The prevalence of ageism within media: Investigating the effect of media on opinions of ageism

The prevalence of ageism within media: Investigating the effect of media on opinions of ageism

Introduction:

Ageism is a form a discrimination based on one's age. It has long been explored in media with focus on visual attributes which characterise one's age. Research lacks insight into the role of structural factors including publication formatting, which could be affecting ageism in media. In this report, we will be specifically looking at the impact of author gender (male, female, unknown), media political position (left leaning, right leaning, neutral), affluence (‘publication formatting', 'tabloid vs broadsheet'), and 3 different year groups on ageism in media.

Method:

180 articles from 11th April 2015, 2020, and 2025 matching the inclusion criteria, were selected using Lexis Nexis and later organised on an excel spreadsheet to allow for comparison. Statistical analyses had been conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics Premium 31 on Windows.

Results:

67/180 (37.2%) of all papers included ageist words in the text. 42.9% of right-leaning papers contained ageist words in text, compared to 34.9% for neutral and 35.2% for left-leaning papers. For author gender, 40% of female authors used ageist words in their text, compared to 35.7% for men, and 38.3% for unknown. For affluence, 42.5% of broadsheet papers used ageist words in text compared to 34.6% for tabloid. For year, 50% of papers in 2025 contained ageist words in text compared to 30.5% in 2020, and 32.8% in 2015. Four separate chi-squared tests looking at the different foci of the paper were then conducted. No significant differences were found between author gender, political position, publication format, and publication year on ageist language in text.

Conclusion:

It is clear that media remains as a catalyst ageism, however, this does not appear to be influenced by author age, political stance, publication formatting, or publication year.