“The Golden Years” – Narratives of Aging on the AARP Website

Abstract

With the number of seniors over the age of 65 projected to grow rapidly over the coming decades, the conversation about aging will become ever more important. AARP, one of the largest media companies targeting seniors, will play a large role in shaping narratives of aging. As such, the case study that follows is an important contribution to the conversation about aging. I explore the narratives of aging related to the topic of health which currently exist on the AARP website, following in the footsteps of Bowen and Anderson, the only published articles studying AARP’s narratives of aging. My methods include a content inventory and thematic analysis of a sample of “Health” articles from the AARP website. My results show that there is no single dominant narrative of aging regarding health in AARP’s “Health” articles; AARP seems to use multiple narratives to approach their senior audience as agents with a moderate amount of agency.