Abstract
Considering the popularity of websites in social contexts and their significant force in producing collective discourses, attitudes, and patterns of behaviors, this study critically examined the projection of visual ageism on news websites during the COVID-19 pandemic. The social semiotic theory of visual grammar developed by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006, 2020) was the theoretical framework for the visual semiotic analysis of photographs. The search for data was conducted between March 2020 and July 2020. The study searching protocol included strings “older adults AND COVID-19”, “the elderly AND coronavirus”, “older people AND COVID-19”, and “old people AND coronavirus” in Google led to retrieving 71 photographs of Iranian older adults from Iranian news websites. The semiotic analysis of the photographs showed that the Iranian new websites continue to embrace a mindset that degrades the old people.
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