Representations of professional nursing homes in the context of climate-related heatwaves: An exploratory study of Swedish media

Abstract

In recent years, a relatively large number of articles in the Swedish media have reported on the problems that afflict nursing homes due to prolonged and climate-related heatwaves during the summer months. Older residents are badly affected by the heat, especially as many nursing homes in Sweden lack air conditioning. This paper aims to explore how nursing homes are depicted in the Swedish press in relation to climate-related heatwaves, professional care, and risk management. The data comprises 182 articles published in the Swedish press and available in the database Retriever.se. The articles cover a period of twenty years, 2002–2022, and have undergone a qualitative analysis. The findings illustrate that media representations are characterized by both climate-related risk production within the framework of a discourse of risk, and climate-related risk management within the framework of a discourse of professionalism. Within the risk discourse, climate change and heatwaves are exclusively associated with risks, dangers, and threats, including threats to residents in nursing homes. The risk discourse is further developed in critical articles stating that nursing homes do not take the threat posed by heatwaves seriously enough, which leads to the mistreatment of residents. According to the discourse of professionalism, nursing homes are professional organizations that provide good care, and the care staff are competent, hardworking, and loyal. However, in the context of climate change, the discourse of professionalism reinforces a subject-object logic within which staff are attributed positions as agents and residents are seen as passive recipients of the staff's actions. An effect of these two contradictory media discourses is that nursing homes appear to be institutions of extremes.