It’s not enough to be seen: exploring how journalists show aged care in Australia from 2018-2021

Older Australians, particularly those in aged-care settings, are frequently targets of persistent discrimination and marginalisation. Media portrayals of older people contribute to how broader society sees and values this demographic. Acknowledging this, the present study analyses how journalists visually cover ageing and the aged care sector during a critical event ‘frame’: the calling of, and government response to, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety from 2018 through 2021. This study recognises that the type of representation of older people in media is more difficult to examine than simply the frequency of representation. Using visual social semiotics as an analytical framework, this paper examined 351 images from a nationally representative news sample published over the 30-month timeframe. This approach has enabled us to go beyond simple frequencies of who is depicted and explore in a more nuanced way how older Australians are depicted, and with what implications.