Being Called “Elderly” Impacts Adult Development: A Critical Analysis of Enduring Ageism During COVID in NZ Online News Media

This article examines how “the elderly” is constructed in New Zealand online news media. By employing a critical framing analysis to challenge ageist practices, conceptually, the study adds to our knowledge of research methodologies in the field of adult development. Online news media articles were collected and analyzed to understand constructions of older adults as “elderly” over an 18-month period before, during, and since the COVID pandemic. Results demonstrated that the term “elderly” was framed powerlessly, in predominantly negative (74%) stereotypical messages about older adults. Positive stereotypes (26% of data) used human impact framing. Associations of “elderly” with being vulnerable, declining, and an individual or societal burden have serious implications, notably for the media in their role of both constructing and reflecting societal attitudes and actions towards older adults. Suggestions are offered to encourage reframing societal attitudes and promoting healthy adult development through age-equality messages that do away with the term “elderly.”