The Representation of Older People in Japanese Television Advertisements

Abstract

In this chapter we present and discuss research on the representation of older people in Japanese television advertisements based on a content analysis of around 3,000 television advertisements. The chapter is structured as follows: We first discuss the theoretical background of this study. The following section will give an overview of the important literature on the representation of older people in television advertising and introduce the main variables of this research. Then we present the results for each variable. We also compare the results between 1997 and 2007 and thus analyze if there were any changes in how older people were represented in Japanese television advertisements between 1997 and 2007, and if these changes were connected with social changes in Japan. These results will then be further analyzed in the discussion section.