Environmental parameters

investigates how newspapers represent ageing baby boomers in Japan and Finland. The chapter further considers the possible creation of a generational consciousness through linguistic articulations in the mass media and its implication for ageing baby boomers. Then, a review of previous research is conducted in terms of how print media, especially newspapers, have portrayed ageing of the baby boomers as well as ageing and older people in a broader sense. This reveals a missing perspective on the intersections of gender and ageing in print media.

5.1 MEDIA AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY

Mass media is considered one of the most important sources of information (Lundgren & Ljuslinder 2011a, 2011b), one of the most potent informal sources of socialisation (Vasil & Wass 1993) and a powerful source of stereotypes (Lumme-Sandt 2011). It is obvious that the mass media has an enormous impact on society. Communication research has addressed the role of the mass media in the process of the social construction of reality by employing two distinguishable approaches (Adoni & Mane 1984: 323). The first approach focuses on the social construction of reality as an important aspect of the relationship between culture and society. This corresponds to the critical approach associated with European perspectives on the sociology of knowledge. The second approach, on the other hand, concentrates on the social construction of reality as one type of media effect. This type of study is linked to American empirical sociology of mass communication. Adoni and Mane (1984) seek to integrate these two approaches to develop a common theoretical framework for the study of the mass media and the social construction of reality. In developing the framework, they draw on the classic theories of Schutz (1967) and Berger and Luckmann (1967) on the process of reality construction.

According to Adoni and Mane (1984), the process of reality construction is social because it can be carried out only through real or symbolic social interaction. The social construction of reality is a process in which human beings can be both creators and products of their social world. Socially constructed reality can be grouped into three types. The first type is objective social reality that displays itself as facts and is experienced as the objective world outside the individual. The second type of reality is symbolic social reality consisting of any form of symbolic expression of objective reality, such

as art, literature or media content. The third type is subjective reality, in which both the objective and the symbolic realities fuse into individual consciousness to construct one’s own subjective reality. When organising one’s subjective reality, social reality is perceived along a continuum based on the distances of its elements from the individual’s everyday life experiences.

The type of reality (objective, symbolic, subjective) and distance of social elements from direct experiences (close, remote) are two dimensions necessary for the social construction of reality. The role of the mass media in the process of the social construction of reality includes interactions among individuals, society and culture, which is called a communicative process (Couldry & Hepp 2017). With respect to different studies on the role of the media in the process of reality construction, one group focuses on symbolic and one of the other two realities, and either close or remote social elements, whereas another group of studies takes a holistic approach that simultaneously examines the interactions among the three reality types as well as social elements ranging from close to remote. Adoni and Mane (1984) maintain that the holistic approach is the one that can serve as a theoretical framework for the systematic examination of the contribution of the mass media to the social construction of reality.

The holistic approach has great potential for investigating both dominant modes of symbolic representations of objective reality in the mass media and the impact of the entire symbolic environment on individuals’ perception of social reality. The present study, in contrast, focuses more on the interaction between objective and symbolic reality, because media take an active part in shaping people’s interpretations of objective reality by how they portray phenomena relating to that particular reality. Hence, this study addresses symbolic expressions (newspaper stories) of certain aspects of objective social reality (ageing baby boomers) made by certain societal actors (newspapers) in specific social contexts (Japan and Finland). By this means, it will provide knowledge about media representations of particular demographic and social facts, which further shape the subjective reality of audiences. This notion of sequence between three types of social reality is well described in the following argument by Koskinen, Salminen and Leino-Kilpi (2014), who have studied media portrayals of older people in Finnish newspapers:

In summary, a society’s attitude toward older people are illustrated in newspapers, but conversely, media portrayals have also been shown to affect people’s attitude. (…) Because older people will be heavy users of health and social services in the future in Finland, it is important to study how they are viewed in society more generally, as this will ultimately influence the care that is provided to them, and thus their well-being. (Koskinen, Salminen & Leino-Kilpi 2014: 2)

This quote implies that a basis for constructing subjective reality about older people has already been prepared at the time symbolic reality is manifested. With respect to the symbolic reality expressed in mass media, media content impacts how people self-identify and approach other persons as well as the way society’s resource allocation is legitimated (Lundgren &

Ljuslinder 2011b). Symbolic reality and its impact in terms of ageing may be more understandable by employing the term ‘images’. Featherstone and Hepworth (2005: 360) suggest that images are increasingly accepted as an integral feature in the process of defining ageing and old age, as images shape and constitute both professional and lay conceptions of what it means to grow older, and therefore, they influence the way older people are treated. They further elaborate on the implication of images on social constructionism, according to which verbal and visual images are regularly deployed and manipulated to produce ageing and old age as a social activity at the level of practical everyday experience.

Symbolic social reality denotes symbolic representations of the objective world. Representation is a way to give meaning to people and things through symbolic signification (Ylänne 2012). As the word ‘meaning’ indicates, representation does not refer merely to descriptions of the subjects in question. According to the theoretical deliberation by Lundgren and Ljuslinder (2011a), representation refers to specific articulations, which present something that is not present from a particular perspective, making certain selections, using certain words and relating certain contexts to it. As a result of the particular preferences assumed in the process of representation, the described phenomenon is no longer neutral. This holds true especially for representations made by the media due to their wide scope and enormous impact. Thus, media representations are seen as culturally productive; they do not just describe phenomena, but also constitute them by repeating certain perspectives, angles, notions and values (Lundgren & Ljuslinder 2011a: 171), and by illustrating phenomena in a contradictory manner, too. Accordingly, when mass media depict a prominent generation like the baby boomers, they shape public perceptions of the baby boomers through imbuing them with certain cultural values, social norms and role expectations, thereby influencing societal attitude towards them and eventually generating socio-political discussions in terms of their wellbeing and how it should be maintained in old age. This gives plausibility for the importance of exploring boomer issues from the perspective of media analysis.

Besides, representations of the baby boomers in the media demonstrate their importance in a more significant manner when a scholarly work explores how the boomers are represented and how such representations are disseminated. It can be argued that the present study ultimately contributes to the social construction of ageing baby boomers by aggregating media representations that have otherwise been present in a dispersed manner, analysing and interpreting them with researcher’s perspectives, angles and values, and expressing processes and results of analyses in understandable

language. One advantage of this study on social gerontology is that it reveals people’s attitudes about and perceptions of ageing and old age through investigating representations of ageing boomers in the mass media.

Of the various forms of mass media, newspapers play an important role in shaping public opinion and influencing decision making on social and political matters. Newspapers offer a window into public opinion, culture, politics and social life (Fairclough 1995), and they present a valuable documentary version of real life (Atkinson & Coffey 2004). Newspapers as traditional print media have, however, started to lose their dominance with the increasing popularity of digital media, including the expansion of the Internet and emergence of social media. Yet, given that the present study explores how the media have portrayed ageing baby boomers for more than a decade, and especially given that the investigated topic has a profound implication for social policy, I contend that newspaper articles are a valid choice for this study. As mentioned previously regarding media representations, newspaper language is rarely neutral, but rather reflects the values, perspectives and norms of journalists and other stakeholders. In an era in which the ageing of the population is being experienced as a global phenomenon, newspaper discussions on retirement and ageing of the boomers may involve social and political values that address the challenges facing welfare societies. Conversely, newspapers may visibly deploy another discourse on population ageing, namely ideas related to active ageing or the Third Age may be strongly connected to newspaper representations of the boomers. It is thus interesting to investigate how the leading newspapers of different countries with different cultural and social characteristics portray the ageing of the baby boomers.