Conflicts Around Elder Care in Mass Media: A Case Study of a Swedish TV-Documentary and the Reactions to it in Public Discourse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31211/interacoes.n39.2020.a2Keywords:
elder care, citizenship, mass media, discourse analysisAbstract
Public opinion regarding the organization of welfare and elder care are issues which have mainly been studied as expressions of individual attitudes or conflicting ideologies. By contrast, and departing from an understanding of the importance of context and societal rhetoric, this study explores a media event in the form of a Swedish TV documentary about problems in elder care and the reactions to it that were published in printed news media. The study departs from a discursive psychological perspective and focuses on what is taken for granted with regard to how elder care should be organized, and which conflicts are articulated in the different articles and opinion pieces that were published during the month following the broadcast.
The study also shows how elder care is not a singular issue, but always interconnected with issues such as citizenship, identity, migration, and the legitimacy of the political and legal system. It was found that right to formal care for older people to a large extent was articulated as a right by virtue of citizenship.
References
Andersson, L. (2016, January 28). Ett hem till varje pris. Hallandsposten.
Baxter, P., & Jack, S. (2008). Qualitative case study methodology: Study design and implementation for novice researchers. The qualitative report, 13(4), 544–559.
Blomqvist, P. (2004). The choice revolution: Privatization of Swedish welfare services in the 1990s. Social Policy & Administration, 38(2), 139-155.
Bode, I. (2007). New moral economies of welfare: The case of domiciliary elder care in Germany, France and Britain. European Societies, vol. 9, no. 2, 201-227.
Chamberlain, K., & Hodgetts, D. (2008). Social psychology and media: critical considerations. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2/3, 1109-1125.
Chung, H., Filipovic Hrast, M., & Rakar, T. (2018). The provision of care: Whose responsibility and why? In P. Taylor-Gooby, & B. Leruth, (eds.) Attitudes, Aspirations and Welfare. Social Policy Directions in Uncertain Times. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan.
Clarke, J., & Newman, J. (1997). The managerial state: Power, politics and ideology in the remaking of social welfare. Sage.
Crepaz, M. M. L. (2008). Trust beyond borders: Immigration, the welfare state, and identity in modern societies. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.
Daatland, S.V., Veenstra, M., & Herlofson, K. (2012). Age and intergenerational attitudes in the family and the welfare state. Advances in Life Course Research, 17, 133-144.
Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology (Vol. 8). London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage publishing.
Hansson, R. (2016, January 21). Alla över 80 borde ha rätt till äldreboende. Sydsvenskan.
Holmberg, S., & Weissenbilder, M. (2018). Betyg på offentlig verksamhet 2017. SOM-rapport nr 2018:4. Gothenburg: SOM-Institutet.
Johnson, T. (2016, January 26). Åldersapartheid är en värre kommunalskandal. Arbetet.
Jönson, H., & Nilsson, M. (2007). Are old people merited veterans of society? Some notes on a problematic claim. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 9(2), 28-43.
Jönson, H. (2016). Framing scandalous nursing home care: What is the problem? Ageing and Society, 36, 400-419.
Kohli, M. (1991). Retirement and the moral economy: An historical interpretation of the German case. In Meredith Minkler & Caroll L. Estes (Eds.), Critical perspectives on aging: The political and moral economy of growing old. New York, Baywood Publishing.
Kustvik, K. (2016, January 23). Vi behandlar äldre för dåligt. Östgöta Correspondenten.
Lewis, J. (2006). News and the empowerment of citizens. European Journal of Cultural Studies. 9(3), 303-319.
Marcinkowski, F. (2014). Mediatisation of politics: Reflections on the state of the concept. Javnost – the public, 21(2), 5-22.
Markström, C., Ljuslinder, K., & Sjöström, S. (2011). Konsensus och personifierade konflikter: problembeskrivningar av äldreomsorg i svensk dagspress. Sociologisk forskning, 5, 23.
Mau, S. (2004). The moral economy of welfare states: Britain and Germany compared (Vol. 5). Abingdon, Routledge.
Meagher, G., & Szebehely, M. (2013). Marketisation in Nordic eldercare: A research report on legislation, oversight, extent and consequences. Department of social work, Stockholm University.
Minkler, M., & Cole, T. R. (1992). The political and moral economy of aging: not such strange bedfellows. International Journal of Health Services, 22(1), 113-124.
Nilsson, M. (2008). Våra äldre: om konstruktioner av äldre i offentligheten (Doctoral dissertation, Linköping University Electronic Press).
Nilsson, M. (2017). Nationalism and the moral economy of ageing. In I. Loffeier, T. Moulaert, & B. Majerus (Eds.), Framing Age: Contested knowledge in Science and Politics. Abingdon, Routledge.
Nilsson, M., Jönson, H., Carlstedt, E., & Harnett, T. (2018). Nursing homes with lifestyle profiles–part of the marketisation of Swedish eldercare. International Journal of Care and Caring, 2(1), 49-63.
Norgren, S. (2016, January 20). “Ett exempel på en felbedömning.” Folkbladet.
Petersen, M. B., Slothuus, R., Stubager, R., & Togeby, L. (2011). Deservingness versus values in public opinion on welfare: The automaticity of the deservingness heuristic. European Journal of Political Research, 50(1), 24-52.
Pettersson, Tommy (2016, February 3) Äldreomsorg till varje pris. Norrköpings-Magazinet.
Potter, Jonathan (1996). Representing reality. Discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Prinzen, Katrin (2014). Intergenerational ambivalence: new perspectives on intergenerational relationships in the German welfare state. Ageing and Society, 34, 428-451.
Slothuus, R. (2007). Framing deservingness to win support for welfare state retrenchment. Scandinavian Political Studies, 30(3), 323–344.
Social Services Act (2001). Socialtjänstlag 2001:453. http://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/socialtjanstlag-2001453_sfs-2001-453
Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare). (2013). Äldre –vård och omsorg den 1 oktober 2012 – Kommunala insatser enligt socialtjänstlagen samt hälso- och sjukvårdslagen.
Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare). (2016). Statistik om särskilt boende, https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/globalassets/sharepoint-dokument/artikelkatalog/statistik/2016-12-5.pdf
Svallfors, S. (2008). The generational contract in Sweden: Age-specific attitudes to age-related policies. Policy & Politics, 36(3), 381–96.
Svallfors, S. (2011). A bedrock of support? Trends in welfare state attitudes in Sweden, 1981–2010. Social Policy & Administration, 45(7), 806-825.
Szebehely, M., & Meagher, G. (2018). Nordic eldercare–weak universalism becoming weaker? Journal of European Social Policy, 28(3), 294-308.
Trydegård, G. B., & Thorslund, M. (2010). One uniform welfare state or a multitude of welfare municipalities? The evolution of local variation in Swedish elder care. Social Policy & Administration, 44(4), 495-511.
Vakna upp och skäms. (2016, February, 9). Inte värdig behandling efter ett långt liv. Västerbottenskuriren
van Oorschot, W. (2000). Who should get what, and why? On deservingness criteria and the conditionality of solidarity among the public. Policy and Politics. Studies in local government and its services, 28(1), 33-48.
van Oorschot, W. (2006). Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states. Journal of European social policy, 16(1), 23-42.
Westlund, O., & Weibull, L. (2013). Generation, life course and news media use in Sweden 1986–2011. Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook, 11(1), 147-173.
Wetherell, M., & Potter, J. (1988). Discourse analysis and the identification of interpretative repertoires. In C. Antaki, (Ed.) Analysing everyday explanation: A casebook of methods, 1688183.
Will, J. A. (1993). The dimensions of poverty: Public perceptions of the deserving poor, Social Science Research, 22(3), 312–332.
Yin, R. K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd ed., London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Åxå trött. (2016, February 11). De äldres pengar går till annat. Hallandsposten.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Magnus Nilsson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The copyright of published works is retained by the author who grants Interações the original publication right. The published article can be used freely for educational, non-commercial purposes, in accordance with the Creative Commons License - Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International, provided that the author, the title of the article, the title and number of the journal are cited together with the URL or DOI of the article.
