HIV/AIDS prevention and media campaigns: limited information?

This piece begins with a brief literature review that focuses upon how media attempt to make sense of news events and construct meaning about HIV/AIDS. We then focus specifically on a linguistic process identified in French dailies in articles about the prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS, namely, the presence of certain adverbs. The impact of this linguistic process is also investigated in an experimental study. The results indicated that participants who were exposed to a message within which epidemiological data were marked by such adverbs compared to those who processed a message without such an adverbial marking expressed a higher level of perceived risk and declared a stronger intention to use a condom and to practice a screening test. They also judged the epidemiological situation as more serious and were more supportive of a coercive management of the epidemic. These effects also appeared when the message referred to a sexually transmitted infection with which the subjects were not familiar.