Seniors and Mass Media

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Presentation of the initiative


Introduction and antecedents:

As argues the German journalist, Frank Schirrmacher, doctor in Philosophy and publisher of the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in its book "The plot of Matusalén":

....... as we turned years, the society is to us prevailing from which it is essential for our essence like people: the security in ourself.
 
The industrial society had to admit that it could not resign to the nature; the society of the information cannot resign to the experience, the individual conscience, the knowledge and the wisdom of the senior ones.
 
To equip to the threatened society of certain security in itself based on the experience and the wisdom will be the great mission of people which habit this world in the next years.
 
If Biology and the economy decimate the reserves of the seniors, the culture does not remain back. The concepts that it coins on the old ones describe them like the abnormal sector of the species: Usually it is said, to mention an example totally innocent, that the old ones are cerriles, preservative, egoistic and pessimistic.
 
Studies made in different countries have found that the old people are seen as a marginal group and the general image is that they are useless and unproductive, and predominate in diverse groups of age the negative stereotypes.
 
The negative stereotypes towards the aging process, maintained by the society and own the old ones, are phenomena that can decrease the capacities of adaptation of the people and to affect their quality of life and its health.
 
It is important to stand out how some victims of processes of construction of stereotypes show tendencies to be satisfied to these stereotypes.
 
… and if in the next years we did not manage to destroy the stereotypes on the oldness, the emotional crisis of a society in which half of the population will live with fear to the oldness will drown our joy to live.
 
Our responsibility in front of our descendants consists of continuing being eternally young, neither to deny our aging, nor to clear to us of in the middle, to do to us invisible or to hide to us. Our task consists of reforming the calendar of our social life. It consists of fighting the discrimination of the oldness when it is necessary by politically correct means in principle. And in which one talks about to models and own images, it consists of seating an antecedent and giving example to the coming generations of how living the oldness.
 
From this reflection one seted out on the part of a group of Students of UPUA accomplishment of project, of duration limitless, in that the students and ex--students of the UPUA investigate “which is the image that of the senior ones projects the different artistic manifestations and mass media, analyze this image, they compare it with its own perception of the reality and ..... they act consequently”.

The initiative had like object different actions, in each one of these actions the analysis and study will be centered at a time and defined affluent theme, thus for example:

  • The seniors in Literature.
  • The seniors in the painting.
  • The seniors in the cinema.
  • The seniors in mass media.
  • The seniors in the publicity.
  • The seniors and the laws.
  • The seniors and the economy.

Each one of the propose actions would orient its activity to give fulfillment to the general missions of the project.
 “THE SENIORS IN .......”
Utopian/diffuse objective
To improve the social consideration that has of the senior people and its self-esteem.

Specific objectives:

  • To analyze the image of the senior people projected by the arts and mass media, to compare it with the image that the senior ones have of themselves and to reflect on the possible differences.
  • To disassemble the images and inlaid negative stereotypes in the present culture.
  • To promote activities, between students and ex--students of the UPUA. in order to improve its self-esteem and to promote the interpersonal relations.
  • To propose routes for the advantage of the potential of knowledge and experiences of the senior ones.
  • To promote one academic improve and a greater knowledge of the study techniques, investigation and work.