ABSTRACT
As we shall see in this chapter older people are the most avid consumers of news media and the shifting audience demographics suggest any mass media product will need to do well with older audiences to establish leading figures in terms of audience share. With older people representing such a large, and growing, proportion of media consumers, it might be expected that the modern media need to move beyond merely reflecting historical ageist attitudes in society, but instead be at the cutting edge of changing attitudes during the great age transformation. Of course, a realistic prediction must be to anticipate that media content will reflect the continued existence of ageist attitudes alongside attempts to commercially benefit from the growing spending power of the ‘grey pound’. However, there is a problematic dearth of previous research material that specifically investigates media content and societal ageing. Mass communication research has generated a large volume of work on media portrayals of different groups within society. However, studies into the portrayal of older people, or the issues identified as being central to their quality of life, are rare in comparison to research which has focused on youth, the other group thought to be most at risk of social exclusion in terms of their age demographic.
