Where is a character that should be here? - AIDS-news and the silencing of people with HIV
Journalism Theory; AIDS-news; Subjectivity Journalism; Communication and health.
This Masters dissertation aims to understand the behavior of AIDS-news today, 40 years after the beginning of the epidemic caused by the HIV. We used quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles published on Portal G1 each December from 2015 through 2019. We researched the history of HIV and AIDS in the media, the exploration of themes by the mass media, the construction of the idea of inherent death, and the link of the key population to the virus, analyzing the newsworthiness and silencing criteria, based on the recommendations of Unaids-UN and in the parameters of Subjectivity Journalism. We used "Red December" a period dedicated to the subject, as a guide for the clipping of journalistic content submitted to the French Discourse Analysis. Our analysis indicates that currently there is a “cooling down” of the news and silencing of the people living with HIV. In addition to the virus losing its novelty, there are a lot of articles that only reproduce statistical data on the infections, putting people as numbers, with a narrative that creates a gap between HIV/AIDS and the general population. We find a discourse much milder than four decades ago, much more careful when reporting on AIDS and all its subjects - but which, because of its politeness, is distant, inoffensive, and very impersonal in an insistent anonymous and faceless third person.