10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17512
This article presents reflections resulting from the conference session “Dis-entangling Later Life: Ageing Processes, Innovative Practices and Critical Reflections”, organized in the context of the VIII STS Italia Conference. The paper expands the discussions from the session and touches on three topics regarding the multiple relationships between COVID-19, ageing and health, namely: (1) the decline of a hyper-responsibilizing rhetoric in the public sphere over the last decades, along with concepts of active ageing and successful ageing; (2) the reinforcement of the representation of ageing as a process with homogenous effects on population, transforming older adults into a social group characterized by shared frailties and needs; and (3) the growing role of public and third sector institutions in supporting older adults in the use of technology during the COVID-19 outbreak, expanding the network of involved actors. Proposals for future research paths are addressed in the conclusions, encouraging the further analysis of the topics discussed in the conference session.
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Francisco Nunes
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
technology
Has COVID-19 Changed Everything? Exploring Turns in Technology Discourses and Practices Related to Ageing
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Conference Reflections
2022-03-26
2023-06-28
2022-03-26
2023-10-23
61-68
TS
Francisco Nunes
2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17512
61
Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS
2038-3460
2
technology
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68
Has COVID-19 Changed Everything? Exploring Turns in Technology Discourses and Practices Related to Ageing
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                                                               Conference Reflections
                                                                                        61




Has COVID-19 Changed Everything?
Exploring Turns in Technology Discourses and
Practices Related to Ageing

          Francesco Miele                                   Francisco Nunes
              University of Padova                          Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS



      Abstract: This article presents reflections resulting from the conference
      session “Dis-entangling Later Life: Ageing Processes, Innovative Practices
      and Critical Reflections”, organized in the context of the VIII STS Italia
      Conference. The paper expands the discussions from the session and
      touches on three topics regarding the multiple relationships between
      COVID-19, ageing and health, namely: (1) the decline of a hyper-responsi-
      bilizing rhetoric in the public sphere over the last decades, along with con-
      cepts of active ageing and successful ageing; (2) the reinforcement of the
      representation of ageing as a process with homogenous effects on popula-
      tion, transforming older adults into a social group characterized by shared
      frailties and needs; and (3) the growing role of public and third sector in-
      stitutions in supporting older adults in the use of technology during the
      COVID-19 outbreak, expanding the network of involved actors. Proposals
      for future research paths are addressed in the conclusions, encouraging the
      further analysis of the topics discussed in the conference session.

      Keywords: Ageing; COVID-19; discourses; practices; technology.

      Submitted: November 24, 2021 – Accepted: January 30, 2022

      Corresponding author: Francesco Miele, Department of Philosophy,
      Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), Via Cesarotti, 10-
      12, 35123 Padova, Italy. Email: francesco.miele@unipd.it.




1. Introduction
   This article presents reflections from the organizers of the session “Dis-
entangling Later Life: Ageing Processes, Innovative Practices and Critical
Reflections” (chaired by the authors and Silvia Fornasini), which took
place during the VIII STS Italia. Planned for the summer of 2020, the event
was postponed to 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 Health Pandemic. The

 TECNOSCIENZA
 Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
 12 (2) pp. 61-68 - ISSN 2038-3460
 www.tecnoscienza.net                                2021
62                                                             Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
disruptive outcomes of the pandemic encouraged organizers and authors
to reorient their reflections and to integrate pandemic constraints and chal-
lenges into their work. The session generated an enriched and in-depth
discussion of age definitions or standard measurements, social-media use –
before and during the COVID-19 pandemic – along with the adoption of
personal or healthcare technologies in rural environments. This paper ex-
pands on the session’s outcomes, namely on three emerging topics arising
from the multiple relationships between COVID-19, ageing and health, re-
framed in the light of current work in the fields of Science and Technology
Studies (STS), ageing studies, and media studies.


2. Older Adults and Public Discourse During the Pandemic:
A Turning Point for Self-responsibility?

    The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on public discourse
about ageing is one of the emerging topics in the debate within the field of
ageing. During the pandemic, the public discourse has vehiculated the per-
spectives of various stakeholders (e.g., scientists, politicians, political opin-
ion leaders, patients’ families, and organizations) and simultaneously, has
oriented public opinion and political agendas.
    In this context, it is relevant to start by clarifying how the pandemic has
(re)shaped representations about the role of older adults in self-managing
their health conditions. Since the beginning of the 1990s, public discourse
has promoted a vision in which older adults are expected to practice self-
care, or, in other words, to take care of themselves by embracing a ‘healthy
lifestyle’ and enhancing their bodies (Joyce et al. 2007; Lassen and Moreira
2014). As stressed by William Jones (University of Washington, USA), con-
cepts such as active ageing and successful ageing have dominated public
discourse, leading to the perception of older adults as independent sub-
jects, in this way turning good and poor health into a matter of pure indi-
vidual responsibility.
    In contrast with this trend, the pandemic strengthened rhetorics that
objectified older individuals, regarded as fragile and passive, in need of
protection from the community (Miele 2021). Beginning with the correla-
tion between chronological age and COVID-19 disease severity, presented
by statisticians and epidemiologists, public narratives framed COVID-19
as a “disease of the elderly”. Throughout the pandemic, this conceptual-
ization has taken on different shapes: during the initial phase of the pan-
demic, particularly on social media, the health of older adults was repre-
sented as an unproductive social burden, dispensable in the name of eco-
nomics (Fraser et al. 2020; Jimenez-Sotomayor 2020). With the spreading
of the virus, older adults were increasingly represented as passive recipients
Miele and Nunes                                                             63
of interventions carried out by governments, scientists, and public institu-
tions (Ayalon et al. 2020; Zhang, Liu 2021; Caliandro et al. 2021). Research
is required to determine if the COVID-19 outbreak has indeed weakened
the previous emphasis on older adults’ individual responsibility or if the
latter will resurface as pandemic conditions pass.


3. The Meaning of Ageing: From Homogenization to De-
standardization and Vice Versa

    A second relevant topic concerns the role of the pandemic in ascribing
meaning to ageing processes. The last decades have been characterized by
attempts from biogerontology and social sciences to produce new
knowledge about the biological processes that modulate ageing. In partic-
ular, as underlined by Bronzini (2021), the connection between chronolog-
ical age and ageing has been growingly contested over recent years. New
criteria for measurement have been created, providing personalized age
measures (Moreira 2016) and reconceptualizing ageing as a process that is
not completely aligned with chronological age (Pickard 2016). De-stand-
ardization of ageing challenges the assumption that there is a certain ho-
mogeneity in the ageing process and that individuals with very different
physiological, psychological, clinical, and social characteristics can be con-
sidered similar merely because they share the same number of life years
(Katz 2006; Moreira 2016).
    As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, national and supranational in-
stitutions have powerfully re-affirmed their need to treat older adults as a
homogeneous social group characterized by shared necessities and fragili-
ties. Since the beginning of the pandemic, public discourse has played a
key role in ‘othering’ older adults, i.e., treating them as a homogeneous
group, distinct from the “normal” (meaning typical or mainstream) popu-
lation, and characterized by frailty, dependency, and vulnerability (Allen
and Aylon 2021). As demonstrated by the qualitative study conducted by
Melis and colleagues (2021) focused on daily life during the COVID-19
lockdown in Italy, the containment measures recommended by the institu-
tions through public speeches, guidelines, and government regulations,
contributed to isolate older adults, forcing them to re-define their daily life
and to dramatically restrict their social contacts. The reinforcement of the
‘othering’ processes, already normalized before the pandemic in discourses
regarding older adults (Fealy et al. 2012), appeared to have a twofold effect
which requires further investigation. On the one hand, ‘othering’ processes
have allowed a wide campaign of vaccination to be organized, a typical ex-
pression of the so-called ‘WE medicine’ (Dickenson 2013), a kind of
64                                                           Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)

medicine aimed at protecting entire sectors of the society and characterized
by universal access to healthcare services (in opposition with the personal-
ized and privatized ‘ME medicine’, strongly interwoven with the neo-lib-
eralization of western healthcare systems). On the other hand, ‘othering’
has favoured the isolation of a large percentage of older adults, supporting
the reduction of their social life (e.g., abandoning informal care and volun-
teering activities) and exacerbating pre-existing inequalities (e.g., affecting
individuals with weak family ties and with very low digital literacy).


4. The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Networks Supporting
Older Adults’ Technology Use: The Increasing Role of
Formal Ties

    The last topic discussed in this paper concerns the similarities and dif-
ferences between the practices of technology use, before and during the
pandemic by older adults.
    One difference that COVID-19 pandemic seems to have introduced is
the increase in the diversity and number of actors involved in the technol-
ogy use by older people. Traditionally, technology use by older adults has
been characterized as an individual or a small group activity supported by
close family and friends (Nunes et al. 2010; Vines et al. 2015; Riche and
Mackay 2010). The study by Simone Carlo (Cattolica University, Milan)
and Francesco Bonifacio (Cattolica University, Milan), conducted in a pre-
covid context and presented at the conference, aligns with this depiction.
The study provides examples of both individual and collaborative use of
technology, supported by close family and friends in the rural Italian town
of Castel del Monte. Fuelled by the need to use technologies to access es-
sential services, such as healthcare, older adults would engage with these
tools by themselves through trial-and-error, or resort to the support of
close family or friends to learn to use different technologies, or, also, to
help them overcome accessibility barriers (Greengard 2009).
    However, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have motivated other ac-
tors to become involved in the usage of technology by older adults. Gov-
ernment restrictions and public representations about the effects of
COVID-19 on older adults’ health have limited their agency, bringing new
actors into their networks. For example, with the presentation by Monica
Murero (Federico II University of Naples) we learned about the role of
local volunteers in supporting older adults in “using” electronic prescrip-
tion. While intended to work as a facilitator during the pandemic, elec-
tronic prescription made it harder for older adults to get medication pre-
scriptions because these were only accessible through a mobile app on a
smartphone. Volunteers supported older adults in accessing such prescrip-
tions, going to the pharmacy to purchase the medication, whenever older
people were requested to stay home. The role of volunteers was, however,
Miele and Nunes                                                            65
not only applied to enabling electronic prescription. Multiple studies
demonstrate volunteers’ role in teaching the use of certain technologies
over the phone (Haase et al. 2021; Gresh et al. 2021). Municipalities were
also a new actor supporting technology use. Evidence is provided by Giulia
Melis (Bicocca University, Milan), Emanuela Sala (Bicocca University, Mi-
lan) and Daniele Zaccaria (SUPSI, Switzerland) on the important role mu-
nicipalities played in training older adults to use information and commu-
nication technologies, in assisting older citizens in gaining access to essen-
tial services, but also social media which became key to maintaining rich
contacts with family, friends, or their local community (von Humboldt et
al. 2020).
     The examples of collective engagement presented in the session moti-
vated us to consider whether such initiatives were isolated instances, or if
society has globally gained a new understanding that the use of technology
by older adults is a shared responsibility. In a moment of adversity, new
actors appeared to support older adults in learning to use or directly access
services perceived as critical to their wellbeing. However, issues of accessi-
bility undoubtedly continue to exist when solidarity and the voluntary na-
ture of the community have weakened. As researchers working in this area,
it is our hope that the same willingness to support older adults remains
after the pandemic and, also, that such initiatives counteract other accessi-
bility issues in the community, such as those faced by people with disabili-
ties.


5. Concluding Remarks

    Starting from the reflections gathered during the session “Dis-entan-
gling Later Life: Ageing Processes, Innovative Practices and Critical Re-
flections” and from the literature produced over the past year and a half,
we have shown how the pandemic has weakened the pre-existing emphasis
on individual responsibility and on the individualization of the life course.
These trends, typical of the biomedicalization era (Clarke et al. 2003, 2010),
shared a specific focus on individuals, perceived as key actors that can pos-
itively and successfully shape the ageing process. From this viewpoint, per-
sonalized and customized biomedical interventions can help individuals to
maintain a good health status, balancing the progressive weakening of pub-
lic welfare systems and the increasing involvement of private entities in the
provision of health services. In contrast, during the pandemic, medical
knowledge has turned into a subsidiary body of knowledge to be mobilized
in the public sphere for legitimizing the expansion of a political centralized
governance of the emergency (Crabu et al. 2021). In parallel, older adults
have been put at the centre of discourses, representations, and policies that
treat these adults as recipients of public health interventions that target a
homogeneous group of frail individuals, in need of protection from the
community. Moreover, the networks of older adults have been changed by
66                                                                 Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
the pandemic, welcoming several new actors from public and third sector
institutions, to support the adoption of technology directly associated to
these adults’ wellbeing.
    We believe more research is required. Firstly, it is important to verify if
the trends identified are temporary or fated to persist beyond the pandemic
phase of COVID-19. Second, it is important to understand if the pandemic
has inspired possible alternatives to hyper-responsibilization and objectifi-
cation of older adults, namely through fostering community solidarity and
the strengthening of public welfare policies directed at older adults, with-
out reducing agency and overlooking individual characteristics. The at-
tempt to view older adults as an active part of the planning and develop-
ment of techno-scientific processes is not new in STS (see: Peine and Ne-
ven 2019; Cozza et al. 2020). However, now it is vital to investigate the
ways through which the pandemic conditions have favoured or obstructed
the active involvement of older adults in the co-construction of interven-
tions aimed at improving their health and wellbeing.


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