Violência contra idosos: aproximações e distanciamentos entre a fala do idoso e o discurso da mídia impressa

Abstract

The main goal of this dissertation was to collect social representations from elder people and press about violence, abuse, and negligence against the elderly. In this dissertation violence against elder people was treated using a psycho sociological approach through a theoretical framework of the Social Psychology, conducted by the Social Representations Theory, from Moscovici, using the contributions of Doise. This study was composed by two technicals of research: a field and a documental research. The locus of the field research was public spaces used by elder people for recreational and physical activities, in Joao Pessoa, Paraiba. The documental research was done using internet searching tools to find news related to this study from two different newspapers: Folha de São Paulo, and O Norte. The keywords used were: "violence against elder people", "abuse against elder people", and "elder people negligence". In the field research, twenty-eight elders, averaging 71 years old, answered a social demographic, family arrangement, violence and abuse questionnaire, as well as a deep interview. The interview content was run through the Lexical Analysis from Alceste software through a standard procedure and crossed analysis. This software was also used to process 126 news collected from the press. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (chi square). The results from the interview showed that the elders socially represented the violence as the lost of the power of managing their lives and being independent, and the detachment of themselves from their ideological reference of family, as well as the lost of the respect of their children and the affective and financial security. The news released social representations of violence against elders based on the social gain experienced by the elder people, mainly through the Elderly Statute which assure them assistance and rights, searching for active elders valorization. When both of the speeches are compared, social representations got closer when the content focused the elderly rights and the violence experienced. On the other hand, speeches got further as, in the case of elders, the speech denoted bio psychosocial suffering because of their stigma as excluded beings. In the case of the press, published social actions pointed to the inclusion of the elderly into the society s life. The results were discussed based on the current literature, indicating a lot of convergence in what was found. The study s potential limitations were also searched, in order to point its applicability and suggest future research and interventions.