Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Department of Culture and Society, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2021 Aug 13;76(7):e306-e312. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa148.
We explored the portrayal of older adults and the public response to topics concerning older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chinese social media (Weibo topics, equivalent to hashtags on Twitter). We also explored the temporal trends of dominant themes to identify changes over time.
Topics related to older adults were searched in the Weibo topic search engine between January 20 and April 28, 2020. Overall, 241 topics and their view frequency and comment frequency were collected. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted to classify the topics into themes. The popularity of each theme was also analyzed. In addition, the frequency with which each theme appeared during the 3 major stages of the pandemic (outbreak, turnover, and post-peak) was reported.
Six main themes were identified. "Older adults contributing to the community" was the most prominent theme with the highest average comment frequency per topic. It was also the most dominant theme in the first stage of the pandemic. "Older patients in hospitals" was the second most prominent theme and the most dominant theme in the second and third stages of the pandemic. The percentage of topics with the themes "Care recipients" and "Older adults caring for the young" increased over time.
The portrayal of older people as being warm, competent, and actively exercising their agency is prevalent on Weibo. The Weibo-viewing public shows signs of interest in intergenerational solidarity during the pandemic in China. These findings are different from findings reported by studies conducted in the West.
我们探索了在 COVID-19 大流行期间中国社交媒体（微博话题，相当于 Twitter 上的标签）中对老年人的描绘以及公众对涉及老年人话题的反应。我们还探讨了主导主题的时间趋势，以确定随时间的变化。
在 2020 年 1 月 20 日至 4 月 28 日期间，我们在微博话题搜索引擎中搜索了与老年人相关的话题。总共收集了 241 个话题及其浏览量和评论量。采用归纳主题分析对话题进行分类，并分析每个主题的受欢迎程度。此外，还报告了每个主题在大流行的 3 个主要阶段（爆发、转折和高峰后）出现的频率。
确定了 6 个主要主题。“老年人为社区做贡献”是最突出的主题，每个话题的平均评论量最高。它也是大流行第一阶段最主要的主题。“医院中的老年患者”是第二大主题，也是第二和第三阶段最主要的主题。随着时间的推移，“照顾对象”和“老年人照顾年轻人”这两个主题的话题比例有所增加。
在微博上，老年人被描绘成热情、有能力并积极行使其代理权的形象。微博浏览者在这场中国大流行中表现出对代际团结的兴趣。这些发现与西方研究报告的发现不同。
