lowering age limit for voting right, innovation in media and
family crisis. The manifest content of each article was then recorded in accordance with this coding framework.
However, the number of identified topics was still too large. To facilitate later qualitative analysis, the 17 topics were subsequently organised into meaningful broader categories by examining the links and relations between the topics. Sorting the codes into fewer clusters resulted in four subjects:
‘work, retirement and pension’, ‘ageing, health and care’, ‘current events in economic and political affairs’, and ‘baby boomers as a generation’. Table 5 shows how the newly defined categories include the original topics. As Table 4 and Table 5 indicate, the names of three of the subjects – ‘work, retirement and pension’, ‘ageing, health and care’, and ‘baby boomers as a generation’ – are same for both the Japanese and Finnish data.
However, the components of the subjects are different, and the qualitative analysis implemented later highlights differences in the newspaper discussions between the two data sets.
Table 5. Four broad subjects and their components in the Finnish media data
Clustered broad subjects Corresponding originally defined topics Work, retirement and pension shortage in the workforce
prolonging working life
stance on working
post-retirement lifestyles
employment and unemployment
pension reform
Ageing, health and care population ageing and sustainability of social security system
social and economic impact of population ageing
attitude toward ageing and the ageing experience
ageism in working life
unhealthy behaviour and health promotion
care and service for the elderly Current events in economic and
political affairs
policy measure for public economy, finance and administration
impact of recession Baby boomers as a generation boomer image in society
transition of power between generations
intergenerational gaps and conflicts
All the articles were then recoded for both main and minor subjects in accordance with the four broad clusters (‘work, retirement and pension’/
‘ageing, health and care’/ ‘current events in economic and political affairs’/
‘baby boomers as a generation’) and the residual category ‘other’. After coding
the material, a cross table of the subjects covered by the articles and the three phases of newspaper discussions could be devised (Table 7: p.93).
The next task was coding the gender of the baby boomers mentioned in each article. The same classification system for identifying gender used when examining the Japanese data was applied to the Finnish newspaper articles.
After this, it was possible to study whether the media discussions adopted a gender perspective (of males or females), or whether they instead gave a non-gendered impression. The results were condensed into a cross table form in Table 9 (p.98). There was no need to perform a one-sample chi-square goodness of fit test, as the outcome was so clear: most articles were non-gendered.
Finally, the manifest content analysis made it possible to investigate the role and placement of the baby boomers in relation to a certain subject by identifying the main character or main viewpoint of each article. The following groups were identified as the main characters and viewpoints of the articles:
(1) baby boomers/retirees/older adults, (2) society/government/public policy, (3) national economy/labour market/economic policy, (4) municipality/local authority, (5) industry/ company/ working place, (6) profession/ employee/
worker, (7) citizen/family/younger age group, (8) politician, (9) newspaper editor and (10) commodity/goods/service. Coding the articles in line with this categorisation schema was followed by making a cross table of the main characters and subjects of the articles (Table 11: p.104).
Completing the manifest content analysis continued by exploring the data qualitatively. Thematic analysis was then employed as the method for subsequent investigation. In the same manner as when analysing the Japanese data, thematic analysis was carried out separately for each subject identified in the previous content analysis (‘ageing, health and care’/‘work, retirement and pension’/‘current events in economic and political affairs’/‘baby boomers as a generation’); it consisted of several steps. The process of analysis included the following five steps (Braun & Clarke 2006: 87): (1) generating initial codes, (2) searching for themes, (3) reviewing themes, (4) defining and naming themes, and (5) producing the report.
8 NEWSPAPER REPRESENTATIONS OF RETIREMENT AND AGEING OF THE BABY BOOMERS
8As the previous chapter on research materials and methods comprehensively demonstrated, newspaper analyses on the ageing baby boomers were implemented in two phases: the first phase involved assessing the manifest content of the data sets, which was followed by qualitatively investigating the latent and underlying meanings of the manifest content. This chapter describes the results of the manifest content analysis. To repeat, the aim of manifest content analysis was to systematise a large amount of the material, to provide an overview of the content and to quantify the patterns of the content. Thus, dominant topics in the individual articles were identified and classified into broader categories. Furthermore, other features of reporting in the newspaper articles were examined to understand their relationships with the categorised topics, including any mention of the gender of the baby boomers and the roles they assumed or how they were placed in the texts of each article. Identifying the manifest topics and clarifying the role and placement of the baby boomers in relation to the particular topic were the means to answer the research questions (1), whereas analysing gender representations served research question (3)9. However, all the investigations contributed to exploring the research questions on the surface level.