The unprotectables: A critical discourse analysis of older people’s portrayal in UK newspaper coverage of Covid-19

• Published in: European journal of cultural studies Vol. 27; no. 4; pp. 648 - 664
• Main Author: Shimoni, Shir
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2024; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: COVID-19; Critical theory; Discourse analysis; Governmentality; Older people; Risk; Viruses; United Kingdom > UK; Ageism; cultural representation; neoliberalism; risk; Covid-19
• ISSN: 1367-5494; 1460-3551
• DOI: 10.1177/13675494231185539

In this article, I draw on the systematic, policy-led negligence with which older people in the United Kingdom were handled during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, as I examine their simultaneous cultural representation across four major UK newspapers. Using content and critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate that while older people were depicted mostly through the notion of their increased risk to contract and die from the virus, this risk was consistently framed as unmanageable. I adopt a Foucauldian governmentality perspective as I argue that by framing dangers as exceeding the possibility of control and insurance, the discourse of unmanageable risk helped to dismantle the protection of older people from the virus. Moreover, I demonstrate that the unmanageable risk discourse spawned a particular kind of an older subject, one who not only is unprotectable but also invisible. I discuss how older people’s invisibility – evident in the absence of their names, voices and testimonies – operated in tandem with their unprotectability, to render them palatably disposable.