This thesis is concerned with AIDS cultural activism. Specifically, it examines artistic responses to the medical/scientific image of HIV that circulates widely in the mainstream press. Examples of AIDS science reporting that focus on the medical/scientific image of HIV are selected from popular American news journals. It is argued that science and journalism are different and mutually dependent domains of knowledge, neither of which can be examined without the other. AIDS activist art engages with the relationship between science and the media and offers alternatives to the authority offered in science reporting. In the author's closing remarks, it is stated that AIDS activist art addresses not only the AIDS crisis but challenges the entire ideological apparatus upon which popular representations of illness are based.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 84 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-68).

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In South Africa there are general studies that aim to understand HIV prevalence and specific surveys for target groups. However there is a gap in research that relates particularly to university students active participation in HIV/AIDS prevention messaging. This study explores the use of the Communication for Social Change (CFSC) theory with students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. The study takes the form of a survey, using researcher administered questions with 400 students at the Westville and Howard College campus to understand their perceptions of the 'Abstinence, Be faithful and Condomise' prevention strategy. Two focus groups were conducted at both campuses to further analyse the survey findings, with a particular reference to the use of dialogue to actively engage students in discussions about HIV/AIDS prevention messages. The study traces the origin of CFSC through a review of the development communication theories (which include modernization theory, dependency theory, development support communication and another development). The survey revealed that students were not supportive of programmes with a top-down flow of communication. Students at both campuses welcomed the role that dialogue could play to encourage student participation in the design of a new HIV/AIDS prevention message. Some of the findings from the survey showed that 91% of students at both campuses motivated in favour of students as active participants in HIV/AIDS communication processes. The findings from the focus group also revealed that students did not find the ABC message effective, and strongly promoted a revision of this message which should include 'accountability' and 'responsibility' as part of the HIV/AIDS prevention strategy. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

The issue of branding with regard to public health communication is the topic of this thesis. The case study investigated is that of the loveLife Lifestyle brand introduced to South Africa in 1999 by the US-based Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation. loveLife brought together the collective efforts of a consortium of NGOs concerned with adolescent reproductive health in South Africa with the primary objective of reducing the rate of new HIV infections, sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancy through promoting a healthy lifestyle approach using traditional commercial marketing techniques. This study draws upon the Circuit of Culture to explore the manner in which the meaning of the loveLife lifestyle brand discourse is constructed, produced, distributed and consumed through using a semiotic approach. To achieve this the study explores the meanings represented by loveLife through examining the images and texts from the television and radio programmes, outdoor media; print publications and public relations produced by loveLife. The manner in which these meanings were produced by loveLife as articulated in various policy documents. It explores how young people aged 12-17 from different socio-economic backgrounds consume and make meaning of the loveLife brand and use these in everyday life to express meaning about themselves in their social interaction and how carcereal networks of power comprising parents, religious groups and AIDS organizations have sought to regulate the meaning and social identities that arise from the representation of the brand. The study concludes that the representation of the loveLife lifestyle brand has given rise to a brand identity that positions adolescent sexuality as something that is cool and that everyone is engaged in. This representation has been the result of a deliberate brand strategy by loveLife that has sought to encourage more open discussions between parents and youth on issues relating to sex and sexuality. The unintentional consequence arising from this representation is that in their consumption of the meanings of loveLife, loveLife's interpersonal facilities are decoded by others in the community as being spaces that encourage sexual interaction by young people. Young people who attend these facilities are by implication decoded as being sexually active. This undermines the intention of the producers of creating spaces where young people can engage and interact in a variety of recreational activities including learning about sexual and reproductive health. An additional unintentional consequence of the representation is that stakeholders who exert power over young people such as parents and religious leaders have actively sought to regulate the meaning of the brand either through using formal channels of protest such as the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa or through preventing their youth from participating in loveLife's interpersonal programme. This study proposes that the quality of media messages be measured in relation to the meanings that consumers and those that interact with them decode. This includes exploring the social identities that these meanings give rise to and manner in which these find meaning through everyday interaction and the extent to which these meanings correlate with those intended by the producers of the message. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

Thesis ( Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 277-292). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (MA (Information Science))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Iowa, 2009. / Thesis supervisor: Julie Andsager. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-62).

Thesis (M.A. (Journalism & Media Studies)) - Rhodes University, 2007. / Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Journalism and Media Studies.

This paper explores discourses of HIV/AIDS evident in a South African daily newspaper from 1985 to 2000, and discusses the implications of these in terms of the way in which HIV/AIDS is constructed in society. In this paper I utilize a Foucauldian analysis of the relationship between power and knowledge. The discursive framework of the war against HIV/AIDS is used to show how different groups of subjects are positioned in relations of power. Within this the power of western science and medicine is influential and supports and informs other discourses of HIV/AIDS. I argue that the discursive framework constructing HIV/AIDS as a war does far more than provide a useful vehicle within which HIV/AIDS can be understood as it supports certain institutions and groups of people above others. The paper concludes by identifying the silenced voices of women and dissidents, and calling for greater reflection concerning the critical analysis of current issues surrounding HIV/AIDS.