Mandate

The global population is ageing. According to UNESCO projections, the proportion of people who are 60 and over is growing faster than any other age group. Between 1970 and 2025, a growth in older persons of some 694 million or 223 percent is expected, with 80 percent living in developing countries. What are our communicational needs and desires as we age? How does the processes of ageing affect our network of social relations, our communicational practices, or our media choices and uses of technologies?

Ageing-Communications-Media brings together a team of researchers from Malaysia, Catalonia (Spain), Canada and Quebec whose goal is to better understand the intersections between communications, ageing and mobility. In discussions of active ageing the areas of health, education and participation typically are named as key elements to living a qualitatively better life. What is absent from much of the literature, is a consideration of the key role of communications, media or new technologies, as components of this strategy. Likewise, within industry documents and academic writings on media and technology, those who are 60+ are typically missing. The goal of our research partnership is to identify, understand, and to see what steps might be taken to rectify this double absence.

Project Participants

  • Kim Sawchuk, Communication Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, Canada
  • Barbara Crow, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, IN3, Open University, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
  • Chui Yin Wong, Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • Line Grenier, Department of Communications, University of Montreal, Montreal, Québec, Canada

Project Manager and Research Assistants

  • Constance Carrier-Lafontaine, PhD Candidate, Communication Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, Canada
  • Daniel Blanche Tarrago, IN3, Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain.

Community Partners

  • Ressources Ethnoculturelle Contra L’Abus Envers Les Aîné/es; Respecting Elders: Communities Against elder Abuse. http://www.recca.ca
  • Atwater Library and Computer Centre.
This research team is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada- Partnership Development Grant, under the project title Active Ageing, Mobile Technologies (2011-2014). We would also like to thank the Office of the Vice-President of Research and Graduate Studies, Concordia University,  the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, and IN3 for their support of our symposia and events.