Research perspectives on communication technologies in later life are often tied up with discourses of decline. Paradigm shifts in social gerontology have incited recent interest in the cultural aspects of older adults’ doings with ICTs (Givskov and Deuze, 2018; Wanka and Gallistl, 2018). Yet, most studies on communication media in care homes have been intervention focused (see Chen and Schulz, 2016) and older adults' subjective social experiences are often overlooked (Tuominen and Pirhonen, 2019).
This paper explores lived experiences of media environments in long-term care. I consider how media practices are intertwined with living spaces and emotional attachments. I present findings from a collaborative research project with a publicly funded long-term care facility in Victoria, BC, Canada, and for the purposes of this paper, I juxtapose these findings with the experiences of four community-dwelling older adults. My analysis draws on participant observation (55+ hours) and qualitative interviews (16) conducted in late 2019. Interviews combined narration on communication media though the life course with communicative ecology mapping (Hearn et al., 2009) and a guided indoor tour (Ratzenböck, 2016).
While government discourses in BC promote social connectedness, basic communication services in the care facility were not covered by public funding. My research found some residents feeling “trapped” with little opportunity for social or civic engagement. A 73-year-old woman who had been living in the care home for four years explained, “I haven’t voted in years… I don't have a TV in my room, I don't get the newspaper ’cause it costs money… I mean, I don't know really what's going on.”
For the four community-dwelling older adults, access to a wide array of communication means supported them to effectively appropriate new media devices; they could choose when and how Internet media would be relevant. I draw on literatures on polymedia (Madianou and Miller, 2013) and emotional responses to media (Vincent, 2006) to describe the ways the community-based respondents shifted between old and new media and assigned individualized meanings and purposes to new media devices based on attachments they had developed to media over their life courses. Media attachments were also important among the long-term care residents; for example, participants who found reading too difficult often flipped through books or magazines. These media gave structure to their day (Östlund, 2010) and provided comfort and continuity.
Juxtaposing these media environments points to the importance of considering the subjective experience of media exclusion. While the community-dwelling adults felt they had no control over online social trends, those in long-term care who had never used the Internet did not feel digitally excluded. Rather, these respondents experienced exclusion when the communication means they were attached to—whether it was reading the newspaper or wandering around the neighborhood—were no longer possible in their current situation. Where standalone ICT interventions are common in care homes, and often not lasting (Matilainen, Schwartz and Zeleznikow, 2017, p.128), findings in this case study suggest it important to foster diverse media environments to support residents to negotiate changing communication means and abilities.