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Older Adults in Prime-Time Television Dramas in Taiwan: Prevalence, Portrayal, and Communication Interaction

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Abstract

A content and thematic analysis of 109 episodes (94.9 h) of prime-time dramas examined the portrayals of aging and the nature of intergenerational interaction involving older adults on Taiwanese television. The content analysis revealed that older characters, regardless of sex, appeared less frequently and in less prominent roles than other adult characters, but not in comparison to adolescents and children. The older characters who did appear, however, were predominantly portrayed as cognitively sound and physically healthy. The thematic analysis provided a different picture, showing that older characters talked about age explicitly, strategically linking it to death and despondence, to influence younger characters. Communication behavior themes identified included supporting, superiority, and controlling for older characters, and reverence/respect for younger characters. Findings are compared to those from similar studies of U.S. media and discussed from a Cultivation Theory perspective in terms of their reinforcement of Chinese age stereotypes and the traditional values of filial piety and age hierarchy in the context of globalization and culture change.

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Notes

  1. Twenty-eight episodes (7 episodes from each of four wireless television stations, representing 30 h of programming randomly selected were used for pilot coding before the main study. Both coders (coder A and coder B) were graduate students from Taiwan studying in the States. They independently analyzed all 28 episodes on each variable. Inter-coder reliabilities (Scott’s Pi) for the age group, sex, role prominence, metal lucidity and physical ability variables were .98, 1.00, .86, 1.00, and 1.00 respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radio & Television, National Taiwan University of Arts, 59 Da-Kuan Rd., Section 1, Pan-Chiao Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Shu-Chin Lien

  2. Department of Communication Studies, University of Kansas, 102 Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS, 66045-7574, USA

    Yan Bing Zhang & Mary Lee Hummert

Authors
  1. Shu-Chin Lien
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  2. Yan Bing Zhang
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  3. Mary Lee Hummert
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Correspondence to Yan Bing Zhang.

Additional information

This paper is based on the first author’s dissertation under the direction of Mary Lee Hummert and Yan Bing Zhang. Our special thanks go to Kai-Chien Tien and Mao-Sheng Hung for their help with the content analysis coding and Hsiu-Hsien Lin for his assistance in data collection.

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Lien, SC., Zhang, Y.B. & Hummert, M.L. Older Adults in Prime-Time Television Dramas in Taiwan: Prevalence, Portrayal, and Communication Interaction. J Cross Cult Gerontol 24, 355–372 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-009-9100-3

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