Selling surveillance technology: semiotic themes in advertisements for ageing in place with dementia

ABSTRACT

Six advertisements were explored that sell surveillance technologies for people living with dementia through qualitative content analysis. Advertisements from the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands were analysed to explore semiotic textual meaning and people living with dementia (N = 5) and carers (N = 4) responded to these advertisements. The semiotic themes report a “wanderer” discourse which signals to track people living with dementia, children pets and possessions. Mainly negative representations communicate the dangers of wandering towards younger-female carers, few positive representations show a smiling person with dementia and only one person was represented as interacting with technology. Participants did not understand the advertisements and people living with dementia felt stigmatised. There is a lack of reflexivity when people living with dementia are seen as objects. The reliance on stereotypes targeted at carers with misunderstood conceivable trackers hinders resilience for people living with dementia and implies the continuous stigmatisation that occurs when they are disregarded as human technology-users.

KEYWORDS:

• Surveillance
• safety
• technology
• dementia
• advertisements
• discourses

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research presented in this paper was carried out as part of the Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) action, H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015, under grant agreement number 676265 [Grant ID: MSCA-ITN-2].

Notes on contributors

Y. Vermeer

Yvette Vermeer is an Early Stage Researcher at the Interdisciplinary Network for Dementia Using Current Technology (INDUCT) and a PhD student at University College London in the United Kingdom.

P. Higgs

Paul Higgs is professor of sociology of ageing at University College London. He is editor of the journal Social Theory and Health and published ‘Rethinking Old Age: Theorising the Fourth Age’ and part of INDUCT.

G. Charlesworth

Georgina Charlesworth is an associate professor at University College London and part of INDUCT.