Good Intentions Aside: Stereotype Threat in the Face of Media Strategies to Counter Age Bias.

The current study shifts the focus of research on media's role in facilitating and inhibiting self-stereotyping among the members of stigmatized groups. More specifically, this study proposes and tests a conceptual model explaining (un)intentional effects of a real-world anti-ageism social media campaign among stereotyped targets: Older workers. Drawing on an experiment among older Dutch adults (N = 649), we test the effects of two message strategies for reducing prejudice: the media-literacy and the counter stereotypical information strategy. The results show that exposure to content warnings as well as strong counter-stereotypical message (i.e., consisting of positive exemplars and the negation of generic age stereotypes) is powerful in inhibiting implicit stereotype endorsement, ultimately boosting favourable employability perceptions of older workers. By integrating insights from the parasocial content hypothesis and stereotype threat indications, we provide a nuanced understanding of how anti-bias campaigns impact stigmatized targets, and isolate reasons for the varied effectiveness of such interventions.

Between Accommodating and Activating: Framing Policy Reforms in Response to Workforce Aging across Europe.

In the past decade, European governments have implemented activating policy reforms to maximize older workers' employment and employability, representing a paradigmatic change in approaches to work and retirement. This study isolates the factors that explain the relative success and failure of competitive frames that are either in favor of or against activating policies in European news coverage, by applying time-series analysis (ordinary least squares with panel-corrected standard errors) to monthly aggregated news coverage in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Spain over the timespan 2006-2013. The results show that pro-activating and counteractivating frames generally coincide in competitive framing environments. The pro-activating frame proliferated in times of high employment protection, whereas the counteractivating frame prevailed stronger in conservative compared with progressive newspapers, and gained momentum during the aftermath of the financial crisis and in times governments on the economic left were in power. The study advances knowledge of competitive issue framing by demonstrating how the economic, policy, and political context matters for the emergence and evolvement of competing frames. In addition, the findings contribute to the understanding of the factors that contribute to news representations that promote active aging in European news, which may foster support for policy reforms that sustain older workers' employability.