| Summary: | Chandran (2014) argues that the use of media in HIV and AIDS education has been on a scale unprecedented in health education, and social media in particular has played a key role in producing the universal awareness of HIV and AIDS. Theoretical perspectives on the media in HIV/AIDS education vary considerably. Early critical accounts stress that the mass media played a role in the distortion of scientific and medical findings concerning HIV and AIDS, privileging certain types of information over others, such as emphasising AIDS in the early years as a ‘gay plague’, gave precedence to biomedical constructions of HIV/AIDS. Many feminist, queer and AIDS activist accounts move beyond these discussions of media distortion and moral panic of HIV/AIDS by considering the distinctive ways in which discourses actively operate in the construction of gender, sexuality and epidemic. For the most part, however, these analyses maintain a focus on national HIV/AIDS education campaigns and their mediation by public policy.
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