Social Identity and Power: Older Adults as “Care Recipients” in Media Content on Family Care

In the context of normalized forms of elder abuse and neglect in Canada, it is important to examine how constructions of family caregivers in the public sphere (re)produce potentially harmful assumptions. In this paper, we examine mainstream media construction of the "caregiver" identity in advocacy-related coverage over a 6-year time period (2016-2021). Relying on abductive formal analysis, we explore how care for older adults is presented as largely burdensome and linked to what are labeled the "complex care needs" of a growing aging population that is erroneously presented as largely incapacitated or incompetent. In particular, the emphasis and confusion generated around the indiscriminate use of the disease label of "dementia" functions to emphasize burden, particularly for women and women's liberation more broadly while simultaneously dehumanizing older persons and ignoring various well-documented and socially generated causes of cognitive impairment. Our analysis suggests that reliance on the caregiver identity contributes to the marginalization of older adults and perpetuates ageism while obscuring multiple system failures that harm older persons and strain families' ability to be responsive to elders' needs.