Homophobia out of the closet in the media portrayal of HIV/AIDS 1991, 1996 and 2001: Celebrity, heterosexism and the silent victims
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a critical discourse analysis of the portrayal of HIV/AIDS in the 20 highest circulating mass print media magazines in Canada in 1991, 1996 and 2001. It is a follow-up of studies describing the conflation of homophobia and HIV/AIDS in media portrayal studies beginning in the 1980s. It provides an examination of more recent stories during a time when the epidemiological characteristics of HIV/AIDS changed to incorporate widespread heterosexual transmission. While the paper documents the continuing presence of homophobia, its portrayal has become indirect and subtle. It is not evident in the explicit descriptions of the sexual or drug-taking characteristics of people with HIV/AIDS, as in the past, but rather in the paradoxical extolling of heterosexuality and hegemonic masculinity. It is also evident in the emphasis on the differences between innocent and guilty victims of HIV/AIDS. There is also a focus on celebrities, both those with HIV/AIDS and those working to help those with HIV/AIDS. Conventional allopathic medicine continued to be emphasized as the primary way to deal with the disease. Alternative stories regarding topics such as prevention, social support for those sickened by HIV/AIDS and the role of poverty and racism in disease spread were ignored. There was some brief discussion of the importance of religion. Discussion of ethics related largely to ways of protecting innocent victims from the disease. The implications of this portrayal are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".