Older People and Technology Use: The Importance of Using Video Stimuli in Group Discussions

Abstract

Current work aims to discuss the importance of using short video materials when investigating technology practices and meanings in older people’s lives. We gathered data through the means of focus groups and we employed an innovative methodology, using a short movie: “The Yellow Smiling Face”, directed by a young Romanian director Constantin Popescu– already distributed in several film festivals. Introducing a short movie in the focus group allowed a reflection on everyday practices with communication technologies. We used this movie as a trigger for older people, asking them to relate their experience with learning different ICTs with the movie. Our findings suggest that some emergent topics are triggered by the context of the movie, such as the learning process, learning from the partners, whereas other topics were indirectly triggered by movie, such as the history of using communication technologies and the interference between technology use and gender roles. Based on these findings, we discuss, in the current article, the importance of learning from the partners to use new technologies, from the spouses, challenges of the learning process at this age group: namely the active role of women and the relatively passive role of the men and the stereotypically gender roles.