The unprotectables
A critical discourse analysis of older people’s portrayal in UK newspaper coverage of Covid-19
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12599344 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shir Shimoni (0000-0001-7275-7473, King's College London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 648-664 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-25 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1367-5494 • E-ISSN: 1460-3551 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13675494231185539 |
| OpenAlex | W4385273671 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 25 |
In this article, I draw on the systematic, policy-led negligence with which older people in the United Kingdom were handled during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, as I examine their simultaneous cultural representation across four major UK newspapers. Using content and critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate that while older people were depicted mostly through the notion of their increased risk to contract and die from the virus, this risk was consistently framed as unmanageable. I adopt a Foucauldian governmentality perspective as I argue that by framing dangers as exceeding the possibility of control and insurance, the discourse of unmanageable risk helped to dismantle the protection of older people from the virus. Moreover, I demonstrate that the unmanageable risk discourse spawned a particular kind of an older subject, one who not only is unprotectable but also invisible. I discuss how older people’s invisibility – evident in the absence of their names, voices and testimonies – operated in tandem with their unprotectability, to render them palatably disposable
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Critical discourse analysis · Discourse analysis · Framing (construction · Governmentality · Invisibility · Linguistics · Media studies · Newspaper · Older people · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US
Discourse Analysis
There is nothing new under the sun
Aging without agency
Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing
Powers of Freedom
Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy
Marking time in lockdown
Happy and entrepreneurial within the “here and now”
Barefaced
From the Commodification to the Corporatization of Care
The global Covid-19 Disability Rights Monitor
The marketisation of care
Third Age’ under neoliberalism
Neo-liberalism
Battles and breakthroughs
Covid ‐19 and care homes in England
Oldies come bottom of Grim Reaper hierarchy
Frailty, abjection and the 'othering' of the fourth age
In the Time of Pandemic, the Deep Structure of Biopower Is Laid Bare
The birth of bio-politics
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |