From Valuable to Vulnerable: Negotiating Strategic Ageism in Later-Year Networked Communication
In recent years, contemporary digital economies are threatened by the proliferation of sophisticated scams and online fraud. Within the intersection of digital media, migration and ageing research, there is a growing number of research studies unpacking the financial, emotional and psychological impacts of scams on older migrants. This paper investigates the ways older Filipino Australians in Victoria, Australia, and their networks in Victoria, Australia and across the Philippines detect, interpret and respond to a diverse range of scams. I extend the lens of strategic misrepresentation (Burrell, 2008) in the context of digital ageism (Rosales et al., 2023) to analyse the data drawing from a multi-sited and visual ethnographic research (2023 – 2025). I coin the term ‘strategic intersectional ageism’ to capture the tactics of scamming in luring and deceiving older migrants and their networks by producing deceptive contents deeply rooted in socio-cultural relations, transnational links, and asymmetrical digital literacies. Significantly, older migrants and their networks negotiate and deploy counter strategies to disrupt scams and minimise digital harms. In sum, the paper contributes to rethinking digital exclusion by illuminating the ways digital threats are culturally tailored and subverted in digital and transnational environments.

Speaker
Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto is an is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, Australia. His research agenda is driven by critically exploring the dynamics and impacts of digital inclusion and exclusion among migrants and their networks who navigate an increasingly digital and global society.