Old people, video games and french press

A topic model approach on a study about discipline, entertainment and self-improvement

Bibliographic Data

ID2653839
AuthorsGabrielle Lavenir (Concordia University), Nicolas Bourgeois (0000-0001-5404-1260, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Year2017
Volume33
Issue63
Publication date2017-11-02
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedieKultur Journal of media and communication research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0900-9671 • E-ISSN: 1901-9726
PublisherDet Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.7146/mediekultur.v33i63.24749
OpenAlexW2625979082
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited11

Over the past few years, the French mainstream press has paid more and more attention to 'silver gamers', adults over sixty who play video games. This article investigates the discursive and normative paradigms that underlie the unexpected enthusiasm of the French mainstream press for older adults who play video games. We use mixed methods on a corpus of French, Swiss and Belgian articles that mention both older people and video games. First, we produce topics, that is, sets of words related by their meanings and identified with a Bayesian statistical algorithm. Second, we cross the topic model results with a discursive analysis of selected articles. We preface the topic modeling's conclusions with a discussion of the representations of older people and video games in European French-language mainstream media. Our analysis explores how the press coverage of older people who play video games simultaneously erases moral panic about video games and reinforces the discourse of 'successful ageing

Art · Criminology · Entertainment · Enthusiasm · Epistemology · Mainstream · Media studies · Moral panic · Multimedia · Normative · Political science · Sociology · Video game · Visual arts · Aging, Elder Care, and Social Issues · Computer Science · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access