Facets of Media Inclusion: Granfluencing and Ageism in Digital Space

Abstract

The paper touches upon the aspects of inclusion that cover online media activity of elderly prosumers – granfluencers. Although researchers of various profiles are interested in problems of adapting “digital immigrants” to modern media space, it is for the first time that granfluencing is discussed in Russian scientific discourse. The purpose of the work is to analyze epiphenomena of ageing as a social construct and media activity that accompanies it from the standpoint of classical models of social theory: typology of cultures with respect to transmitting technological experience, the concept of stigmatization, and the theory of external extensions of the human. The data of the latest empirical studies devoted to granfluencing will also be taken into account. It was revealed that this trendy phenomenon is a kind of reaction to ageism in the media that contributes to producing stereotypes which differ from traditional ones. As a new trend in social networks, where the older generation uses media platforms to influence communal dynamics, granfluencing is actually a symptom of postfigurative culture, when we encounter the traditional way of socialization of the younger generation through adapting the experience of the elders; on the other hand, older people are a kind of “inhabitants of the prefigurative borderland” who master new technologies on a par with the young. At the social level this phenomenon transforms society’s ideas about the older generation and its digital (in)competence, whereas at the anthropological level it acts as a practice of the self, a tool for constructing identity, as well as a mnemonic technique that allows one to preserve memory of oneself and prolong one’s creative existence. The paper may be of interest to researchers of the “digital frontier” and everyday practices of computer-mediated communication, representatives of gerontosophy, as well as to digital design specialists and age equality activists.