The biopolitics of aging: The presentation of aging in alternative and mainstream media

It is assumed that every discourse that is constructed to explain aging contains clues about the social structure in which it is formed. Therefore it can be said that the aging process is arranged as a normative and as a performative field of struggle between the so-called 'scientifically' divided age stages. In this context, time and the life span are both accepted for the individuals and the sovereign power (the social policies of the ruling practices in particular) to be a process that needs to be managed, organized and planned. Established expectations regarding this issue have caused aging to be regarded as a notion of precarity. This also increases the tendency of subjectivities, equipped with the idea of articulating their life, to spend the aging process at a 'reasonable' and 'desired' level. Within the scope of this study, the criterion that determines the level of 'reasonability' is framed in the context of a Foucauldian perspective on knowledge – power relations and ethics that is covered by the axis of managerialism. In this study, the problematizing of aging is tried to be observed in the mainstream and alternative journalism practices. Therefore, the Hürriyet newspaper is chosen as a sample for the mainstream media and the news portal bianet.org is chosen as an alternative one. As a result of the searching process, a Foucauldian discourse analysis has been carried out on the news written between the years 2002-2017 with the help of the keyword 'aging'. According to this observation, eight categories related to aging have been identified. These are 'Aging as a Field of Experience', 'Aging as a Category of Insolvency', 'Aging as an Immortality Strategy', ' Aging as a Dispositive Disease', 'The Idealization of Youth', 'The Biopolitics of Demography', 'Aging Process as a Subject of Social Policy' and 'The Gender of Aging' . In the context of these categories, the potential of the alternative media- as a desolate arena- in creating a resistantial sphere and discourse is tried to be examined.