Framing older adults' loneliness in Danish news media: between societal responsibility and individual burden

Loneliness among older adults is addressed as a global public health issue and constitutes a key policy issue, internationally and within countries. Denmark is a country where numerous policies, initiatives, and campaigns, with aims of reducing loneliness, have been conducted over the past decade. The news media influence public understandings of loneliness and how the issue is dealt with in policy and practice. The aim of this study is to examine how loneliness among older adults is constructed in the Danish news media.

Danish news articles were analyzed through the lens of Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, with emphasis on the interplay between media representations and societal discourses in the construction of loneliness.

Four discourses were identified in the analysis: (1) a discourse of social activities to reduce loneliness; (2) a discourse of loneliness as a societal and political issue; (3) a discourse of housing and the importance of the physical environment for reducing loneliness; and (4) a discourse of lived experiences of loneliness in later life.

Articles were dominated by a focus on activity-based interventions, in which politicians, project managers, volunteers, and older adults were given a voice. Structural conditions, shortcomings in eldercare provision, and portrayals of older adults as "forgotten" were constructed as primary causes of loneliness. In these articles, older adults were portrayed as victims and were not present. It is important to maintain a critical awareness of the role the news media plays in constructing images of ageing, old age, and loneliness.