Ageism on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic

Reuben Ng; Nicole Indran; Luyao Liu

doi:10.1111/josi.12535

Ageism on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic

J Soc Issues. 2022 Jul 20:10.1111/josi.12535. doi: 10.1111/josi.12535. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Reuben Ng^{1

2}, Nicole Indran¹, Luyao Liu²

Affiliations

¹ Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy National University of Singapore Singapore Singapore.
² Lloyd's Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk National University of Singapore Singapore Singapore.

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has sparked a resurgence of scholarly interest in the issue of ageism. Whether the outbreak thwarts or facilitates efforts to combat ageism hinges upon public sentiments toward the older demographic. This study aims to explore discourse surrounding older adults by analyzing 183,179 related tweets posted during the COVID-19 pandemic from February to December 2020. Overall, sentiments toward older adults became significantly less negative over time, being the least negative in April, August, and October, though the score remained below the neutral value throughout the 11 months. Our topic modelling analysis generated four themes: "The Need to Protect Older Adults" (41%), "Vulnerability and Mortality" (36%), "Failure of Political Leadership" (12%), and "Resilience" (11%). These findings indicate nascent support for older adults, though attempts to show solidarity may well worsen benevolent ageism.